Leijonat

Monday, March 18th 2018.

We had no lines to guide us but the blackened trees all around swallowing the apartment blocks behind them whole, a glistening sheet of perfectly white ice looking endless, and our bags in place as goals. Sometimes we’d be lucky enough to have the real ones still out, battered to the point where the red of the posts had started peeling and the nets hung on the negative end of tattered, when the caretakers felt generous or were forgetful. Mostly it was just us and the ice, trying to get the better of each other. I remember when we heard the rumours about the city opening an ice-rink some two kilometers from where we lived, laughing at the misguidedness: kids in these suburbs didn’t skate, kids in these suburbs didn’t care about hockey, even if the two of us and a handful of friends did. And, as kids tend to be, we were wrong at large but right in principle: the rink was fully booked for what felt like years on end but rarely by the people it was built for, the people who were neighbours to it, those of us who could get there on summer days with rollerblades and winter nights with our equipment bags.

So we played, and how we played differed only depending on what we were aiming at: having the bags as goalposts meant a softer touch and sharper accuracy was needed to score and win since there were no walls around the ice and the puck would fly off towards the cars in the parking lot if hit with too much force, having the actual goals meant power and decent aim was enough so getting past each other was by default more of a challenge and part of the game. I did my best to keep up because he was quicker, I broke through on occasion thanks to a distinct skill with both slapshots and my wrists over technique because he was far more gifted in that department, but I could never stop him when he got his speed up, crossing me out on my left and his right because he knew that was my weaker side and skating backwards only made rare appearances in my repertoire.

We played sports together and were on the same teams for most of our childhoods. His parents and his sisters were always nothing but kind and welcoming, as if I belonged at their home as much as I did my own. We’d barbecue together as soon as the Swedish winter made way for something more livable, as soon as he felt the sun was right and the wind was gone and hours spent outside were the best way to spend them. And I’d join him, always, for a while, until I became busy with work on things that have felt meaningless for more time than I care to mention, than I dare admit out of fear for the violent guilt I feel inside consuming me whole and forever. One of his sisters was moving away to become a doctor and her apartment where we all grew up stood empty which was perfect because he had a new job, and I ran into him while he was buying necessities on his very first day back home. I took him to my parents for dinner, helped him carry the bags home, set up whatever was needed, promised we’d see each other soon to make up for time we both knew was lost needlessly and was easy to fix.

A pain in his leg interrupted our plans a few weeks later, a pain that had been a surgery-requiring bloodclot, had placed him in a wheelchair, had revealed itself as not the source of what was ailing him but a consequence of much worse things happening inside him. I was invited to a group on a social media website started by his sisters dedicated to trying to find a cure for something not a single person in any of our lives had ever even heard of. I had a run-in at the supermarket with a hollowed out man in a wheelchair only recognizable through the sister pushing it and the heartbroken smile when she saw me and a wish from him that I was getting the help I needed to handle the cracks that were breaking my mind apart. I forced myself into rational thinking and pragmatism to ward off the panic and made calls to every doctor I know in a handful of countries. And finally, a red dot amongst any other on a social media website told me he had died: a glitch in an algorithm, or maybe its design, pushed a notification out a few days after, and six months or maybe eight after we set up his new home and before any of the hospitals and hospices and doctors and healers even had the chance to respond the person who was supposed to build a life there was gone.

20 years of matches on ice and grass and wood and plastic. 20 years of supporting the same club in the same stadiums and arenas and finding a massive family for us to turn to when those we had at home couldn’t help us. 20 years of barbecues all over the northwestern parts of Stockholm and sleepovers when that was a special thing for children and a necessity out of tiredness or excessive gaming as teenagers and young adults. 20 years of being brothers, a bond created by living 20 meters away from each other for years and years and years and me over time not living up to my end of what that’s supposed to mean. He always noticed the expression I’d unavoidably make when trying to stifle a certain kind of smile, which only showed itself when something went particularly well during games, which he always gleefully remarked on very loudly to anyone and everyone around us, because he wanted me to show it and be proud, because he was. He used to point out that he’s older than me and, barely containing his laughter as kids tend to do, that I should respect my elders whenever I outsmarted him in an argument, which was as often as he’d trick me on the ice. I’ve been older than him for over a year now, for the first time. I don’t like it. I’ve been scrambling to make sense of it and I have no idea how, instead desperately trying to restart whatever simulation this reality is running on, trying to make it stop, I didn’t deserve to be here and need to make everything go back.

I’ve been waiting by the asphalt court behind the rink, the space that was turned into ice and used by us because everyone else wanted to play indoors while we were happy to have this to ourselves. It’s empty now, most nights of the winter months, except for me sitting on the remains of a broken bench by a corner. It’s still endless, still a gleaming white surrounded by darkness, ready to be cut through and played on and the mist laying softly over it dispersed by our attempts to break each other down and help each other up. I’ve gotten better. I think I could beat him now. I think I figured his moves out and can parry them, and if I can’t I know I’ll learn from him step by step and attack after attack. One-on-one. Let me try. One more game. Please. Pick up the phone. Don’t leave me alone in this cruel, cold world.