“The past beats inside me like a second heart.” John Banville
The old barn stood as it always had. Silent now and grayed after decades of weather, the once red paint was but a memory. The long ago animal smell still lingered, albeit faintly, while bits of straw stuck out in occasional spots along the aged walls, and cob webs hung like dirty gossamer from the corners.
Laura paused just inside the opening, the sliding doors now long gone. Sunlight spilled in around her and through the holes in the ceiling, illuminating dust motes that floated through the air before vanishing into darkness. In her mind she still heard the shuffling of hooved feet, the forceful breaths of the cows awaiting the vet, and the occasional whinny of one of the draft horses. The ghosts of those who had helped run the farm haunted the space with whistles and off-key singing while her grandfather's gruff voice and hearty laugh seem to punctuate the wholesomeness of the scene.
She saw it all in her mind and in her heart. Her grandfather was long gone now as were her parents and most of her generation. Yet at this moment they were as present as the ivy covering the outside walls. God had blessed her with her own family, four kids, thirteen grandkids, and four great-grandkids, with one more on the way, yet she still longed for those who had gone on. At ninety-three, she didn't understand the youth of today. Their need for constant “connection,” their sense of entitlement, their seeming shallowness of being. She wouldn't say she was eager to die but she would welcome it when it came, knowing she would once again be with those whom she loved and understood the most.
Looking upward toward the hayloft she smiled softly as she remembered a certain day, a certain young man, and a certain experience that had changed her from young girl to young woman. That young man would eventually become her husband, the greatest love of her life for nearly sixty years. How she missed him! But, soon, she would be with him again, her body buried beside his in the family cemetery and her spirit with his in heaven.
It was said that your life passed before your eyes at the moment of death. If this were true then death must have been imminent for her life, or at least this part of it, was certainly doing so. The memories were all so real that she started to reach for them, only to stop with her hand partially raised as she reminded herself that they weren't real. At least not in the physical sense.
“Grandma?”
Her great-granddaughter's voice brought her back with a jolt and her fragile, lined hand dropped to her lap. The vibrant memories vanished, replaced by the reality of what lay before her. She was no longer the strong, fiery haired young woman capable of carrying bales of hay and bags of grain. And while she still knew how to operate a tractor and drive a team, she was now confined to a wheelchair with barely enough strength to raise a spoon of soup to her mouth with her gnarled, arthritic hand.
She sighed heavily before raising a tired smile to the young woman standing beside her. She was a beauty, Laura thought proudly. Strong, independent, incredibly intelligent, with the same auburn hair and vivid green eyes she herself had once born. It was like looking into a mirror of the past. She chuckled quietly, amused with her conceit.
“I'm okay, dear. Let's go back.”
And as the sun set behind the distant hills, the two women turned away.
So poignant and beautifully expressed. While those days are largely gone, they are still remembered by some.
You made me think of my mother, raised on a farm, now confined to a walker with her bad joints at 91. She, too, ran into a handsome but poor boy when she was 17 and she was with him 62 years, now with several great-grandchildren. About 2004, my younger brother took her back to my great-grandfather's homestead and they toured the house of her childhood, vacant for over 20 years but still finding some bits of the 1920s-30s from her memory. The barn was gone.
Kimberly has gone from a well-paid female executive one minute to a desperate woman the next. Thinking her day can't possibly get any worse, she finds out how wrong she is when she goes home. The only way to set things straight is to get even.
The old barn stood as it always had. Silent now and grayed after decades of weather, the once red paint was but a memory. The long ago animal smell still lingered, albeit faintly, while bits of straw stuck out in occasional spots along the aged walls, and cob webs hung like dirty gossamer from the corners.
