03.31.01/2
A Song for Sorrow
This is an unfinished prose that I've been writing since last fall when my aunt died. She was a beautiful person. I wish she was still here for my mother, who lost her best friend and sister. For her husband who lost his childhood sweetheart. And for her two boys, who are beautiful people, who she'll never see fall in love with the girl of their dreams and get married and have babies. Her grandchildren. It's still so sad, and I still cry almost everytime I think about her. It's called A Song for Sorrow.
Yesterday my mother sat, soaking her feet in the cool water on the steps leading into our pool. Her back was turned towards the sun. I couldn't see her face and wondered what was hiding there.
She told me she prays. I told her that I didn't know what love was. And for no other reason that the heat of the sun burning through my hair, I thought about how fast everything could change.
I swam underwater to the other end of the pool and remembered the days between her mother's death and funeral. I remembered how she sang lullibies to me between her tears. I thought about how cruel Jesus seemed sometimes. I didn't want to battle not believing anymore.
Today the rains came. Streamed from the sky and made me believe it could only be the tears of all the angels in heaven.
It was cold rain. The worst kind. It drips down the bridge of your nose, it drips down your neck to wet the collar of your sweater. It even manages to get inside the cuffs of your jacket and stick your watch to your wrist.
I don't often pray. But in this rain I drove to my grandmother's grave and talked to her, or anyone who would listen. I asked her to be there to meet my aunt. At the gates of heaven, I suppose. Funny how death makes you believe. I asked her to somehow show my mother that things would be okay. I stood and cried beside her tombstone as the cold rain drops blended with my hot tears. And I was so damn angry at God. At myself. At everyone, because I just couldn't understand how someone so beautiful and so full of laughter and life could be reduced to. . . how this could happen.
The brown October grass seemed to be another unwelcome reminder of the death surrounding us. Suffocating us. The key fit easily into the ignition and the muddy gravel turned under the wheels. I went home to try and accept her fate.
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