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Time, Out Of Mind by Maryann Lawrence She was out of her mind. Or, rather, she was not of sound mind, unless you call the repetitive utterance of the most profound grief to be sound. For the sound she made no sympathetic heart could bear without breaking. “My baby, my baby,” were the only intelligible words. On hearing it, every ear wished that it was struck immediately deaf, and wanted the promise that such a refrain would never be heard again. Torrential tears plagued the mourners and all the maladies, the small injustices committed against them, the minutiae of daily life fell away. They were as soldiers in a foxhole, hoping for death and hoping for life. Their pity for the mother and for their own loss, and for the losses that they had suffered previously and would surely suffer again, and then, eventually, the loss of their own life, wrung their hearts and spun their heads – thoughts and feelings tumbled like clothes in a dryer -- until they became exhausted and dizzy with the thinking and feeling. And still the mother wailed, “my baby, my baby,” and lost her mind again. *** She had the presence of mind to know of their presence – these mourners –– and presently she turned to one of them and spoke. Sorrow only appears to be unfathomable, but it is never so deep that exhaustion cannot reach it. God bless our bodies. Misery stops for a runny nose or full bladder. Terror subsides when light reaches the eye. Anger ceases when the stomach churns. And so the mother ate and slept and the trivial concerns of living came and went. Sorrow remained a lump in the throat, but the beds were made again, and the dinners were served and she could –sometimes – look at the lawn and not think of a child running over it but that, rather, it simply needed to be mowed. *** Her baby was a flaxen-haired girl of fourteen. Pretty, sweet. The course of her life was not destined to be great, however. She was not exceptional of mind. She had no great potential. She would likely have graduated high school with no particular honors, labored in no particularly great career and made no great contribution in areas of medicine or technology, for instance. Still, her disposition was such that her heart chimed in concert with the universal love that is the undercurrent of all. So while her life may have been ordinary, the loss of it was extraordinary, and it was many days and weeks and months before the mother could regain her mind. There was a father, and a stepfather, and siblings who cried, too. Among them was a boy of 16 who sharply resembled the baby who died. He was seated in a wheelchair beside the casket, saying very little and feeling very much. In time, too, he would regain his mind, but then for just a brief time. *** Two great winter storms blew through the mourner’s lives in the months that followed, blanketing their memories and keeping them occupied with its power outages and frozen pipes and heavy shovels. April’s torrential rain beat out the snow and washed away the deafening echoes of the funereal wails. They found solace in the predictability of the seasons and the rhythm of daily life. May followed April and June followed May, and the summer solstice broke through sadness and the sun shone down on its charges, steeping them in warmth and infusing them with light. *** The smell of green grass filled the lungs of two siblings and a mother whose sorrow was still fresh but, momentarily, put aside. The boy who thought much and said little was on two feet -- no, not feet, but wheels. They all had wheels under them and they glided effortlessly along the trail, sometimes hand in hand, sometimes one far in front of the others. They laughed in champagne bubbles that rose and fell with the hills. The park was filled with other families, other kids, other mothers of small children and grandparents and couples of long-standing acquaintance and those only newly formed. Dogs on short leashes yapped at the heels of joggers, stopped to sniff others of their kind and resumed trotting beside their owners, leaving off memories of what had just occurred. The hill was steep and not the first that day. The mother reached the apex and pushed forward. Her hair tried to run from its roots, waving softly behind her head. In her ears, the voice of two boys, but she could not make out the words – if they were talking at all and not (as they often were that day) simply whooping and hollering. Wind was racing at her, agitating her clothes, her hair, her senses, shaking behind her ears and in her forehead like the rumblings of a headache about to begin. Horrible wind, wonderful wind. Whistling in your ears and racing through the wheels of your shoes. Probably, probably she did not know that her scream was warranted. Probably. Probably, she thought (and others around her thought) that it was just an unguarded moment, like when you see a snake, or when you’re watching the shower scene in “Psycho.” No one thought much of it. People on roller blades fall all the time. A steep hill, a wobble, a shriek, a tumble and, sometimes, a bloody knee or elbow. Occasionally, there is a quiet moment. A concussion, a crack. *** Some people, later, thought that she had simply fulfilled a wish to see her baby again. Others said it was irony. Still others, an injustice. The boy went quiet again, even as the ducks on the pond quacked obscenities at each other and the robins pulled the heads of worms from their hollows. Tragedy strikes us dumb, but to laugh in the same breath that death takes you seems more sweet than bitter to me. |
