Science  Write  Now

 “It is indeed easier to unravel a single thread — an incident, a name, a motive — than to trace the history of any picture defined by many threads. For with the picture in the tapestry a new element has come in: the picture is greater than, and not explained by, the sum of the component threads.”

― J.R.R. Tolkien

Claude sat at his desk, staring at the blank paper before him. He’d been sitting in the same position for about an hour now. Still, no words. It was like the well in his mind had all dried up, and the paper was left parched. His legs jittered, knees drumming against the wooden frame of the desk. He could barely contain the urge to rip up the sheet before him. 

He was a writer, and words were the thing he loved; his life’s mantra…and now, when he needed them most, he was at a loss for them. Claude’s heart twinged with guilt at the thought, and the familiar pressure returned to his temple. 

Perhaps in a few months, he’d be writing another eulogy– for another parent. 

He should do this now. 

“You need the closure,” his therapist had said. 

Closing his eyes, he tried to push everything to the back of his mind.

He kept his eyes shut, willing for an idea, a memory, to float his way. Ms. Fraser’s voice, the very one of his high school English teacher, rang in the back of his mind, “Write what you know.”

What did he know?

His father had died when he was thirteen. He could still remember snippets of the eulogy he had written for him then. It was rushed and had felt too simple, like slapping a plaster on a gaping wound and hoping the bleeding would stop. Hence the rewrite now. But much of what a younger Claude associated with his father remained the same– the beep-beep-beep of the hospital and the sagging bed upon which his father lived out his final months.

The only other slivers that Claude could remember were that he loved nature. His father was an ecologist after all. Claude’s clearest memory of him, when he was still healthy, was when he took him birdwatching. His father had lifted him onto his shoulders when he complained of tired feet, and pointed up to a V of migrating birds. Geese, perhaps. Claude couldn’t remember.

Look! 

The leader bird in the front creates a slipstream, which makes it easier for the birds following to fly. 

Claude remembered not knowing what a “slipstream” meant, but he nodded along anyway. 

And when the leader is tired, a new one takes his place. That’s it. That’s the secret. 

His father set him down from his shoulders and kneeled in front of him. 

Always remember this Claude. It’s impossible to live life on your own. Everyone needs help. It’s always there. You just need to look around a bit to find it. 

Two are better than one, because they have a good reward for their toil.  For if they fall, one will lift up his fellow. That’s Ecclesiastes 4:9-10.

Claude nodded at this, too. Of course, he hadn’t understood a thing then, but he wanted to.

But now, instead of comforting him, the memory stung. Claude loved his father, but as a child he had never really understood his passing. He had felt abandoned– lost. And in a way still did. The steady wing that supported him was snatched from his grasp, the sudden movement causing him to fall. He had to teach himself how to pick himself up, how to fly. There was no one behind which he could fall into place. 

And then it appeared. 

The only solace he found was with the boy with a scrawny face defined by brown eyes, an arched nose, and a perpetual grin. 

Yusuf. 

The boy who used to live right across from Claude’s childhood home. His friend. Hours building forts in Yusuf’s bedroom, and turns taken playing Super Mario Bros on his Nintendo, or a game of tag at the park nearby. But the best days were the ones when Yusuf’s father was home, and if he was in the mood, he’d call them into the living room to listen to him recite poetry. And so, by the age of ten, unbeknownst to Claude, he’d heard poems from the greatest of Afghan and Persian poets, the likes of Khushal Khan Khattak and Rumi. Of course, even after hearing the snatches of dubious translation from Pashto to English by Yusuf, he didn’t understand much of it– but he liked it all the same. It sounded beautiful to him, the way the words took up space, the lyricality, and the genuine joy that lit up Yusuf’s father’s face. A young Claude had always been a little jealous of their tight-knit family. It had never occurred to him that his own father did not choose to be confined to a hospital bed. 

And on that  September morning, when Claude’s father died, Yusuf’s mother was the first to console them. She had a warm hug, and Claude felt a sense of relief when he saw his own mother taken care of by such deft and gentle hands. She brought them entire platters of homemade mantu and bowls of spiced palau every week, singlehandedly saving Claude and his mother’s lives in those months. 

But then one grey day in April, Yusuf broke the news– they were moving. And so, the Afridi family were gone by the end of May. Claude always chastised himself for never having thought of taking down Yusuf’s number, or even an address, but now he was long gone. All that was left was a yellowed paper containing the translation of a poem– one that Yusuf’s father had written himself. 

Abruptly, the phone started to ring. 

Claude’s heart stalled. 

No one called him. No one, except the hospital where his mother now lived. And with that, he burst into motion, snatching up the phone on the third ring. 

