At the funeral, my grandmother explained to me about one true things. She said that everyone has their own one true thing and they don’t always know it, but it is very special to them. In my seven-year-old mind the wheels started to turn and I asked her, “Can somebody have more than one?”
“No,” she replied. “A person can only have one one true thing.”
She told me, “There is a sound a person makes when they lose their one true thing. Time stands still for no man but there are often moments when it slows down. The entire universe stops whatever it’s doing and turns to watch. A falling bird, shot out of the sky. The winning shot in the Wimbledon finals. A car, swerving just in time. When a person loses their one true thing, time slows down and everything is a thousand times more.” I thought of the sound my mother made, a never-ending wail of limitless pain and grief that I would always hear in the back of my head, no matter where I went.
