Crucial: The Power of a Propaganda Love

In The Memory of an Exceptional Generation

Someone way smarter than me said:

"Sometimes telling is better than not telling. And sometimes telling can do better harm."

Chapter One: Mothers and Fathers and Siblings and Friends

Uchiha Sasuke

You know the feeling of receiving something you never wanted. Something you dreaded even. Like a change in your room made by your mom.

I guess that is how I would prefer to describe the shift in my anxiety. Me no longer dreading the awful consequences could mean a healthy mindset. Or it could just as well represent a calm before the storm. In every way this change of attitude is annoying and unwanted.

The worst of all are the memories I tried to leave behind long ago, not the obvious ones, however. Those that are sickening, but oddly nostalgic, leave the same feeling of your heart being tied to a great rock with a fine string and when you try to move away, to move on, your heart starts bleeding from all the tugging.

One of the furthest memories from my childhood is associated with a girl from my flat; 8 years old; a sudden death caused by inner bleeding. No one ever even looked into the case, there also were women and men, but I can't recall anything about them.

I only remember the older girl from my flat, the blue door on the right side with a shitty graffiti and a golden handle, sixth floor. She also had a dog called Jessie- some Russian breed. For some reason, I feel like that matters.

I never got to play with her, no one did.

I remember receiving the news like a brick wall. None of us cried, none of us were in shock or scared thinking it could have been any of us. We were just curious or in simple denial.

Naruto, for example, came up with a ridiculous idea that the 8-year-old ran away from home and got married, the parents were embarrassed and decided to spread out a word, that she actually died.

Funny, how the idiot could come up with the dumbest idea and it could somehow help preserve his idiotic radiant innocence.

Later on, while I was overthinking a little bit too much over that particular death for a 7 year-old, I discovered something.

Yes, it could have been me. The kid who died, I mean.

It could have been any of us.

Yes, it could have been me and therefore, it should have been me.

The thought didn't bother me. It was something I accepted with ease.

After all, it wasn't me.

The gloomy clouds of a child's early death receded and childhood remained sunny. School was chaining us together so we wouldn't start falling apart.

The kids in the class were okay. We were all similar to each-other. The boys got along with the girls. We all were good at math and we had all our pictures of cars, sunflowers, suns and sea hanging on the wall; it was the first six grades; the only years of my childhood.

No leeching smell of death following us around like stormy clouds could wipe the genuine smiles from our faces. No fear of loss and separation.

With a skip in our steps we marched into the hell.

Haruno Sakura

My dad used to always talk about 80ties like there was something he was especially proud of. Everyone was proud of eighties as I later discovered. Though, the stories being told were never inviting. As I grew older I understood why: They were proud because they survived.

They survived and spread like cockroaches unaffected by nuclear leak. After all, only the strongest of them got to live past the age of twenty. I remember thinking that adults were capable of anything. Sasuke once told me when we were young, that his mother indeed had a doctors degree, that she spent all of her afternoons reading Goethe in Deutsche, she made exquisite dinners and worked an eight-hour shift at night at the 24/7 exchange cabin. Oh, and she had two kids – the oldest barely 11 years old.

When I try to remember this woman I cannot seem to recall her features, but I do however remember that me and my mother found her fairly pleasant and well-mannered. I used to think she was too skinny and her habit of fixing my collar every once in a while, when she picked us up from school, was in fact affectionate.

Strange how the generation of our parents even under the pressure of Totalitarian intoxication and the defeating, hopeless desperation caused by a lost war, could still hold so much power over the stream of their life. No hunger, no darkness, no biting cold, or scalding heat, no humiliation, no loss could prevent them from rising again and keep preserving what was a priority - us.

Uchiha Sasuke

My father was a man of a few words. He was not absent for his children, nor was he overly present. I didn't know who exactly he was, he used to work just anywhere, drive a bus, fix the pipes, reset the watches, like everyone did back then. Later I found he was an engineer. My father used to bring supplies from the market, he was always tired, exhausted even, and he had a flaring temper. But I also remember that he was fairly easy to please, he wasn't asking of me to be the first in class, he never had anything against my friends, and he was okay with my weird quirks. And he had a particular sense of humor, the type that lets you laugh death in its face and has you grinning instead of panicking.

Father was tall and strong. I remember considering if he could lift our flat if I asked him to. I now understand he wouldn't. Not because he couldn't, but because it would be unnecessary.

That was Uchiha Fugaku. No nonsense, commenting at the irony of tragic events, a definite smart mouth, introducing me to all the dangers of life without putting me in harm's way, not sparing unnecessary attention, and safe - always safe.

I rarely think of my late father nowadays. It is disappointing to reminisce about him for I find I have forgotten quiet a few things. Like his voice. I recall it used to surge confidence and self-awareness at the same time. Although, I can't remember the ring to it, though. How it sounded at all.

I find this deeply upsetting, for my whole life has been dedicated to rebuilding my father's name and reputation, I wanted people except for me to remember him and tell stories of how Uchiha Fugaku tried his best.

Sakura remembered him. I asked her once if she did. She told me of this one time when we were in third grade and Fugaku picked her up from school, 'cause no one else was available. He took her along with Itachi on a ride across the town, he was a bus-driver than, my father. Sakura said that she remembered he was polite with the passengers and joked a couple of times about Itachi. She said she didn't get it, but was sure it was funny.

Once during a sleepless summer night, Sakura told me about that day again.

"I was chewing a gum real loud. Could tell it sorta annoyed Itachi. He got off the bus two blocks from ours and I thought it was because of my gum - wait, it's too hot in here."

She took of her sweatshirt and lied naked next to me.

"Now that I think about It, It could be a shortcut to the bureau."

The absentminded look on her doll-like face evaporated in a moment. After a long pause she breathed through the unbearable heat and building sexual tension.

"Your father used to wear the same jacket all the time. I also remember he had little gray hair above his ears"

I told her that he didn't have any gray hairs. She insisted that he did, so I didn't argue with her further.

She turned on her stomach revealing a beautiful back, smooth, slightly sun-kissed skin and all.

We dropped the subject completely.

I avoided remembering Uchiha Fugaku, Uchiha mikoto, Obito, Shisui or any of the Uchihas for that matter.

although, I did spend a lot of time thinking about Uchiha Itachi. My deceased brother.

.

.

In The Memory of an Exceptional Generation

please, leave a review and let the author know your thoughts.