by Bianca Ozeri
Two months ago I lost a dear family friend, Jonathan. His death was sudden. Unsurprising—his mother says—but sudden. I’m spending this holiday on Grand Cayman with his family.
The Lewis’s are those closer than blood friends. Jon was my cousin, his mother I call auntie. Staying in their house, where Jonathan and his three siblings grew up for four years, has been a challenge for everyone.
I’m still not sure how to write about the tragedy—I’ve never been so close to the center of one. Here, there’s only murk.
Instead of Jonathan, there is an energy wrought with grief. Happy memories don’t yet purvey our conversations. We’re still talking about our anger. How did this come to be? What we are to do with it now?
I’m certain I’ve digested only morsels of this pain, one I feel I’m too young to really understand. Ensconced in death on such a majestic place posits some incompatible feelings.
Jonathan, who loved to dive, was supposed to be on this trip. Yesterday, Christmas, we swam far out into the bay to snorkel. We hovered over sergeant majors, and sea urchins, and fairy basslets feeding off pastel corals. Huge amethyst leaves moored to the reef swayed slowly with the tide. I was hypnotized.
Even though the holiday felt lost in this 80 degree weather. I’m thankful to be here. Seas replenish my spirituality. In winter I forget how magnificent a painter the sun is. I feel Jon when it sets, and in wind, and in the reefs planted below the waters he’s swam in.
Just before I left New York last week, his absence (or maybe his presence) hit me hard. I had yet to think of him all day. The build up begot tears on a rush hour subway. As I wiped them away a young Korean boy sat beside me, his grandmother beside him. “Would like a snack, Jonathan?” she asked him.