So, without further ado:
Tin Whistle
Friends told me
that ten years was too long - that it was time to move on.
Perhaps such
words weren’t easy to say, but no matter how kindly intended, they always arrived
at my ear sounding flat and inconsequential, as though read from the pages of
an instruction booklet.
‘Two years’, the booklet would state, ‘possibly three, or maybe even five are
acceptable to grieve for the loss of a loved one. But’, it would always end
in grave tones of dire warning, ‘ten is
far too long.’
An instruction
booklet didn’t deal much in abstracts. Regardless of the depth of my hurt, what
it was telling me – what everyone was
telling me - was that I had to let go.
But neither
booklet, nor friend had ever known Emily the way I had.
They’d never
felt the soft glow of her smile, the tingle of her laughter, or the love in her
heart - channeled through her eyes into mine - and so, into my own heart.
They’d never felt these things.
They’d never
seen the world transformed in an instant, nor felt the warmth of her the way I
had. They had never made love to her in the moonlight, or caressed her body and
been filled with wonder as I had. They’d never seen themselves mirrored, in a
thousand ways, with love, as she had done with me. They’d never left the
ground, buoyed by the purity of their joy.
Not in the way I
had.
When that’s
suddenly been taken away, in the form of a somber faced Mountie telling you
that there’s been an accident - in carefully couched, officially distant words
- how can you put a timeframe on your acceptance that somehow the world is
still turning without her?
We were in a
room together – a world of our making – and now she was gone. Ten years?
Twenty? A lifetime? What difference, when that place that held all things of
meaning was now lost?
Only its ghost
lingered on in my mind.
Probably those
same friends were relieved when informed of my decision to leave Winnipeg for a
place in the country.
I needed the
solitude for my writing, I told them.
The change would
do me good, they would invariably reply.
All the while
the specter of my dead wife hovered between us, carefully unremarked. They had grown
reluctant to speak of her – it depressed me to see their discomfort whenever
her name was invoked. They were afraid of inadvertently re-opening that old
wound, preferring, instead, to think my decision to leave was a sign that, at
long last, it was healing.
Perhaps it was,
in some small way. Leaving our home, our friends, all the familiar places we
used to know together, was like stepping aboard a ship with an uncharted
horizon for a destination, and a cautioning ‘There be Dragons’ etched in my mind.
It hadn’t been easy
closing the door of our home that last time. It hadn’t been easy leaving all
those places that triggered memories. It was only the knowledge that my mind
didn’t require their prodding that had made it bearable.
Leaving her in the past had never been
my goal, but I thought it best to let them think that such was the case. It was
useless for them to worry. The real reason was that they needed leaving – them and their sad, concerned,
reluctant-to-speak-of-Emily faces.
That’s what
needed to be escaped.
* * *
My realtor had found
an old stone farmhouse on the homestead of a wealthy English immigrant from the
late nineteenth century. A reasonable price was asked, most likely because that
family’s last scion had died some years earlier and, as it was miles from
anywhere, the municipality was desperate to be rid of it.
It was late
autumn when I drove out to inspect the property. It wasn’t too much trouble to
find – as mentioned, there was no other place around, so a solitary windbreak
in the distance beckoned like the point of a compass.
The long
graveled lane was in surprisingly good repair, but the fallen leaves of the
maples were lost in the wild dejection of the yard. Out back, a small orchard
of apple trees – the last of their fruit rotting on withered limbs – stood
useless and forlorn within the protective enclosure of the windbreak. Both
maples and orchard - stark and naked – branches climbing the sky like black,
tortured lightning.
The house itself
– a fine old two-storied structure, but with paint faded and peeling – seemed
to crouch nervously before me like a giant orphan before a prospective parent. Here,
in the physical, were rooms, once vibrant with memories, now cobwebbed by time.
Like a close relation, I wondered what had it cost to leave them?
Turning to go,
something flitted across the perimeter of my vision - little more than a strobe
of interrupted light. There, but a short distance before me, ghostly and huge, the
shadowy form of a Grey Owl slid silently away through the trees. No doubt, my
invasion of his domain had startled him from his slumbers, and he was
retreating to regain his seclusion, leaving me rooted in awe.
Intermittently,
these past years there had been dreams of an owl gliding like a spirit through
a copse just like this one. I could not turn my mind from the notion that this was
a sign.
Lore and old
wives’ tales claimed that an owl was a harbinger of Death.
* * *
I stood in the living
room the evening of the day of possession. The movers had gone, leaving me
alone with the parcels and packages of my life, looking pitifully small and
uncertain in their new surroundings, like a child’s first day at school.
I rolled up my
sleeves, and with a utility knife, cut the packaging tape on the first box.
Unwrapping the newspaper from the photograph of our wedding – both of us happily
eager to embrace the future - I carefully took it out, and set it upon the
mantle.
