no more heroes / firstborn

I love visiting empty shopping malls, especially if they look run-down. Like a barren wasteland, the vacant buildings are like a forgotten monument, now the embodiment of a faded masterpiece - an uncharted territory rife with adventure. Walking along the empty avenues, through impressive archways and expansive concourses, I imagine myself an alien explorer discovering the ruined remnants of a once busy marketplace. Its abandonment is a tragically poignant parable, but such parables are too common to count and are often consequently ignored.

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I sit in an old wooden chair, on the same cushions and cushion covers I used to 12 years ago, back when I was a kid mesmerised by the television- oblivious to everything and anything else. Now, I take in everything. My uncle sits with a pile of pine cones on the plastic table in front of him. The afternoon sun makes its way through the full length windows, filling the house with its warmth. With the windows fully open, sounds of passing cars, the light panting of the dog and the summer heat enter making the world a part of the house, or rather, the house a part of the world. The tv, in its usual spot, calmly informs us of war and oil spills, but we pay it no attention. The narration of current affairs seems foreign in this familiar setting - the wallpaper stained with memory, the nostalgia soaked carpet - but it is preferable to listening to the empty air that an old lady's belaboured breath would have once filled, so we leave it on. Now her picture hangs on the wall overlooking the dining table; beside it, a picture of her husband - my grandfather.

His picture always looked slightly forlorn to me. His expression gravely solemn, I used to avoid looking at his picture, perhaps out of some form of reverence - the same kind of courtesy that prevents people from making eye contact in the elevator or on the subway. Now together, as I study their portraits, their features seem impossibly serene. Resting side by side, countenance captured in black and white, he no longer looks forlorn. Like a flower photographed from a different angle, his wife's presence beside him reveals a different dimension to me, or at least that's what it seems like. I was never very close to my grandfather - too young and too busy watching cartoons to care. My dad spoke of him infrequently, but they were always words of praise and admiration. I contemplate with wonder how I could know so little of the people whose blood runs through my veins - a pair of anonymous donors, distant neighbours, familiar strangers.