Some Forms Of Hope

Emily Dickinson is quoted to have said : " The Things that that never can come back, are several - Childhood - some forms of Hope - the Dead ." Emily Wu quotes these startling words at the start of the second part of her chilling memoir " Feather in the Storm ", about growing up in the harrowing chaos of China's Communist Revolution with the Great Leap Forward and its subsequent equally brutal Cultural Revolution together claiming the lives of over ten million people. The words rang in my mind like a gong that reverberates into a headache. Civil wars are always especially brutal, and Emily Wu's sensitively written account of her traumatic childhood rings true to that fact all too often illustrated in the story of human history. Families are torn apart, are destroyed, are pitted against each other. Heartbreaking and bringing to mind the eternally unanswerable enigma of evil and all its monstrous manifestations.
I remember my brother saying to me, when my parents' marriage and our relationship with our siblings were falling apart all at the same time :  " World War III has started." At the time, 15 years ago now, I thought he was being quite overdramatic. But the facts cannot be denied. Once the dust cleared of my parents' bitter end to their long marriage, there was nothing but rubble left. Both our sisters were dead, my brother and I became permanently estranged, my father perished alone in an Alzheimer center in Oostende, and my mother died of complications of liver and kidney cancer certainly related to her long time alcohol abuse. All that remained was a hole in my heart big enough to drive a truck through. There are no family reunions, no family anniversaries, weddings, baptisms, Christmas celebrations, bbq.s. There is no family left. Perhaps that is why the quote by Emily Dickinson was so jarring when I came across it. It hit a nerve that stays raw regardless of the passage of time. The words that hit me the strongest were " some forms of Hope ". There are still days when I have to struggle hard to overcome the pull against the loss of hope that started when my family destroyed itself. Emily Dickinson is right, there are things that never can come back. No matter how hard you try, no matter how hard you pray. What is lost stays lost when it comes to the loss of family. It leaves one alone. Not alone as with no one around. Alone as in uprooted like a tree, your soul always gasping for air, longing to have your drying, dying roots be planted again in the comfort and belonging of an earth family there for you. You see trees planted securely all around you, and your heart aches for the ones pulled up and struggling like you are yourself. It is an ache that never goes away. Like a volume switch, it will tone down its presence , but when you least expect it, it will pierce your heart again with deafening roar, as impredictable as a bomber flying overhead. It is not something I talk about out loud hardly ever to anyone, not even to my husband and son. It is hard enough to write about. Or even think about without the old trauma response of nausea coming back, because I just can't take it, my whole body recoils still at the unnatural act of being stripped of my roots, my family, my clan and the identity that once made me feel unique, worthwhile, proud.