Then I began to
feel better.
* * *
Winter came
early that year.
Settling into my
new surroundings came surprisingly easy. Although it was too late in the year
to do much about the yard, the house itself could be made my own. Painting
would keep me busy – that and my writing.
I had forgone
the comfort of having my bed in the master bedroom, but had chosen, instead, a
smaller room in the back. The master – spacious and comfortable, with
check-rail windows overlooking the yard – became my study.
I fell into the
habit of writing when tired of painting, and whenever words became elusive, returned
to roller and tray. But for occasional trips to Minnedosa for necessities, such
was my life.
I chose dark
colours for my walls…and wrote stories of heartbreak and loss.
* *
*
It was the last
day in October that it began to snow.
There had been
frost in the morning for the past week, but the sun’s thin rays could usually
provide sufficient warmth for a walk in the afternoon. Yet today a biting,
knife-edged wind began to pick up from the north-east, and as the day
progressed, the temperature continued to drop. When the wind started to howl, the
first few flakes began to descend like advance guards.
By the time I
had prepared my evening meal the windows were rattling – grains of snow stinging
their panes. By the time that I had gone upstairs to finish a story about a mad
hermit, the temperature had dropped to -10 Celsius, and the storm had become a
blizzard.
Yet, regardless
of my intentions, as the tempest raged outside, the monitor remained blank. All
that filled my mind was a desire to rest.
Surrender lured me to the sofa next to
my desk.
* * *
I was still
sleeping when there came a knock at the door. I knew this because, although the
windows continued to shiver from the blows of the storm, all else felt like a
dream.
The loud,
stentorian boom, echoing through the halls to my study, was not of the world of
the waking. Neither was my lack of surprise when rising – without any wonder at
who would be about on such a night – to go down the stairs in answer to its
summons. My hand reached for the door as a diver might reach for a conch. The
bite of the wind tore through me but failed to touch my consciousness.
My visitor stood
before me, tall and elegant, clad in old tweed and gaiters, as might have a
country squire from a by-gone age. A soft, felt wideawake covered his head, its
brim casting his face into deeper shadow than the stygian night surrounding him.
In his hands he
held a tin whistle.
But he bowed me
a friendly bow, and I found myself bowing in return before standing aside to
allow him entrance.
He strode past
me with long, languid…confident
steps. He spoke not a word, but took
a familiar station by the fireplace. Then, with practiced ease, he brought the whistle
to his lips, and began to play.
Curiously,
without incongruence, although his mien was darkened shadow, the tune he played
was merry and light. Of its own accord, my toe began to tap. Surrendering to
the music, my body began to sway.
Then I was leaping
and laughing – twirling around the room with unfamiliar abandon. My feet flew
hither and thither of their own volition, carrying me to heights of exuberant
delirium.
I was lost in a
merriment that held no meaning, shorn of woe, shorn of all that I was.
Uncaring, I
danced on.
When finally it
was over, my spirit came lightly to my body the way that a balloon might come
to the earth.
When I opened my
eyes …she was there.
Emily.
She stood before
me, real and immutable. She smiled that same, cherished smile that had been
alive only in my heart for ten years past.
I smiled a
dream-smile in return.
Then, with our
eyes locked in a love that spanned the chasms of time, once more, the dark man
began to play.
Emily’s laughter
was sweet as a memory as she held out her arms. Laughing in turn, I swept her
up, and twirled with her ‘round and ‘round the floor.
This was my Emily.
I was holding her - against all
probability….I was holding her!
We were in our
room again, our eternal room, alone and unfettered. My hands caressed her -
felt the surety of her. I fell once
more into her beauty, and while the dark man played, clung to her with violent
passion, praying that this moment might never end.
Yet, even as the
room spun and blurred beyond the softness of her eyes, I could feel that surety
slipping away, like melancholy music fading into mist.
* * *
I awoke in the
morning to a chickadee tapping curiously at the window of my study.
Tired and
disheveled, as the memory of my dream re-visited, I felt anew all of the dark depths
of my loss.
A senseless
panic enveloped me. I launched myself from the sofa and raced down the stairs.
But, of course, the house was empty.
Unwilling yet to
accept, I ran out the door, barefoot amongst virgin drifts.
The wild wind
had gone, and with its passing had come a new dawn. The morning sun sparkled the
snow so fiercely it hurt my eyes.
Then, perhaps
because it held a different glimmer, something caught my peripheral attention.
A tin whistle
lay nestled on the snow-covered rail of the veranda.
I stared,
incapable of belief.
I picked it up -
felt its weight in my hands.
Somewhere in the
distance, the Grey Owl mourned its call over the frozen land, speaking of
things that required no meaning.
“Emily….!”
Her name was a
sigh.
The End
CW
Lovatt – 06/10/07
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