That’s why it seemed so odd to Carolyn when she did not hear from Fran for several weeks. It was summer, prime time for digging dumps and going exploring on the back roads of New England. They’d been thick as thieves, and her pilfering partner was missing in action. Carolyn made a call to arms. She’d sensed her friend needed a hug. Fran answered the phone but said nothing about her own conspicuous absence, leading Carolyn to believe all was well. Nothing could have been further from the truth. What Fran had to say was not the kind of information imparted over the telephone. Shortly after an awkward conversation ended, Fran got in her car and drove up to the farm.
Surprised and equally delighted to see her pulling into the yard, a fresh pot of coffee was brewing before she had a chance to cross the threshold of the kitchen door. The instant Carolyn laid eyes on Fran she knew something was terribly wrong. Embracing spontaneously, welcoming a long lost and found companion, they sat down together at the table. Staring at the coffee cup in front of her, Fran started to speak. Her hands began trembling, as if all the raw energy in her body was trying to escape through her fingertips.
“Tell me what happened. Fran, what can I do to help?”
“Nothing. No one can do anything. What’s done is done.”
Alarmed by the tone of her voice, Carolyn waited patiently for Fran to divulge what she had come there to say. Reserved and dignified, not prone to display much emotion, Fran composed herself along with the words she needed to speak, as painful a process as anyone could endure. Choking back what should have rightfully exploded out of her, having simmered for so long, the dear woman refused to cry anymore but the grief was palpable, a presence in the room. It was difficult to watch her struggling but Carolyn waited for her dear friend to find her own way in her own time.
Fran had gone over to T.W. Rounds on her own to look around, to see if there was anything old but new to him, something worthy of dragging Carolyn the distance to see. Fran was the lookout, the one who found hidden treasures, whether buried in the ground or shuffled to the back of a dusty shelf. It had been a brief excursion, one not far from her house. On her way home, while taking in the scenery along the Smith & Sayles Reservoir, she approached another sharp corner. A car pulled out in front of her and sped away. Chestnut Hill Road in Chepachet is a narrow, winding death trap. Everyone knows to take it slow… almost everyone. Approaching the narrowest of its bridges just ahead of her, behind another driver traveling a bit too fast, Fran saw the child dart out from behind her mother. She saw the mother turn, trying to grab hold of her little girl. Look out! It was too late. Both ran directly into the road, into the path of the oncoming car; both struck. Leaping out of her own vehicle, she ran to the wounded, scooping the little girl into her arms where she died a few minutes later. Franny cradled the babe who’d been feeding the ducks only seconds before. She knew what had happened. The ducks swam underneath the bridge and a curious kid simply wanted to see them emerge from the other side. An innocent mistake made cost the child her life. How tenuous the grasp… how thin the line between life and death. Her mother was also severely injured though she remained conscious long enough to watch her daughter die in the loving arms of another mother. Fran was a surrogate, thrust into the role of guardian as the angel of death came upon them. It shook her to the soul. At the intersection of life and death, Fran swaddled a child and comforted the mother whose arms were both broken, unable to hold her baby or say goodbye. It was beyond tragic. Fran would never shake the shock of it, not in her lifetime, another one destined to be all too brief. There were no words of condolence adequate to soothe the pain of inconsolable grief. Time does not heal everything. Sometimes it merely prolongs the memory.
When Fran began feeling ill she withdrew though the ladies always stayed in touch, especially in mind. Then came the awful diagnosis. It took its time ravaging her body, devouring her from within. As the end grew too near to bear Carolyn flew to her side to see her, be present with a friend one last time, the day before she died. Ever since their sad parting, as Fran escaped the surly bonds of Earth and touched the face of God, Carolyn has often wondered why it had been the last time, why Fran has never come back to visit her, not once, not even in her dreams.
Fran’s death was a mercy: an act of God. She was a pure and perfect spirit in life and as Carolyn ponders her ultimate fate, she’s decided Fran must have transcended the darkness and gone to the light; becoming Light. To reunify and coalesce with the Universe seems appropriate for the once ethereal creature. Franny was not of this world. She was an angel wandering through, touching the hearts of mere mortals along her journey home, having taken the road less traveled. As Carolyn thinks of her now the words of Emily Dickinson swirl in the vapor, a deep sigh inhaling them into her soul. Revisiting the past, the memory of an old friend she misses; her bottle-digging, stove-stealing buddy stuck with her for life. Dear God, how she’d suffered in the end. Amen.
“Because I could not stop for Death—
He kindly stopped for me—
The Carriage held but just ourselves
And Immortality.”
Fran’s death was haunting. It was grossly unfair. She was still such a young woman. Struggling to make sense of it has provided no closure, only more questions. She has never come to call, not once, though she left this world knowing how to fly like the birds she so tenderly fed from her own hands. Why has she never returned, if for no other reason than one last meeting of the minds? Why has this celestial spirit not bothered to impart a message she knows Carolyn is capable of receiving? Has she passed the point of no return? Had she achieved the ultimate spiritual evolution, ascending to then crossing through Heaven’s Gate, the gateway into a garden, the paradise from which she can never re-enter this realm? Did Fran make the transition as her transformation? Enlightened, had her beautiful spirit, pure white light, dispersed as energy into the ether, out into the cosmos to create some other life form with which we are unfamiliar? Carolyn has always been curious about it, though she suspects, in her end was her beginning. Fran was highly evolved, a spiritual entity: a being with no bounds. Carolyn always assumed they would communicate again from beyond the grave. Silence: no sign of the times they’d shared or what time she’s in now. No messages. Not a clue to her whereabouts.
