It's January 18th. The time is just after Dawn.
The city's doing its regular routine. Taxis are taking people to their jobs, vendors are handing out decent hot dogs and bagels to people who didn't eat breakfast, exercise junkies are running through Central Park's emerald trees and cracked paths, and the sun is coming up over the horizon to cast shadows across the world and yet illuminate it at the same time.
And while everyone else has started their day, started their routine, their simple, consistent routine, we're standing in the new part of the cemetery. It's on a hilltop.. lots of sky, lots of clouds.. lots of sun and moon and stars. Lavender will bloom there in the summer, and the magnolia trees' pink petals will dot the verdant grass. The tombstones sit upright and stark against the lawn, and there's a newly made grave before them that would have been filling up with a bit of water from the rain had they not put a tent up for the mourning.
It's as though the sky cries for her passing, too.
They sit beneath the green tent, listening to the rain and the stunning silence. It's a solemn day, a somber, sad day, and there are no words to express the sorrow that buries itself in their hearts to make an everlasting home, for none of them will ever be the same.
Especially her mother.
Who is coming?
A little girl.
It is sad when the young die.
Yes. Indeed.
The Dead whisper among themselves, looking past the mourners and into the Great Beyond where they hope to journey one day when their time of forgetting and letting go of the world is done.
Do you know her name?
I believe her name is Hadley.
"Birdie.." Julia, Hadley's godmother, whispers, "It's time."
She looks over at her friend, her eyes previously glued to the casket that is two sizes too small, the casket a size that should never ever have to be built for anyone. She swallows, but she stands, and she moves for the small podium next to the small coffin.
"Thank you.. everyone.. for being here to pay.. your respects to.." Her voice cracks, "My baby.. my Hadley." She chokes a bit on her name, but after a pause, a wipe of her cheeks, a cough, she continues, "Your love and support.. Will be what gets me through this.."
Hadley stands among the Dead now, next to her own little grave, which is just a diminutive hole in the ground now. She watches her mother, a soft frown resting upon softer features that mirror Birdie's.
"Mommy looks so sad.." She mumbles.
They always do.
Yes.. She will be sad for a long time..
She will heal, dear.
It's going to be all right.
She looks about the Dead, studying their empty faces, their void visages,
"Will she really be okay?.." Her gaze returns to her mom,
"I don't want Mommy to be sad.."
Shhh, dear.. She will be okay.
Our time here is to let go.. To move on to what is Next.
Haddy frowns deeper, an expression that is sharply defined against the vapid ones around her,
"What is next?"
We don't know, dear..
But we'll find out soon enough..
Birdie smiles through the tears that refuse to stop coming, "I remember when she was born.. And I never knew that I could love anything so much, that.. that people started off that tiny." She breathes a small laugh, "And.. I remember when she called me Momma for the first time, and that I was glad I kept her, and that I'd always keep her." She sniffs, wipes her cheek. But as she continues, her voice, which was wavering, became an earthquake, "I blame myself.. For letting her go to that birthday party. I should have thought about the ice.. I should have known that people would be drinking, would be drunk.. I shouldn't have let her into her friend's car.."
"It isn't your fault, Mommy.." Hadley beholds her crying mother, and it breaks her heart even if it doesn't beat anymore. She speaks to the dead,
"She's going to know it isn't her fault, won't she?"
Yes, she will know it eventually.
Shhh, be still, Hadley..
It will be all right.
After a minute of composing herself, a sorrowful song whose piano cries, she continues with the eulogy, "I wanted Hadley to have the life I never had.. To have the freedom to become anything she wanted, anyone she wanted.. To make her own choices.. To be her own person.." Another disturbed laugh, "And she was the most beautiful person I have ever known.."
Hadley sits next to her grave, right down in the wet grass, but she doesn't feel its dampness, doesn't feel its cold, and she makes a face at that,
"I don't feel anything like I used to.."
No, you won't.
It all fades.
The world will fade.
Memory will fade.
And so will your mother's pain.
"Are you sure?.." She asks, watching her mother speak in a sadness that Hadley has never known.
Yes, we are sure.
Don't linger on the living, Hadley..
They will join us soon.
Birdie swallows that lump again before she looks at her child's grave, "Haddy.. Mommy loves you.. So, so, very much.." Her voice breaks on her name, on love, on much, "I.. I can never thank you enough, my sweet baby.. For teaching me not only to love others, but to love myself.. I can never thank you enough.. for the most beautiful adventure I could ever be on.. You will always be in my heart.. And you will always be my sunshine."
Tears streak Hadley's cheek as she watches everyone cry, especially her mother, but before she can bear to watch her leave, she whispers a question Birdie can't hear.
"Will you sing to me, Mommy?.."
But it's as though Birdie
can hear it. From a place far away, from some other world, from a beach, from home, from memory.
"You are my sunshine.. My only sunshine.. You make me happy.. When skies are grey.." She's completely shattered, in pieces, in ruin, but the song brings calm to her, brings calm to the rain, brings calm to Hadley, "You'll never know just.. how much I love you.."
Hadley's eyes are closed as she waits for what is Next, for her Great Beyond, as the last line comes out as a sob.
"Please don't take.. my sunshine away.."
"Goodbye, Mommy."
"Please."
---
A year passes, my friends, and when she walks onto that stage, it's as though she has never left.
She feels the suspense, tangible and real, hanging in the air, as the audience holds its breath, waiting and watching this alabaster figurine, this ballerina twirling in their music box. And the lights no longer burn her skin and sear into her bones. No.. They are warm and bright, sunshine for her to bask in, to dance in, and when she hears the first piano key, and she's off.
But this time, it's different.
The broken bird is no more. The woman spinning before the crowd is not caged. She is not trapped. She is not tailing the piano. She is not a prisoner in her own mind. She is not lonely. She is not afraid. She is not abused. She is not caged.
She's free.
The piano chases her, following her every delicate step, and yet each tread is powerful. It marks a journey, a path. It exposes and showcases the work that she's done, the road and tribulations that it's taken to get her freedom, what it's taken to get to that stage, that beautiful stage. She's powerful. She's fearless. She's nurtured.
For once in her entire life, she suddenly knows what it's like to be
sovereign.
To be independent. To be self-ruled. To be unrestricted. To be unimpeded. To be liberated. To be exempt.
With her wings outstretched, she is able to take flight for the first time. They watch her opening flight, her inaugural exodus from the person she used to be, from her past, from her fears. She is a bird, but not just any bird. She is a phoenix rising from the ashes of a burned down life. She's being reborn on that stage. Heart aching. Heart racing. Heart pounding. Heart throbbing. She's finally who she wants to be, and for the first time she can breathe. All anyone sees is this rebirth, this lionhearted woman.
But she's far from the stage.
Far from the lights, far from the crowd, far from the piano, far from here. She's on a beach, basking in her own piece of heaven, eyes on cerulean waters that kiss at her ankles, and toes in pristine sands. She doesn't hear their cheers. She hears the surf, the gulls. She hears Her.
"Mommy!"
Birdie is no where to be found, even as she is blessed, gifted with a standing ovation. As the crowd is rising like the tide, she is drifting farther away. She doesn't stand on a stage; she stands on the shore.
She's in some other place.
A place where she's Mommy, a place where she's Birdie, a place where she's finally free.
She's home.
