A Candle Flickered

Looking through a window I see a cake huge in comparison to the young boy for whom it was purchased. A few friends, all about 10 or 11, and the young boy’s family stand circled in close. His family is comprised of his mother, and his two elder siblings, both sisters. All try to sing in unison the typical chant of birthdays past, present, and future, that one song that every child knows from the age of two on only to be sung on the anniversary of a person birth. 1

This is last birthday party this young boy will know as his own celebration. The last truly carefree moments he will have with his mother. His February 9th. A day for this child a funeral to birthdays. A dirge to lead unto life, a living horror show, that nightmare you would not wish upon anyone not even that or your most loathed enemies. A final series of moments. A final year of time with his mother. 2

A backdrop for you, this eleven year old child living with a single parent, his mother, and two older sisters is not the star of the school, nor is he a child prodigy in any sense of the term. An ordinary child, living on a quiet street after his father died only four years prior, is still exists in a reclusive state of emotion. With his only talent being that he can smear the walls of a person’s mind with random trivial tid-bits, he was not amongst the social elites. One of his few friends at the time was his dog Angel; he did not go out to play often. This geek in the making sat on his bed playing Pokemon and watching Animal Planet all day. 3

Though intelligent, he was lazy. He became familiar with the vice Principal’s office. The man to whom it belonged was a nasty mean person with the idea that over-punishing children was the proper course of action in every situation, along with his usual cubicle in the support room, which really should have been named the isolation room. There was never any support to be given in this room, just “Sit, be quiet, find some work to do or sleep.” If the inhabitants were lucky they were allowed to have the radio on, sometimes. 4

There was once, just once, that the young boy was glad to be in the support room. He was as usual in there for the same reason as every other day: he had not done his homework. Typical 5th grader. Well typical student really? But he was punished for it there were plenty of other kids not doing homework and this injustice was brought down upon him. Anyway, that one joyous occasion meant he could sit and eat his lunch in peace during school with his mother, the women whom he admired for her strength and willingness to sit in a room resembling the dinning area of her occupation at the Hopewell Detention Center for the juvenile offenders of the law. She did this knowing he had broken a rule and was being punished for it, but she decided to love him anyway. Now it is not a federal crime, forgetting to do homework, though the room felt like a prison cell depicted in all the movies of escaping and gun slinging. 5

This young boy enjoyed his last year at the elementary school despite the teacher who always seemed to have it out for him, and the vice principal that finally stopped harassing him because his mother and her legal wisdom from the paralegal degree she had worked so hard to obtain decided to make him fear the name Balmer. The days grew on, and the weather changed from the muck and slush of the spring time to the summer heat of New York, where it could be 55 to 60 degrees on Christmas day and on Mother’s day be snowing. 6

The summer passed by in a flash for there were finally other boys that lived on the street to play kick ball with and race bikes form the top of the street down and back. The Animal Planet schedule gradually forgotten and, the daily routine of bikes, the play-ground trips and other excursions became the center of attention until it became dull and pointless. The beginning of new adventures in The Middle School became the focus. Finding friends and figuring out who was in what house with whom, became the most exciting thing to all the pre-teen children.7

The final week of summer came and dragged on. The day before school finally came and that morning the young boy awoke, his mother and sister already suited up to take a ride on the “new” Honda Goldwing. The new side car waited for him to be dressed in the miniature garb like that of his sister and mother. His black, silver and purple helmet had a little figure of something not quite a worm but not a snake either. They, headed to the estate of his mother recently departed friend to meet some state official to hear him say it was ok for them to buy the car left behind by Michelle. This car was to be a gift to the boy’s sister who was soon to get her permit and not long after her license. 8

The young boy all suited up in an outfit that almost perfectly matched his mother’s, begged to take the station wagon out to the house because he had a bad feeling about this ride. Nothing conclusive, just a gut feeling that something horrific was going to happen. The boy had not for-seen the events to come to the exact detail, but he had a few months precursor told his mother, Jacqueline, that she was going to die on her Motorcycle in a morbid conversation about death and how everyone in the room wanted to be buried. 9

As they were passing Cooley Road, with neither a care nor concern toward what was waiting down the road but the car that was soon to belong to Myrna Balmer, headed down 5 & 20. As the troublesome trio climbed the hill, leading up to the crown where the road flattened out, they drove headlong in to a pickup truck pulling a trailer, the contents still unknown to the young boy to this very day, as the road bike for unknown reasons swayed into the opposing lane of traffic coming up the hill. The impact, killing his mother the only person in his family who ever truly showed any concern or compassion towards him? The same force of impact had simultaneously thrown his sister a good fifty feet from the dilapidated motorcycle breaking her left femur and shattering the left knee cap, causing additional brain damage to the already hindered personality of this fifteen soon to be sixteen year old child. The young boy sustaining very minimal injuries consisting of a duet of miniscule cuts midway down the rib-cage from a piece of the sidecar windshield. The young boy then rushed to Strong hospital in Rochester, with the sirens crying out similar to that of the young boy in his mind sitting on a gray couch screaming in agony the lost of his family. His only true injury was the underlying emotional damage, the torturous memories of the smiling mother he loved, hearing her last laugh, and the worse stolen moment ever, his mother’s final words “OH SHIT.” 10

They finish the song. The room goes dark as the candles flicker out with the young boy’s CO2 enriched breath. As they shuffle to turn on the lights and cut the cake to tame the ravenous children drooling over the sugar coated dessert a buzzing sound alarms the young boy as he is shaken to consciousness. The young boy sits up in his bed, thinking about school about the paper he’ll be assigned in his 7th period creative writing class. What topic was the bizarrely amusing teacher Mr. Sisson, going to pick for this week? The young boy at age Seventeen was no longer all too young, being a senior in high school just trying to get by and though she was dead make his mother proud, as though she was alive.11

All this taken in the blink of an eye, a flash in the strobe of emotions that make life. What more could have happened that day? The Year 2001, was not a kind year to the United States with in a matter of days after this small event that shook many in the Motorcyclist community the 9/11 attacks happened. It was the worst year for this young child and his Family, five days after the first February 9th with out his mother the house he had finally become capable of calling home burned. The source being an electrical wire that had shorted out this wire had been on the list of things to fix made by his that previous summer. February 14th 2001 had been a finalization in a chapter of this child’s life. He set in his mind to pass through Middle and High school with out repeating any grades, to continue on to college and come back and rebuild his favorite house from his child hood what little one he had. 12