It was a beautiful birch tree, smooth, tall white limbs. I loved how it bent over us curved and swaying like a vulnerable musical note, a long sinewy stroke on a violin. She’s gone now, lying in the creek on her side waiting to become firewood or the legs of a table. I don’t deal well with loss or change but time heals. The space she left behind is a backdrop now for eagles and hawks that fly above indifferently painting the sky with their long wings, showing off their flight like showgirls show their legs.
No, I don’t do well with loss, friends I can no longer see, parents that morphed into memories too deep to speak of, pets whose fur I can still feel and whose funny wobbling walk I can still see. No, I don’t do well with loss, the haunting shadows of it, the youth I had, the once shiny new corvette, the saddle shoes, the college lectures on the history of art, the words I spoke as Joan of Arc and Blanche Debois. The praise, the fear, the once sought after dream. No, I don’t do well with loss. It nips at my heels, it pulls at my heartstrings, and it saddens my days. But it makes me strong and wise and deep. It makes me live to the farthest point, laugh to the loudest degree and love the tic toc clock of life with all my heart.
Vera Jane Cook is an award winning author and has eight published novels. Her most recent ebook, The Story of Sassy Sweetwater, has gone to print and will be featured through Bublish at the Southern Independent Bookstore Association Conference in Savannah on September 18th -19th. To learn more about her visit: www.verajanecook.com
