Alchemyst - CactusRose (books for new readers .txt) 📗

lady curled up and died.

Guilt plagued Maggie. With increasing frequency she heard a grinding, tooth-on-bone, munching, crunching hullabaloo whenever she sat on the front steps watching occasional cars wind up and down the hilly country road. No one was ever there.

Complicating matters even further, in her dreams she saw the old housekeeper’s ghastly, distorted face draw ever nearer…until the papery, wrinkled skin touched her and the apparition whispered unintelligible words that muffled her screams.

“I… I’m…” was all she could make of the soft, breathless murmur.

Maggie always awoke drenched in sweat. When sunshine finally dispelled the paralyzing image, she breezed through school half-awake like an insubstantial zombie. Every subsequent dream amplified the whispering.

Finally, on the dawn of her eighteenth birthday, she understood.

When a midnight thunderstorm slashed great thrusts of lightning at her window the previous night, she’d drawn the curtains shut and slipped into a shallow sleep.

Instantly, the dream arose. Again the old woman whispered. Barely asleep this time, Maggie heard the phantom murmur, ”I’m… not…your…mother.”

Rumblings and Rootings

Indeed, Mother had popped in and out of her life like a jack-in-the-box, sharing irrational fears but otherwise offering essential comforts.

Oh, Maggie knew she was loved, all right. Mom only left because of the divorce. There was a more troublesome feeling that bothered her. What if mother died before Maggie was ready to live without her?

Right from the beginning, Mother was her entire world. Originally it was only symbiosis that linked the pair.

Father had been away serving the country since his marriage. With wartime security blocking the information flow to and from military bases, the new daddy was alienated from the bonding process of fatherhood.

He returned home to a precocious toddler. Such assertiveness was intolerable to a war-seasoned soldier. They loved each other, but his physical interventions and attempted control over her destroyed Maggie’s trust in him, making Mother and her lovely singing voice her immortal ally against disparaging criticism and assertions regarding her worth. A life without her had seemed rather pointless.

Reinvention

Now an adult with grown children, she took off her sweatband to sip crystal clear spring water and examine the intervening years.

Mom had been extremely intuitive. In fact, it was downright uncanny. She sang songs like Playmates, Three little Fishies, and A'Tiskit, A'Tasket

that were riveting and connected deeply to Maggie's younger self. Her mommy ears and eyes could delve into the corners of a far distant domicile when there was good reason.

Whenever Maggie worked too intensely or watched horror shows late at night, the phone rang. Mother’s voice came on the line. She always began, “Are you alright?”

“Sure thing, mom!” Whether it was true or not, the spell was broken and Maggie felt relaxed and sleepy. “Thanks for calling.”

LifeQuake

Then came that fateful summer weekend…

Maggie was too busy to call her mother about weekend plans. At first she didn’t worry, because Mom's little apartment was equipped with a pull cord to call for help in case of an emergency.

Everything centered on the radioactively hot last day of June.

Humid weather caused air conditioners to blow invisible mold spores. Soon, irritated sinuses plagued Maggie. After phoning work to arrange sick leave, she placed several calls to the apartment. There was no answer.

She phoned her sister. “Heard from Mom? Is she visiting?”

“No. Isn’t she with you?”

Maggie raced to the apartment complex and rode an elevator to the top. She grimaced at the stuffy lobby. Wasn’t the A/C working? Why was it not cooler indoors than out?

At the end of the corridor, she placed her ear against a door. Fans whizzed inside. Maggie balked. Perhaps Mom was out shopping? At any rate, she had one key and the lock needed two. With help, she roused bathrobe-clad Dismal Dan, the reluctant caretaker, and they entered together.

She knew instantly. Three fans circulated fetid air. Hoping against hope, she ran to the kitchen to check for thawing food.

Sargasso Sea of Troublesome No No's and Woe

Too late! Dan raced from the bedroom, flailing his arms at her as if pursued by demons. “Don’t enter,” he commanded.

“Oh, my god!” she gasped. “Go…just go do your thing!” She slumped against Mother’s soft new chair in her high heels, heavy purse dangling from her shoulder like a dead weight.

Grasping the cell phone, she redialed her sister but could not say anything. Finally she mumbled, “She...she’s…not…” The words broke abruptly in mid-sentence, as Maggie stared blankly at hundreds of thoughts clamoring for attention.

“Be right there, Sis!”

“Okay,” she mumbled, weak and reeling from shocking, heartfelt pain and muted screams of compelling horror trapped in her burning throat. The trauma was much too deep for tears.

She realized Sis was an hour away. About to faint, she dialed another number. Almost immediately her children were on their way.

Minutes later, volunteers took over.

When the medical examiner arrived, he rummaged drawers and peered in cupboards for five minutes. “Heart attack,” he muttered, and left.