What remains most deeply troubling to Carolyn is the notion that, somehow, nefarious forces were involved in her demise as she and Sam both died of cancer and each had been impaled, penetrated by the blue laser light which came down the chimney, targeting them at the farm. This is a distressing concept yet it lingers in her consciousness and has done so for decades, haunting her still.
Carolyn walks into her garden, then come the birds from every conceivable corner of the Universe. Fran would be so satisfied, so proud to see her friend in communion with the creatures she adored. Essentially, she was a bird at heart: an esoteric being with invisible wings. Perhaps Carolyn had been mistaken. Disheartened that Fran has not come to call on her, perhaps she is the black-capped chickadee perched upon her bedroom windowsill, the one who greets her every morning, the one who comes with the light. Maybe she has crossed beyond mortality to discover the ultimate freedom of flight. Fran always knew she could fly. She needed only an adequate supply of wind. She may reside and glide on the solar winds, soaring into infinity on a wing and a prayer, attaining a proper altitude for one so elevated. Hers was a radical departure, one prompting her closest friend to wonder why Fran had forsaken her when there was so much more to explore. There she went, off into oblivion, traveling a timeless path. Go in peace… the kindest words one can utter to another mortal soul as they make their transition to spirit. Carolyn prays for her still hoping tranquility has become a close companion in the convoluted cosmos. It was the least she deserved; serenity she sought in life and found too infrequently, though usually while digging bottles with a cohort. It should be her just reward for a life well-lived. If she has indeed passed through an irreversible gateway to infinity and beyond then Carolyn hopes someday
to meet her on the other side. As Cynthia is so fond of saying, “No need to mourn them… they’re not really gone.” But it feels as if Fran is really gone… for good. She remains as elusive in death as she was accessible in life. If she has indeed crossed beyond the reach of mere mortals they can only pity their own loss. She is free to fly.
Carolyn went to see Fran one last time, the most haunting and humbling of all their many encounters. They shared fond memories of gallivanting together through the labyrinth of life and then Fran closed her darkened eyes to rest. By the next morning she was gone, but not forgotten. Her friend hopes she has someone close by to fill the void if it exists for her now. Carolyn remains lonely without her, longing for her company again. Or perhaps she is a luminescent figure, a guiding light, closer to God than she was on Earth, in which case, Fran may well be closer than they think… omnipresent. Perhaps she’s the tickle of tiny birds lighting upon Carolyn’s shoulder in the light of dawn.
Before she died Fran found true love: Eternal love. What more can someone ask for in life? The little bird on a wing and a prayer, angel in disguise, Carolyn will count on her in death as she once did in life. As the navigator with a good sense of direction, there, waiting to show her the way home, they’ll be together again, onward to the next exciting escapade.
“I once had a sparrow alight upon my shoulder for a moment,
while I was hoeing in a village garden and I felt
that I was more distinguished by that circumstance
than I should have been by any epaulet I could have worn.”
Henry David Thoreau
~ George and Fran forever together in heart ~
hallelujah
“Maybe there’s a God above
But all I’ve ever learned from love
Was how to shoot at someone who outdrew you
It’s not a cry you can hear at night
It’s not somebody who has seen the light
It’s a cold and it’s a broken Hallelujah”
Leonard Cohen
Found then lost: true love. Eternal love. What brought them together had torn them apart. Their differences were too many, the chasm too wide. A bridge too far to travel. I wasn’t worth the energy she’d have to expend, even if she had it in her to to try. He would never meet her halfway. She just didn’t care anymore. Roger and Carolyn Perron were married in 1957 and expected to remain so forever. Differences they once found enticing proved to be their undoing. What each once considered intriguing and unusual about the other had become overbearing and intolerable for both. Their marriage had become a trial by fire and she was burned out. Ashes and cinders. No point in rekindling a funeral pyre. She wanted to rise like the phoenix and fly far, far away.
The same held true for the farm. Love found then lost, Carolyn was disenchanted with virtually every aspect of her life. She took no pleasure in the place anymore. It was a burden, a chore, one endless Sisyphean task after another. Crowded out of close quarters, she became as cold and austere as the house itself. It had turned on her, becoming an enemy, much like her husband, rejecting her on every front. Even though their family left the farm in the warmth of June in 1980, it was a cold and broken “hallelujah” Carolyn uttered as they pulled out of the driveway one last time. She will never return to the place in the country she once loved, a place that called her home. It robbed her of her youth and enthusiasm, and almost claimed her life on more than one occasion. It supplanted images she will never escape in this lifetime and stirred raw emotions she never wants to feel again. It was time to move on… if not yet in body, most certainly in mind.
