Namid

Namid

Ken thinks I'm an empath - a person who is highly attuned to the emotions of those around them. Someone who can tell what other people are feeling. He's not technically wrong, but I don't think he's technically right either. I don't tell him that anymore. We haven't talked about what I am…or what I'm not…for a long time.

Mr. Kenneth Johnson is a kind man. He's the one who found me on the side of the highway in the snow ten years ago, and when it became clear that I had no one who cared enough to come looking for me and nowhere to go, he let me stay with him until I could figure something else out. I never figured anything else out. I never needed to.

He was in his late fifties when he found me. His wife Katherine had passed away a little more than a year prior, and their only son had moved to Arizona, of all places. He isn't close with his son Ethan, and in all the years I've known Ken, I've only known them to speak a handful of times. Neither has ever visited the other. I know that hurts him. I don't know what happened between them, but I know Ken loves his son deeply. Though I'm endlessly grateful for all Ken has offered me, there are moments in which I feel like I've inadvertently taken Ethan's place.

Ken owns the mortuary and funeral home where I work. I started helping him with small things when the days of not knowing who I was and having nothing to do became too soul numbing to tolerate. I lifted heavy boxes and drove with him into town to the mechanic's shop or the grocery store on cold winter days when the snow was bad enough that it was too risky for him to drive in the icy darkness alone. Eventually, I started helping him with his business as well.

Even though Ken usually sees people when they're at their worst and they're crying in his quiet rooms after losing someone close to them, they like him. Everyone likes him. He grew up in this small town. He's gentle and soft spoken and doesn't have a mean bone in his body. I'm lucky he's the one who found me. I don't think anyone else would have taken in a naked man they stumbled upon in the middle of the Alaskan wilderness who couldn't remember who he was or why he was there. Ten years later, a lot of folks are still a bit suspicious of me. They're polite, and they smile and make small talk when they're stuck behind me in line at the grocery store, but they aren't the same as they are with Ken.

That's okay though. I don't think I'd want them to be.

I like being alone. I don't mind being around one or two people on occasion, but most of the time, I prefer solitude. Ken knows this, and he's okay with it. He gives me plenty of space even when it's just the two of us, and he's always careful to avoid sending me on errands that will lead to prolonged contact with others. He understands that being around a lot of people is hard for me. While he believes that a lot of my aversion to being in public is because I feel everything so deeply, he also thinks I have social anxiety. I don't think I do; it's just overwhelming to experience multiple people's feelings all at once.

Ken and I never had a conversation about me staying with him forever. For the first three months after he found me, he let me live in the small backroom of the funeral home that houses a cot and a hotplate and a tiny shower stall. One day after work, he grunted in my direction to indicate that I should follow before leading me across the mortuary parking lot and down the narrow gravel path toward his house. He'd cleaned up the small one-room cabin that sits not far from his two-bedroom cottage, and he'd told me that I could live there as long as I wanted. Ten years later, it's still my home. I love it. It's made of logs - actual logs. The walls are scraped smooth, but they are still round, and the wood's grain is clearly visible. I've studied them for hours, running my fingers along their glossy surfaces, learning the whorls and patterns that formed when they were trees. I wonder what they saw as they grew large enough to be used for cabin logs. I wonder what they lived through. How many of their winters were harsh enough that they barely survived? How many summers were bright and wet, and they thrived and grew? How many animals had eaten their leaves or made homes in their branches ?

There is a soft bed in one corner of my cabin. It's large enough for two people, but no one has ever joined me there. There is a coffee machine and a toaster oven sitting on the counter under my kitchen window. There is a fridge, and a stove, and a tiny pantry that holds more than enough for just me. There is a stacked washer and dryer next to my clothes rack inside the hallway closet, and the corner of the kitchen holds a small dining table and two chairs. I've never needed more than two chairs. There is a fireplace with a hearth where I set the beautiful rocks and pinecones and occasional raven's feathers that I find on my walks. Once in a while, on long, dark Alaskan nights, I pile my blankets on the floor and curl up close to the flames to listen to the wood crackle as it burns while storms rage outside.

Ken and I spend time together outside of work too. He's become my friend, and he's the closest thing I'll ever know to a parent. We eat dinner together most days, and sometimes we watch TV afterward. We talk while we eat and while we work. We talk about almost everything. I listen to him talk about his past and about his late wife, Katherine. He loved her with an all-encompassing completeness that I don't think many people get to experience in their lives. We talk about football, which I don't particularly care for, but he absolutely loves. I like listening to him talk about it even though I don't find the subject very interesting. I enjoy feeling the way he gets so excited about something so simple. Working where we do, I don't encounter a lot of happy emotions.

When it became clear that I wanted to stay, Ken began teaching me about his business. It's an odd thing, coordinating funerals, especially in a small, close-knit community like this. While I'm happy to help Ken in any way that I can, most of what I do doesn't involve interacting with people. I keep the inventory organized and do all the heavy lifting - things like moving coffins and chairs and extravagant floral arrangements. I've also taken over all the bookkeeping and accounting. I'm good with numbers, and Ken is decidedly…not. I also prepare people for their last moments with their families. I don't actually think they know what I'm doing for them. I don't think they're still around. I don't know where people go when they die, but as I get them ready - putting makeup on their faces and brushing their hair and dressing them in their Sunday best - I don't think they're with me. I treat the people I get ready like they're here anyway.

