DEPARTURE
I jolted awake to a melodic voice over the intercom in the air terminal. It was time to board the flight. I sat and waited until the very last minute; I don’t want to be on this plane for this reason. Beside me, a man dressed in light beige desert camo clutched a girl and her nails dug into him as if she could prevent the inevitability of life.
Soaring through the sky, I watched as the plane skimmed just above the clouds. We look up here from the ground because this is where we envision God being. I saw nothing.
I’m looking up at the sky and the clouds begin to take on horrifying shapes. I try to breathe but the air is stale. All around me is death in a sepia background. Dead fallen trees and dry, unfertile ground. I try to walk but my legs are heavy so I’m forced to crawl through rotting grass until I’m at the door of a rusty metal shed. I close my eyes and try to calm my breathing. Struggling to stand, I lift myself up with the latch. I lift the latch but it breaks. Inside I hear Charlie screaming out in pain. I try to bang on the door but each attempt is sluggish - my arms numb and heavy. Charlie’s screams grow louder, louder, louder….
“Ma’am,” a stewardess gently pats my shoulder, “you’ve reached your destination.”
* * * *
Staring at myself in the mirror of my mother’s bathroom, I tried but failed at keeping my eyes away from the tub. It didn’t feel real, not even after I’d picked out her casket, flowers, and pre-written poem that would be printed on fancy paper only to be tossed after the ceremony. I broke my gaze from the tub and donned myself in black.
“Ashes to ashes, dust to dust…today we remember the life of Bianca Pierce, mother, daughter, friend-.” I try to stay in the present but find myself drifting into the past while the sun plays in the trees, moving slivers of light across my face. Seventeen years ago, I stood just a few plots away from here to bury Charlie. I had my mom then. Today I had no one, just a crowd of shallow smiles and eyes that didn’t know whether to maintain contact with mine, stay fixed on the ground, or dart around awkwardly. Today I buried another piece of my heart away in soil where rotting things sleep.
Sitting in the quiet of my mother’s house, I swallowed the last gulp of wine from the bottle and analyzed her death. A flurry of what-if’s dizzied my brain. What if I would have answered her phone call, what if I’d stayed in Aldbrook, what if I had found Charlie in time?