-

The sting of antiseptic that pervaded his nose, and the maddening beeping of the monitors was all too familiar. Every time he visited the hospital despair came at him in waves– sometimes he felt like reeling, his heart convulsing at being so helpless. Sometimes, he simply felt empty inside– his mind too tired to grapple with reality. 

Today it was the former; his hands shook as he walked out of the ICU. He needed to process everything without needing to smile through it all in front of his mother, perhaps a coffee to clear his head. Critical condition said the paper on the clipboard. How mundane, too simple for what this was.

She had looked terrible. All her energy seemed spent on lifting the corners of her mouth. Her eyes were sunken, and her skin was like chalk. Claude was afraid she’d turn to dust if he touched her. His mother. Yes, she hadn’t been the same since father passed. But she was always strong, in her way.

As he walked through the corridor, he passed a room with the door ajar– enough to look inside even if he didn’t mean to. Inside was a man had tubes jutting out of him in all sorts of places, so many that his face was barely even visible. But what was jarring was the sight of a little girl tightly clasping the hand of her mother as she peered over at what could only be her father on the hospital bed. 

Memories that he had tried to stifle long ago resurfaced, knocking the breath out of him and causing him to sink into the nearest chair.

A memory fought its way up– 

The day he no longer recognised his own father. He was only a strange man limited to his bed. He no longer asked me to “look!” His eyes seemed far away, already escaping us. That was the hardest part. Worse than even death. 

Look! 

Don’t forget your binoculars, Claude. Don’t forget to zoom in. Notice the little gears that make the world turn. 

But when his diagnosis of cancer came through, Claude no longer knew what to look for. 

From that day, Claude told himself there was no point in looking into the little things when the bigger picture was all that remained. All he knew was that his father was dying–already dead–for all he knew, and no observation into the oncogenes and tumour suppressor genes as the doctor had tried to explain, would ever make the whole ordeal make sense.

And now here he was, with another parent on the deathbed. He wanted to believe she had more time left–

His thoughts were broken by a nurse rushing up to him. “Your mother’s awake,” she said softly.

-

“Claude…” she whispered. “I’m going to be okay.”

Claude found that he couldn’t open his mouth. The muscles in the back of his thraot were knotting. So he simply went on holding her hand, trying to avoid eye contact.

She smiled, the movement clearly hurting her. “Lavender,” she managed to whisper. 

That's when he remembered the sprig of lavender that hung out from his breast pocket–he’d hastily cut it off from the garden before coming to the hospital and completely forgotten to give it to her. He brought it out and ran it between his fingers, the smell lingering in the air- the nostalgic smell soothing his nerves.

“The bees,” his mother said.

And like a key turning inside a lock, something clicked. A memory, his father’s voice:

Look! 

The bees are what make the plants flower, and the fruits and vegetables grow. Look at their little furry legs coated with pollen, like fairy dust. Your mother would never get her fix of lavender without them. 

She smiled weakly up at him as realisation set in. He couldn’t help but grin. 

He’d always known lavender was his mother’s favourite flower. His father had known that too, and thus had planted shrubs of lavender for her in the front yard. 

But she loved them because they attracted bees–because Claude’s father loved bees.

He would say that sometimes, we need to leave the books and just come watch the bees to learn everything there is to learn. 

Claude could feel the weight of his mother’s eyes on him then. Scrutinising. Discerning all the secrets that he thought he had swept under, learning of all the weight that was dragging him down without a word passing between them.

At last, she spoke, voice so hoarse it was almost painful to hear.

“He would have been proud of you.”

 With that, he could tell that she was getting tired again. He pulled up the blanket and tucked it in around her, watching her drags of breath quiet into a gentle rhythm. With a final squeeze, he slipped his hand away, sitting in a chair beside her bed.

His mother’s words had changed something. 

Perhaps he didn’t need a gallery of memories to carry his father’s spirit within him. It was there all along, woven into him. He just needed to look.

He realised now he’d never truly been alone, nor abandoned by his father. 

In fact, he had left him the greatest gift of all– perspective.

Yusuf’s family had taken care of him many a time. They had let him drift in their slipstream, gently guiding him forward. He just hadn’t appreciated it that way.

The wonder his father found in nature had, over time, blossomed in Claude as a love for language– a fascination with every word’s place and meaning– how they contributed to the poem, to the story.

That was it. He knew now what he had to write for the eulogy. It wouldn’t be a recollection of memories, he hadn’t many. It would simply be a letter of gratitude for the legacy of wonder that his father had quietly left behind. 

Fingers trembling, he picked up his pen.

The science behind the piece:

Just like birds flying in a V, or bees pollinating flowers, synergy is reflected in the way we humans interact with each other and how we perceive the world we live in. Individuals—though seemingly alone—are interconnected, and the strength of others can help one move forward, just as nature itself thrives through collaboration.