As the bomb exploded five hundred yards from where he was standing, he remembered working sixteen hours straight. He remembered sitting in silence with his grandmother as evening drew on, her left eye, his skinny arms, cigarette ash and artificial flowers, his twelfth birthday, his seventeenth birthday, his father’s tyrannies, his mother’s nightlong laments for his father, his baby bro—his traveling companion—his quirks and quiddities: his messy hair, his maddening stories, his wizardry with leftovers. He remembered the languor and warm happiness of those golden afternoons, broad-leaved evergreens, fishing tackle and broken-spined paperbacks, a ten-pounder, his trusty Corona typewriter, a hat that he wore at a rakish angle, a gray suit flecked with white, his fruitless attempts to publish poetry, his mother’s gift of a pen. He remembered the touch of her hand—his first wife—her lively mind, her delighted cackle, sleeping under canvas, the seasonal rhythm of the agricultural year, the deer season, the rainy season, the beauty and romance of the night, domestic felicity, baked apples, ambulance sirens, the hospital’s east wing, the endless patience of the nurses, the abrupt finality of death. He remembered with sudden guilt the letter from his mother that he had not yet read.
Sources: New Oxford American Dictionary, Collins COBUILD Primary Learner’s Dictionary, Collins English Dictionary
