Brigit's Flame, October, week #1
Title: String of Bells
Author: keppiehed
Warnings: none
Rating: G
Word Count:557
Prompt: “Laughter”
A/N: Written for week #1 at brigits_flame. Only I could take a prompt like laughter and make it sad! I don't usually write things personal to myself, but in the last year I've sort of changed that rule a bit, as I have been working through a lot in my RL and I feel that this is a safe place to do that as an author. I don't expect to get votes or anything, and please don't feel that you are obligated to read! This is just a good way for me to write it all out.
You are gone from us now.
The truth of it has come gradually, like the dying rays of an evening. It isn't so very hard to understand, but one can't simply watch the sun set all at once; one must take it in by degrees. It must lower towards the horizon, that inevitable descent. The fiery brightness which was once too blinding to be viewed directly at midday can now be seen, diminished, in fading gradations of color. Even after the star is gone from view its reach lingers long into the coming night until it is just a glow of its former glory. A memory of light.
So it has been with you. Your death.
The night I knew you would die, I didn't cry. And I found the strength to speak over you when you at last found peace. All of these moments are unreal; they are fragile like glass and belong frozen in someone else's memories. Not mine. Never mine.
The day the glass broke was in autumn. I'd been packing all your clothes, boxing all your books and closing the door to your house for the last time. I stood over your papers, burning everything. It took all day, and the smoke burned black even though it was just paper. I looked over the fields but you weren't there. You weren't in the rustle of leaves and you weren't in the chirp of the birds overhead. You were just … away from this place. I knew then that you were never coming back again, that your old shoes would never be worn and we should just go ahead and throw away the hats. Something in that smoke must have stung my eyes, but I couldn't blink for a very long time after that. I just held the rake and looked at the sky and that endless trail of smoke.
There is a sadness too deep for tears. I wish I could cry, cry for myself and for you and for all of us. For the loss of you, for the suffering, for knowing that we'll never be the same. There are too many things to cry for, but I can't yet. What I do know is that every day I realize what I've lost. I wish we would have known it before it was gone.
I don't have anything of yours, but I needed to change that. In one of the mildewed boxes I'd set by the side of the road, I rescued a set of your bells from a long time ago. They jarred loose a distant memory of childhood. I kept them for a few days, then in a momentary whimsy I asked my son to help me hang them from a tree in our yard. As he climbed high in the branches of the magnolia, I saw his bright smile and it reminded me that I might be happy. That he was happy. That there were things in the world worth happiness still, even after you. Maybe because of you.
“How do they look, Mama?” he asked. “Did I pick a good spot?”
I hugged him. “It's going to be just fine,” I said, and as the rusted string of bells rang for the first time in thirty years and mixed with his laughter, I knew it really would be.
Author: keppiehed
Warnings: none
Rating: G
Word Count:557
Prompt: “Laughter”
A/N: Written for week #1 at brigits_flame. Only I could take a prompt like laughter and make it sad! I don't usually write things personal to myself, but in the last year I've sort of changed that rule a bit, as I have been working through a lot in my RL and I feel that this is a safe place to do that as an author. I don't expect to get votes or anything, and please don't feel that you are obligated to read! This is just a good way for me to write it all out.
You are gone from us now.
The truth of it has come gradually, like the dying rays of an evening. It isn't so very hard to understand, but one can't simply watch the sun set all at once; one must take it in by degrees. It must lower towards the horizon, that inevitable descent. The fiery brightness which was once too blinding to be viewed directly at midday can now be seen, diminished, in fading gradations of color. Even after the star is gone from view its reach lingers long into the coming night until it is just a glow of its former glory. A memory of light.
So it has been with you. Your death.
The night I knew you would die, I didn't cry. And I found the strength to speak over you when you at last found peace. All of these moments are unreal; they are fragile like glass and belong frozen in someone else's memories. Not mine. Never mine.
The day the glass broke was in autumn. I'd been packing all your clothes, boxing all your books and closing the door to your house for the last time. I stood over your papers, burning everything. It took all day, and the smoke burned black even though it was just paper. I looked over the fields but you weren't there. You weren't in the rustle of leaves and you weren't in the chirp of the birds overhead. You were just … away from this place. I knew then that you were never coming back again, that your old shoes would never be worn and we should just go ahead and throw away the hats. Something in that smoke must have stung my eyes, but I couldn't blink for a very long time after that. I just held the rake and looked at the sky and that endless trail of smoke.
There is a sadness too deep for tears. I wish I could cry, cry for myself and for you and for all of us. For the loss of you, for the suffering, for knowing that we'll never be the same. There are too many things to cry for, but I can't yet. What I do know is that every day I realize what I've lost. I wish we would have known it before it was gone.
I don't have anything of yours, but I needed to change that. In one of the mildewed boxes I'd set by the side of the road, I rescued a set of your bells from a long time ago. They jarred loose a distant memory of childhood. I kept them for a few days, then in a momentary whimsy I asked my son to help me hang them from a tree in our yard. As he climbed high in the branches of the magnolia, I saw his bright smile and it reminded me that I might be happy. That he was happy. That there were things in the world worth happiness still, even after you. Maybe because of you.
“How do they look, Mama?” he asked. “Did I pick a good spot?”
I hugged him. “It's going to be just fine,” I said, and as the rusted string of bells rang for the first time in thirty years and mixed with his laughter, I knew it really would be.