(Originally written December 2007)
As soon as he woke up, he knew they were gone. The house was cold and quiet and gray. No laughter peeled off walls. No tiny feet pummeled floors. There were no cries of protest. Shrill pleadings and every sign of life had been sucked from the building. Now the wind slammed the house, hammering it with buckets of rain. And he was alone.
It was supposed to be a small break for him. She’d take the kids to church and he’d get extra sleep; but the minute he woke he knew it was more permanent than that.
What would he do? Sell the house, of course. Unfinished as it was, he could not stay here. And the business? Yes, that too. Perhaps his brother would take over both.
As he stepped from the shower, images flipped across his mind like flash cards: an elk herd, their van, his kids…his wife.
He wondered why no phones rang and why the house was quiet and why the wind wouldn’t stop whooshing trees and why the damn gutters kept leaking drip-drip-drip-drip.
He was out of the house then and back in the cold spaceship his crew had abandoned. An alarm flashed blip-blip-blip-blip. He was still alone. There was no house. Just instruments and curved walls. He checked the oxygen supply—low. He must have been hallucinating. Remembering a life lost.
Moving into the long corridor, he wished they’d made it pink. Anything but this gray walling him in so silently. He’d take any color now. He’d take any noise now—an angry wife, even a crying kid.
His kids. He’d joined the Space Corps knowing they’d be at risk. But he determined not to let that hinder him. They belonged to God, not him, and like every human had their appointed time to die.
Their appointed time to die…
While alive, he had steeled himself against their departure by voraciously loving every minute with them—tasting, laughing, feeling, and thanking God for it all. He knew he couldn’t wrestle with them forever.
He didn’t know then the silence would ache so without them. That once they were gone he’d give his entire career to have them back. He didn’t know then that hurtling through the heavens could mean nothing. He’d rather be on his king-sized bed tickling them or playing peek-a-boo in the sheets.
Their laughter rang out to him now like bells. As did their toddler voices, high-pitched and musical with words bent oddly yet offered so earnestly. He heard them now like a small choir, like angels waiting to receive him. He would go to them, he thought, fitting on his helmet. He would find them.
The chamber ripped open then and the peculiar light of space spilled in. Jagged walls swung away until he hung on the edge of infinity.
He heard it again: the laughter of tickling, the voices of love. And he saw only light.
So he let go.
This piece knocks me to the ground, Rick. I believe you read a few paragraphs to me as you were writing it and with just that nibble it stuck in my mind for twelve years. Now the whole nugget is lodged in there for my heart to work over. Your spare yet cosmically-rich story lazers in on a grief that nobody wants to imagine yet it consumes folks every day. Being brave enough to grab hold of that reality may enable us to hang on to life, or at least help someone make it through the day.
Thank you, Watt. It knocked me to the ground, too. Maybe that’s why I was reluctant to share. I hope it helps those ‘on the edge’ feel like they’re not alone.