Poetry for Sympathy

Wrecked Mitt, Impeccable Memories

   Gray scraped surfaces peaked through the worn out white leather, normal for a glove that was about six years old. Although the writing was still legible, the green ink smudged throughout the baseball glove´s surface, creating all sorts of crazy patterns. The lines of letters were those lines of poems, poems about life issues. Life issues that included sorrow like death or sickness, or moments of accomplishments. These poems represented Johnny´s memoirs, moments that impacted him forever. Johnny would read these poems whenever he had time in the baseball field; he claimed it kept him entertained.

    “Death is nothing at all.

I have only slipped away to the next room.

I am I and you are you.

Whatever we were to each other,

That, we still are.”

   Those lines from “Death is Nothing At All” by Henry Scott Holland, were uncle John´s last words before he died from cancer. He was Johnny´s godfather; Johnny was actually named after him. Uncle John loved baseball, so when he died Johnny was certain about honoring his godfather´s memory by doing what uncle John loved. My little brother demanded a baseball glove and immediately got signed up for the sport.

   The first thing Johnny did when he received the mitt was to write those lines of “Death is Nothing At All” down on it, to remember what evoked his passion for the game. He never thought about copying down an inventory of poems onto his treasured mitt, but over time, he realized reading while waiting to play baseball was actually entertaining. And so every time he felt the urge to express his emotions on a significant event, he would pour his heart out through poems onto his baseball glove.

   That poem still reminds me of uncle John’s death, but now it also reminds me of Johnny´s as well. A few hours before his death, when he was feeling his worst, he asked me to pass him his mitt, he read the poems to me.

   “Death is nothing at all.

I have only slipped away to the next room.

I am I and you are you.

Whatever we were to each other,

That, we still are.” 

    The sound of his voice still rings in my ears. He died from leukemia. It was a disease that made him thin to the bone, his skin grew pale as snow, and the bags under his eyes became like deep wounds. Watching Johnny suffer made me suffer as well, not physically, but emotionally. Every time a shriek of pain escaped from his mouth, I felt an excruciating ache in my heart. Like if a knife was stabbing me and tearing away part of me.

   From the moment I found out how serious his sickness was, I knew Johnny would cease to exist, but I never wanted to imagine when that moment would come. I´m depressed about his death, but more angry really… angry at how unfair life is. I consider my little brother to be the greatest kid that ever-stepped foot onto this Earth.

    Johnny was a genius; his brain must have been compacted of tremendous and creative

thoughts. I know it for a fact, and if you don´t believe me, then you can go ask all the teachers who called the house to compliment my parents about his intelligence. Did I mention how kind and polite he was? He was always up for helping everybody, no matter the consequences. His smile was the warmest I have ever seen, to me, it seemed like rays of sunshine inhabited his mouth.

    Oh! I lied about not being hurt physically. The night he died, I simply went insane, a demon seemed to replace my soul. My fists grew a brain of their own; the brain commanded them to take action. I started punching and breaking all the windows in the garage, leaving shattered bits on the abrasive cement floor. I stopped once I realized the bone in my hand was no longer whole. Every time I try making a fist now, my hand stings, and I can barely tighten it.

   I wish time machines existed for real, that way I could go back to those joyful times and hold on to Johnny. But now the only thing left to hold onto is his memory, a memory from when I was a child. I do not want to be seventeen and in the present, I want to be thirteen and alongside my beloved little brother.