Of Scars, Of Seattle's Best

At Seattle’s Best the other evening, I had a not-too-late-night-conversation with some good friends – Aldo, Pao and Emoy. While the conversation was firing up, Aldo caught sight of a scar on my left leg. “Where did you get that?” he chortled. I looked at my eight-stitches-scar. I tried to recall an experience of two decades past. And, I narrated a history I almost but have not quite forgotten.

However, when the wounds of life scarred us deeply, with a pain abysmal – how would one look at, recall and narrate the story behind those scars? For a sexually abused child, how does she stare at the face of a stranger? For a husband who just lost his love one of thirty-five years in a battle with cancer, how does the sound of his voice echo inside the very room they made love in for ages past? For a mother who in her arms embraced the tortured, mangled body of her dying son, how would the odor of her son’s clothes tang as she launders those shirts? How does one make sense in this routine of fear, in this routine of loneliness, in this routine of angst? Honestly speaking, I do not know. I am voiceless.