Butterflies and memories

Memories of my li'l beefy beefers remind me of butterflies. It has been ages since I saw one in the flesh and if I did see one right now, I think I won't even remember the gap from when I last saw one.

I remember her in her violet and white striped Tee and matching shorts when she couldn't even talk. I feel like I need to be with her even if it means leaving this world. There are two things that stop me - one is that I don't believe in an afterlife; secondly I don't really think I can do what she did looking at the wreckage that she wreaked in my life…I am still vain enough to think that I am important enough in other people's lives to be as important as she was to me. Or am I? Does it even matter? Do they matter to me much? They do! So that is why I can't let go.

My earliest memory of beefy is me catching butterflies and putting them in a big plastic jar for her to see and gurgle as a baby. If you only knew what I feel right now, beefkutts, you wouldn't have done what you did - you wouldn't have abandoned me. I feel lost. I feel helpless. I feel totally cynical about life.

I have decided to chronologically document what I remember about Beefy. It is an attempt to preserve my memory of her as vividly as I can.

I remember the two of us sitting around waiting for the rickshaw to take us to school. Me reading a book and Beefy puttering about and trying to feign excuses to not go to school. How ironic that later on I was the slacker and she the scholar.

I remember her obsession with jasmine flowers. I hated it because I thought it was too "common". Yes, I was an anglicized snob even then. Poor beefy was always the innocent, shy one. The one with chubby cheeks and pleasing smile that nobody could ignore. When did she lose her magical smile?

I think I don't remember her smiling much or laughing ever since our grandparents died. Was that the last straw? Should she have been taken in for counseling as a 5-year old? Perhaps. I remeber playing with our neighbours Arun and Anup the day my grandmother went to the hospital and never came back. The rickshaw was a lambretta with doors. I think she wore her violet saree with pale pink flowers. I didn't think too much of her leaving because she was always going to the hospital. Now I know that she did because of her breast cancer but back then I didn't know why. I didn't question it. I just thought of her as very old and needing medical attention - she must have been all of 53 when the cancer started.

Jim, if there is an afterlife, I beg you to take care of my beefy like you would of your own girls. Ricky mistook my affection for Rachelle as something else. But all I felt was a fatherly/ elder-brotherly affection to that precocious teen who I wished had been my daughter.

Again, to my dear beefy, with all my love,
Your bro.