Maggie had no strength to protest.

Freefall

Next day, the family met to discuss what came next. The verdict was “Cremate.”

After the funeral and graveside ash burial, Maggie could barely sleep or eat. Ambien materialized. On sleepless nights she wrote poetry, beginning with ‘Precious Flower’:

“Beautiful Babe!”
A photograph restorer said,
Presented with your wedding picture;
You looked forward to babies,
Not dying embers of dwindling stars
With a sun forgetting to shine.

Winsome Spirit,
Restore your magnificent image;
Pass on your luminous earthly aim
Weary booster, lovely angel,
Untangle your maze of woven disguise
Tell us how to tend this garden.

Poetry helped. Sudden passing was hard on those left, though, and the most helpful ideas were from a friend of the family who was also a licensed counselor.

“Do what I did,” Nickolas would say. “Talk to your mother like she’s still around.”

Then, pointing to a navigation wheel bearing the five stages of grief, he’d insist, “Maggie, my friend, don’ oscillate. Relax. Sadness is where th’ Devil c’n nab ya’. Don’t linger there. You don’t need t’be better, ya’ couldn’t have changed things, and ya’ won’t know why this happened!”

A Ready and Playful Spirit

Later that same evening as the coffee shop meeting with her friends, Maggie wondered if she would feel so unsettled if her parents had exchanged goodbyes with her before leaving. Their startling departures were distressing.

She realized then that she was like Father, who had happily remarried and moved into a new life. She was ready to move on.

Except, that is, for several untidy loose ends that remained even after encountering Sara.

Had Mom envisioned her demise? Visions of those who already passed weren’t unusual when dying. Had memories beckoned her beyond? Furthermore, was there anything left unsaid between them?

While she ruminated, Maggie carried a laundry basket toward the guest room where Mother had slept. It was also where the tired spirit had lingered three years earlier, long enough for her busy daughter to relax and sense her parting essence before winging away to rest.

Suddenly Maggie hesitated in the doorway clutching a bundle to her thudding chest.

“You’re here, aren’t you, Mom?” Clothes showered to her feet. Her heart fluttered, stopped, lurched forward, and started beating again as she reached out to steady herself.

Mom was back…not in eulogy this time, but in song. Vintage music played in the background. Maggie lowered herself to the floor and sat there covered in fabric, singing old melodies accompanied by her mother’s gifted voice.

Somehow, in that time of solitude and peaceful wisdom between this life and the next, her mother found what she lacked in life. She used that love now to etch Maggie’s soul.

As the playful spirit formulated this life-altering essence, Maggie danced around the room lost in the giddiness of childhood.

Then, halfway through singing “...a’tiskit, a’tasket, a little yellow basket, and on the way...,” she lost it. Three years of pent up tears overflowed, flushing away grief and longing. She sent sobbing goodbyes heavenward.

Alchemy

Soon after, there descended an ordinary sort of emptiness  ~ a void too often refilled with turmoil.

Then, SMASH! A thunderstorm rocked the house with the vicious kind of fury that foreshadows a momentous event. Lightning sizzled. Curtains blew open. A naked windowpane appeared.

Maggie froze in wonder at an image etched in the glass. What alchemyst had painted this incredible image?

Backlit in the window through which her mother had once gazed outdoors blazed a remarkably holographic photographic image!

Etched into glass in all her glory by some unknown electrostatic process, a radiant young woman beamed back at Maggie. She recognized her mother from an old portrait. Her pride was evident. She was slim and fashionably dressed, wearing a pearl-studded olive suit accented with a triple strand pearl necklace and the flattering hairstyle of a fashionable generation.

Standing off to one side at a short distance back was her father, as a tall, handsome young soldier dressed in the military greens of the Army Air Force. Father had dipped his head in greeting, and was now smiling at Maggie from under a russet leather visor that shaded his intense blue eyes. A winged aviation badge fastened to his Isenberg olive wool officer’s hat provided a visual reminder of his tactical force assignment with the USAAF air sea rescue squadron and her feelings shifted from lifelong respect to outright admiration.

Smiling back, she saluted their independent spirits.

Almost immediately, the storm cell moved east. The curtains began to close. Maggie’s sorrow subsided, permanently replaced with the inexplicable beauty of AWE.

I'd love to hear how your life has been touched by near misses and awesome events.

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CactusRose
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"Then summer fades and passes and October comes. We'll smell smoke then, and feel an unexpected sharpness, a thrill of nervousness, swift elation, a sense of sadness and departure."

…Thomas Wolfe

Imprint

Text: All rights reserved InternationalCopyright©CactusRose2012
Publication Date: 01-07-2012

All Rights Reserved

Dedication:
Commemorating the lives of parents who are now our guardian angels