Take-offs, White Roses, and Landings

There was a red flare.

A singular red flare, to the side of the road. I saw it at a distance, through the rain and fog. Even though I rendered my wheel to the familiar bend of 280, I can tell that there were no other cars around, no lights, no signs of movement. It wasn't until I was passing by the flare that there was momentum of wreckage on the ground: the carnage of a car accident or the like. But it was brief. The moment my headlights hit the scattered pieces of metal across the road, perpendicular to said red flare, the wreckage-laid road disappeared. And it was in that space of time, in which my thoughts were developing the images I just saw, that my eyes adjusted to a figure, standing to the side of the road. A singular figure. Now, it may just be that I was driving 60 miles per hour on the slick wet roads. It was late, and I had just shaken myself from a deep nap. But as I passed the figure, its face shadowed under the late night sky of the unlit 280, he managed to vanish from the roadside and became my backseat passenger. I peered up, and there he sat, grinning at me from my rear view mirror.

Now as I've said, it could be that I've just woken up from my nap. My late night habit of taking drives have never resulted in something so delusional. It may have been that I forced myself to drink a Venti soy latte from Starbucks just as I was about to board the plane last morning. Or that I've been pummeled by lack of sleep, Orange County climate, and/or change in diet. It may just be that I participated in two days of a proper Catholic mourning ceremony: wakes, funeral, and burial; family time is when I shed crocodile tears. Out of all my acute principles, showing my less than desirable emotions in front of hundreds of Vietnamese relatives is not acceptable. I like to keep my grieving private, closer to my soul, because I'm used to that sharp pain. To publicize such pain in front of Vietnamese Catholic relatives is the biggest fake I can manage. In any case, I was there, for a 92-year-old man who received a peaceful death, dressed in black, white at my brow. I spent time with his grandchildren, embraced his addling wife, and carried white roses up and down the aisles of his church, and left some on his casket as his corpse was lifted down and covered in dirt by a construction machine, which took roughly about five minutes to cover and pat down with grass. I spent a night studying characters in card rooms across the county. I tried Korean food for the first time. I drove stoned from Mission Viejo to Garden Grove. I shivered tasting salt in Newport, and realized that I miss being in love so much, but I refuse to submit to that longing, because for once in my life, it has to be right. Each one of them has told me that I love to love; although half of them spoke out of spite, I think the other half truly knew me.

And now there was this man in my backseat. But he didn't stay long. As instantaneous as the second-frame he became another presence in my vehicle, I flickered my eyes to another curve in the road and then raised my eyes again. He left me to myself, and I continued driving in the rain.