For me, people are who they are because of their emotions. People are always feeling something, usually more than one something. Sometimes, their emotions are so simple they don't even realize they're experiencing them. Sometimes, they sit on a bench in the sun and wonder at the marvel of bees and flowers and cool summer breezes. Sometimes, they find comfort in a box of fries or a bowl of ice cream. Sometimes, they're genuinely annoyed when they see their first mosquito of the year. These feelings pass by so quickly that they may not even notice, but if I'm near them, I do.

Sometimes, people's emotions are so big they engulf them completely as they fall into the depths of grief and depression, or laugh with delight at the birth of a child, or find a profound sense of achievement when they've finished their thesis or gotten a long-awaited promotion.

People never feel…nothing.

The people I get ready feel nothing. I think what I do is for those they've left behind.

It's not like Ken keeps me locked away in the basement far away from the living. He simply knows that I only like interacting with people one-on-one. Even that can become too overwhelming for me at times.

Sometimes, people come in and want to pre-plan their own funerals. I often take the lead on those occasions as I actually enjoy that work. I like the fact that when we begin the process, the people making plans feel overwhelmed or sad or depressed, but when we finish, they feel a sense of completion. Sometimes, they even experience peace over the fact they won't leave the burden of planning for their loved ones or that they know their wishes will be honored. I love that. I like the way their emotions slowly shift, like a gentle stream of hot water flowing into a cold tub until they blend in a way that leaves the water a comfortable, warm embrace. I wonder if their relief surprises them. I wonder who they truly are as we sit together and plan, and I wonder who they'll leave behind.

I wonder about the people who feel nothing as I get them ready for their last moments with their loved ones. I wonder who they were and what their lives were like and what emotions they got to experience. I wonder who they were close to and whether they knew what it was like to be loved. I don't get to see love in person very often. I read about it a lot. I watch it on TV and in movies. When Ken thinks about Katherine, I feel the way he loved her. It's gentle and warm, and it washes over him in waves that seem to dampen the grief and sadness he still carries deep in his soul. Sometimes, I wonder what Ken's love for her must have felt like on its own. I only know it in combination with loss. That's usually how I encounter love - tinged with sadness. I've felt love coupled with relief a few times as well when those who come to the burgundy room have loved ones who were ill for a long time. Their love seems gentler when it's combined with the relief that the one they loved is no longer suffering.

There are so many kinds of love. I don't know if I had a family before I came here. If I did, I don't remember them. I don't know if they loved me or if I loved them. I love Ken now, and he loves me in return, but that is a soft love. It's kind and affectionate yet still somehow detached. It swirls peach and gentle and consistent, like the love I notice others feel for their children.

Just once, I'd like to feel the kind of deep, passionate, unbreakable love that I read about. I imagine it must be bright and vibrant and overwhelming and achingly beautiful.

I know that it's not something I'll ever find for myself, but I'd like to feel it through someone else one day just to know that it really exists.

I'm attracted to men, and this is a small, remote town. There is no one for me here, aside from the tourists who pass through a few times a year. They are where I've halfheartedly looked for love in the past and where my limited sexual experiences have been found .

The men I've dated, the men I've had sex with…I didn't love any of those men, and none of them loved me. What we felt for one another was grasping, almost desperate desire. It was nervousness when we first met, and hope that perhaps we'd like one another, that maybe we'd found someone who would like us. It was excitement and passion and pleasure and need and connection and aching. It was gasps and lips and tongues and heat and skin. Until it wasn't. Then it was resignation and acceptance and loss as we went our separate ways, having realized that what we'd found wasn't love and that it never would be.

I'm too different for the kind of love I read about. How would I explain who I am? What I am. I've been vigilant on the handful of occasions I've taken men to bed, always careful to act as normal as possible, to not react to every stray emotion that has swept through my partner's consciousness. I've been cautious to keep my shirt on the few times I've had sex as well, so the other ways I'm different haven't been an issue. My encounters have been quick and sweaty. They've been enjoyable yet ultimately unfulfilling liaisons in motel rooms or in the cool air outside behind the bar. Still, I wonder what it would be like to experience more. I wonder what it would feel like to be loved.

I wonder.

I wonder about the man I worked with today, the one who was in a car accident. It had been a bad accident, and he'd been badly injured. I was glad they'd told his family the casket should be closed. I wouldn't have wanted anyone who loved him to see him as he was. I took care of him anyway. I'd seen him in town a handful of times, at the mechanic's shop, I think, but I don't know anything about him. Whoever he was, he deserved to be cared for. I cleaned him gently and dressed him in a deep-blue suit. I combed his light-brown hair and covered the cuts on his jaw as best as I could. He'd been handsome, with a strong jaw and high cheekbones. That sounds creepy, I know, but I don't mean it that way. It's just an objective observation. I like observing things. I like studying them. I like wondering.

When I'd finished, I closed the lid of the cherrywood box quietly. I was the last person to see him, and a rush of sadness washed through me as the lid clicked shut. It always does. I'd moved him into the gold and burgundy room where his friends and family would join him and rearranged some of the flowers. Ken doesn't have a good eye for that sort of thing.

I've never liked the burgundy room. It feels suffocating. I don't know if that's due to Katherine's heavy-handed decorating - which is something Ken will never change - or if it's the residual effect of so much emotion, so much sadness, being crammed into one place for so many years on end. I don't know if rooms can absorb emotions from the people who occupy them. I know some places feel like they have emotions of their own. Places like the forest that are filled with living creatures that have their own emotions, even though they aren't the same as those humans experience. The burgundy room feels like it carries emotion, but it's not like the forest. It's not someplace good .

Ken is in the other room with the man's family when I finish in the burgundy room, and when I hear their muted conversation heading in my direction, I discreetly exit down the back stairs. I don't really feel like absorbing others' grief today.