Happy travels, mom
She used to tell her granddaughters that she wants to go, that she’s tired, that she’s been living too long, that this stupid old body has exhausted her – and also no one in their family has ever lived this long, she’s almost eighty five, and that’s no joke.
But she loved life.
Despite her already useless legs, worn out heart and constant weakness – every morning she was fiercely enjoying the sun, when it was out; the rain, when it occurred; the smell of flowers which she couldn’t really sense anymore, just remembered what it should be like; and the wind – the wind was her favorite, it reminded her of her childhood, of the taste of dust on her tongue, dry from endless heat, of a melancholic hooting of a hoopoe in the afternoon haze and of the blue mountains outlining the horizon with a dainty broken line.
She was closing her eyes, and instead of this room she was really fed up with (how many years passed since she made some renovations here, with love and inspiration? Too many…) saw a squatty white hut, a blue fence, big cherry trees in full blossom right in front of the house and messy, thorny raspberry shrub behind it – if you weren’t afraid of a million of angry yellowjackets, you could pick those raspberries all day long – and still have enough left for your brothers and sister, the stubborn, annoying but beloved little sister.
Her brother and sister are already gone, and the one remaining brother calls her rarely and sighs into the phone, and his voice is fading away and vanishing. And the voices of those gone are just the opposite; they grow closer and clearer by day. They come, they call, they whisper… Soon, she’s waving them off, soon, just be patient, come on, I can’t wait either!
And at dawn she captures eagerly the first ray of sun true the curtains and says to it quietly, “Hello, here’s another day for me!”
But with increasing frequency her memory thrusted her to the past – there she was alive again, crying and laughing her head off, loving and getting hurt, missing and waiting.
And the present was floating by like indistinct shadow.
Someone is calling on the phone, asking her something, shouting – mom, mom, can you hear me?! I can hear you, she wants to say, but her head is so light, and her eyes don’t see this stupid old room anymore but evening in June and wooden table under grape vines. And her father, alive and well, is rocking on his knee the eldest granddaughter, stout with big eyes… Oh, wasn’t it her on the phone just now, shouting, but it doesn’t matter, it’s all so far away now that everybody are alive, laughing, eating and drinking tea, and early clusters of cloudy grapes are touching the back of their heads, tender and weighty.
Just now it was unbearably hot, but towards the evening the wind picked up, blew away the languid haze and the taste of dust.
And now the lamp is lit above the table, the shadows of furry moths are flickering and bats fly through the dark garden. The wind brings in the fragrance of mom’s roses, this unbearably wonderful fragrance, tremulous and tender like first love. Sky isn’t black just yet, it has this indescribable tint of darkness when you allegedly can’t see anything, but the silhouette of a night bird – or is it a bat, after all? – flickers like a hint in light flirting.
Oh, she loved flirting and laughing so much! After her half-starved childhood she believed herself to be too plain and not pretty, and how happy and surprised she was when the men willingly responded to her jokes, catching her sly glances and quivering when their hands touched unintentionally.
How she loved love, this flirtatious game, this was the last thing she lost – and the one she was sad about the most, even more than her useless legs and flattering heart – there, somewhere beneath her solar plexus, was a bubbling spring of love, and now it’s almost dried up. Even though she was now smiling to a ray of sun just as she used to smile to the man she loved. And instead of warm hands she was now caressing the leaves of African violets given to her by one of her granddaughters – though she forgot which one.
Again someone came, asking her for something – it’s so hard to know if it’s a shadow or one of the living, everybody are so hazy and almost inaudible.
Her memory plunged her into her childhood once more. Her father returned from a three-day fishing trip, a tail of a giant catfish is hanging out of his bag, leaving a trail in a soft dust. Mom is throwing up her hands, dragging the fish away, muttering while scraping the hulking carcass with a knife, kneading the dough and then serving to the table a giant fish pie that will be remembered for thirty years by the kids, friends and neighbors that were fortunate to sit around that jolly table under the grapevines that evening.
She is wearing her old checkered dress, her hair is still curly, unruly and dark, not a single gray strand. Her entire life is still ahead of her, the sky, white with heat, smiles at her, and the wind kisses her and lifts her short dress shamelessly.
The old woman is smiling in her sleep, her fingers caressing the blanket, she breathes in – and doesn’t breathe out anymore.
Her children were crying by her bed, calling the ambulance, quietly discussing the funeral…
And none of them noticed the carefree snub-nosed little girl in a short checkered dress running along the road, raking warm dust with her bare feet, drinking the wind and laughing with incomprehensible joy.
And in a distance, by the very end of the road blue mountains reigned, so far and so unbelievably beautiful.
And she was just fine.
Translated by Diana Shnaiderman-Pereira