It would be seven more years before their family moved to Georgia, yet it seemed Carolyn had been faced with some difficult decisions living at the farm and she was about to make another. She wanted a divorce. Not just from her husband, from her life as she knew it. By any standard, this was a clear cut case of irreconcilable differences and she firmly believed there was no fixing what was wrong. The only joy she found was in the company of her girls, the golden moments she cherished with them: trips to the river and walks in the woods, a spirited softball game with the Marshall family, riding the horses across the rocky, rambunctious terrain at the power lines. These are the times she would recall later, much later in life, as times well-remembered.
As for the children, they all sensed a breach, a permanent rift between their parents; a wholly disconcerting and insecure sensation for any child. They call it “The What Next Syndrome” now, something closely akin to Boo! Who? Though not privy to the sordid details they all figured it had something to do with the fact that he didn’t believe her about the ghosts for a very long time. By the time he became a believer, she had lost her faith in him. Roger had questioned her sanity, her integrity, her character. It was more than she could abide but according to Carolyn, she had many reasons, more than they will ever know. But the way she was treated on the night of the séance had been the bridge too far to cross and Roger had crossed the line. Ironically, their marriage was destined for failure, not because of their differences but because they were too much alike. The day Carolyn announced she had filed for divorce a cheer rang out in the Salacoa Valley which echoes through the foothills to this day. If one listens closely, the word “hallelujah” can still be heard in the wind; the sound of five voices speaking in unison, much like seven soldiers buried in a wall. The war was finally over though an official truce was never called between factions, hostilities simmering ever since in the cauldron of discontent.
Roger and Carolyn married in 1957, expecting to remain so forever. Though she did not leave his side, the mother of his children divorced him in spirit almost ten years before she did it in front of a judge, receiving the official documentation releasing her from hell on Earth. After twenty-four years, their children shouted to the heavens “Hallelujah!” It was over. As the former couple has yet to resolve their differences, perhaps they’ll have another chance next time ’round the cosmos. Only time will tell as neither learned their lesson well. And all either of them ever really wanted was peace. Perhaps along the continuum, they will pass the test of wills.
“The golden moments in the stream of life rush past us and we see nothing but sand;
the angels come to visit us, and we only know them
when they are gone.”
George Elliot
something sacred
“Laertes: Lay her i’ the earth: / And from her fair
and unpolluted flesh /
May violets spring! I tell thee, churlish priest, /
A ministering angel shall my sister be, /
When thou liest howling.”
William Shakespeare Hamlet 1603
There were guardians in the darkness; ancient, vigilant souls watching over an anxious family. Guardian Angels? Perhaps. Cindy believes and so does Nancy. They witnessed an incredible sight, energy protecting a sister in dire need of assistance. Nancy saw the Light. Cindy felt it surrounding her in the dark of night. Blessed be.
***
The house was crowded with kids that night, a motley crew of teenagers playing music and card games, all learning how to flirt. Nancy made all the arrangements. Cindy was fourteen at the time and Nancy was old enough to know better. As soon as the parents hit the door, she was on the phone. Andrea was in Pittsburgh, unable to put a stop to a party for which no permission had been granted.
Before long the yard was littered with cars and kids, more than expected. Chrissy became nervous, questioning her older sister about the onslaught. Cindy was so shy and reserved, reluctant to intermingle, afraid of making a friend in a crowd. She got small, receding into herself. Lingering behind on the porch, almost out of sight, an innocent child would soon be exposed to a vice of adulthood. Apparently a popular elder sister was determined to stay that way. As cars began to gather along a gravel driveway, speakers blasting, Nancy swooped down from her perch on the porch, as a hawk honing in on its prey. Landing softly, she flittered about the group, cheerily greeting her
guests. Before she arrived at the site she made her choice. Nancy really liked Eddy. Soon he would be the one to capture her heart and undivided attention, to the exclusion of everyone else. Inviting the school buddies to stay, friends of her buddies were apparently welcome as well. A disruptive influence by nature, Nancy insisted that her sisters be cordial and participate in the festivities. Ultimately, when the truth was revealed, Nancy would not be the only one to cop the blame, as usual. She always had a few unwitting co-conspirators. It was inevitable. Carolyn made a point of knowing all of their friends. As a mother, it was her business to be informed. Eventually one of them would get careless in her presence and make some nostalgic quip about an “awesome party” that she had known nothing about. With a cluster of loose-lipped gossips hanging out, it was only a matter of time. Katy.
Christine was polite to all the guests. She chatted with those she knew well. April had gone with her parents for the evening. Cindy sat silently on the porch, studying new faces from a safe distance, so she thought. A young man approached, climbing up the granite stairs. He sat inside the wide window ledge, where the screens would be inset once the weather became warmer. She recognized him as someone she had avoided, one of the older boys on the bus. She knew nothing about him otherwise.
“Who are you?”
“Cindy. Nancy’s sister.”
“Oh, I’ve seen you before. You always sit up front.”
“Usually.”
“I’m Jake. Eddy’s friend.”
“Hi.” Cindy blushed in spite of a chill in the air.
“Are you cold?” The young man seemed genuinely concerned.
House of Darkness House of Light Page 45