Waking Up During The Fall

It was but a glimpse, and even then it was but a glimpse of a silhouette. It was a shimmer, a sylph; a vapor of joy and mirth in the night. It came and went like a scene between buildings spotted from the window of a speeding train. It was there, and then it wasn't. And yet it remains. Indelibly.

As I traveled into town the other night, a little after 8:00, I zipped down Concord Street with little in particular on my mind. It was a typical fall night, the edge of frost scraping at the windows, at the mums in planters, at the pumpkins on lighted front steps. Leaves piled in a light breeze along the curbs; woodsmoke curled around hedges and jumped over eaves.

Suddenly, as I approached the town funeral home, its lights on inside and out, a little girl, not more than 7 years old and wearing a little dress and overcoat, leapt off the funeral parlor's front steps and skipped toward a car at the curb, its rear passenger door swung wide open to receive her. There was glee, there was merriment; there was a pure and innocent joy in her step, the angle of her arms, the bounce of her hair. It was clear she felt free, happy, even relieved: nothing could encumber her.

But then I noticed, as I moved closer and past, that coming out of the funeral home, trailing behind the little girl, was a middle-aged woman carrying a huge funeral bouquet in a vase. She was saying goodbye to somebody, she was moving slowly; there seemed to be someone else in the foyer, another woman, more flowers, a man in a suit. There was no one else, no crowd, no line; no long queue of grief flowing down the street, like I had so often seen when some prominent person had died, or some shocking tragedy struck Peterborough. And as I readied to turn round the old library, I knew I had seen the closing moments of a wake, of calling hours: there would be a funeral or graveside service tomorrow, I knew; the flowers would be brought from one place to the next.

Who had died? Was it the little girl's grandmother, her great-grandmother? Was it her papa? Or was it someone she was supposed to know, someone in a long line of family that she knew by blood but not by face or name? Perhaps it was her little brother, or her little cousin, who had died at childbirth or because of a miscarriage. I could not know.

But it was the leap and the skip, the movement alone -- that sign of life -- that I know, and shall never forget. I do not know the little girl's name, nor do I have any idea what she looks like, blacked out as she was by the porch lights behind her and the lights shining on a funeral home's sign. There was light in that darkness, no doubt. But it did not come from any bulb or any flame. It came from a little girl, leaving death behind, leaping toward the unknown, free to be, to laugh. To swing her arms.

To make my heart skip a beat or two as I turned a corner, moving on.

Peace.

©Bill Gnade 2006/Contratimes -- All Rights Reserved.