Appalachia
[Death from a 2 year old child's point of view]
Pa tells me that it is Christmas Eve and that santa clause will come tonight bringing me many toys, among them two wooden dolls that the elves have whittled from good stout hickory. According to pa, they made the dolls just for me, but I cannot get excited, I am too sick to care. Ma is walking the floor again wringing her hands and crying. Pa is right at her heels. They are tired. I know that I have kept them awake many nights with my harsh coughing. I want them to get some rest tonight, and I try not to cough.... I am so sleepy...
The last thing I remember was falling asleep without once coughing and how pleased ma and pa would be, to be able to sleep through the night.
I never woke up. The pages of my short life became blank as if I never existed and was no more than I ever was, if I ever was. I may have been out of existence for a long time before becoming aware of being aware again- an awarness of being, yet not aware of what I was being.
I was in total darkness- a black silent dark, not like the dark of night that comes and goes on earth, but like into a darkness that holds no promise of dawn- a darkness that the sun and moon had not looked into.
A dark that was alone inside itself, with no beginning or ending and without reason. Such was the darkness of the grave.
When I became aware of something other than darkness, I slowly begin my painful awakening into the realm of spirit hood. Sixty some odd years I lay in limbo trying to awaken, or perhapes it was only sixty seconds. Time seemed to give no account for the silence of the grave. Perhaps it was not called to do so? Was it time itself that filled my ears with faint wavey murmurs? I listened to the vague murmurs until they became distant echoes then vanished altogether. When I ceased to listen for them to come again, I knew that they would not be back. I seemed to be awaiting for something else...
When that something else came, it came in the form of light. Not that it lighted up the darkness around me, but lighted up the inside of me. This light could not be seen only felt, and I could feel the darkness seeping from me.
Sound began to form inside the light and once formed became music, and although the music was sounding from the light inside me, it sounded from above me. I did not think this to be strange. The light had a reason of its own, was on its own and was powered by its own source. It bruned away what little flesh that I had left clinging to my bones then went inside the bones and shut itself up like fire.
It was out of that fire that I came back into being. Throughout the process of purification by fire, I became more knowledgeable than a two year old child should ever be. There was a knowing in me that I was something other than just another common dead mortal. I could not know then that I would be feared and shunned by mankind, that they would call me names like wrath, demon and ghost. I became aware of just how predigest and unbelieving motorals were when at last, I threw off my graveclothes and spiraled from my tomb.
They tagged me snow ghost because of the white light that surrounded my essence and swore that I was made by a mortal child playing in the snow that is seldom seen, and that this nameless child gave a name to one like me. The more I became aware of human reasoning and the carnal ways of mortal minds, the less I thought of them. I was glad of being myself even if that self was nothing more than self awareness, and in spite of the loneliness of spirit hood, I was glad of being alone. But soon I would become restless and begin to roam the dark hills, watching and searching for something or someone.
Part #2
A Year Later Christmas Eve
I hear the north wind calling for me to come out and play, and my essence leaps with joy that sends me spiraling upward from my grave like a white tornado! To my delight it is snowing.
The soft flakes fall throught me, and I dart higher in a game of my own making. I hurry to catch each lacy flake as to stop them on their downward journey, but there are too many, and I am slowly loosing the battle. The wind sees my plight and hurries to blow them sideways, but all too soon the game is over. Everybody knows you can't stop the snow from falling.
''Will you sing with me?, I ask the wind.''
''I will try, he replies, but the only song you know is out of my range and almost impossible for a windsong to sing.''
We sing anyway, the wind and I. We sing an old song that Ma us to sing me to me when I was a mortal. [Rock of Ages]Off key and out of tune we sing the music of the hills.
Then the wind carries me down into the dark hollow, my childish laughter trailing behind us like jet vapors.
He drops me off at the tiny cabin where a five year old mortal lies dreaming. Tonight I will seek out the child's pet agian.
I find the old dog sleeping on the porch all nested down among the croker sacks that she had put there just for him.
He does not hear the wind nor acknowledge my presence. He is dreaming. I peek into his dreams to see him chasing rabbits across corn fields and through green woods of white pine. I smell the scent of nature at her best- mossy spring mornings covered with her wet kisses. The old dog pauses to roll in the sweet dewdrops, before he trees a coon for the old man to shoot out of a persimmon tree like ripe fruit.
And in his dreams, the old woman pats his knobby head and gives him one of her good baking powder biscuits. I wait politely until he has swollowed it whole, and until his dreams acknowledge me. He wags his bony tail in greeting and I go swirling across the porch in the form of snow, and calling his name in a harsh gravely voice of one that has died from the whooping cough.
I whisper into one of his tattered ears. ''Old dog, go to the graveyard out on the ridge before first light and dig up my grave. ''Retrieve the two wooden dolls that you will find there among my bones and leave them by my stone. ''They are my Christmas gifts for the little ragmuffin mortal that I have come to know and love.''
To be continued maybe.
