The city’s finest came out every summer for the numerous town festivities. A lovely mix of mullets, cut off shorts, high heels and Louis Vuitton handbags. You always enjoyed people watching at these events. Not because you were condescending or pretentious, but because you had a genuine desire to see, feel, and know all people. From the youthful mother with three young children to the Suit with his bluetooth, you were fascinated by all of them.
Along the outskirts of the city sat a two story white house. Your house. It stands today, at dusk and summer, with the same familiar exterior, but the interior is painfully different. The tattered basketball hoop still stands. Sometimes, if I sit quietly between the tall maple tree and the seventh crack in the driveway pavement, I can still hear the thump of your basketball hitting the pavement and feel your energy surging through the cement.
Across the street are images only visible in memories of the three tall evergreen trees that once stood. Three tall pillars, protectors of the cornfields, guarding against the brutal onslaught of progress and urbanization. The neighborhood’s naïve surety that nature would be preserved left the day those trees were chopped down. You spent that day sitting in the top branches of the middle tree.
“If they go, I go!”, you yelled down.
Fortunately, your father was the tree feller and he was used to your passionate stands. Eco-fascists and green activists never seem to get along. We stood together, him and I, staring up at your green eyes and barefeet; him annoyed, I, in love.
Today, inside your white house sit two people, a man and a woman. Your parents. Their bodies are in their forties, but their faces look much older. Death is a hell of a life sucker. They sit across from one another at an old mahogany table that quietly whispers tales of its glory days. Your mother is the first to speak.
“I know it doesn’t feel like it now, but with time, it’ll be alright.”
Your father does not break the staring contest he’s having with a ring shaped coffee stain on the table. He takes one last desperate drag from his cigarette before extinguishing it an the overflowing ashtray. He picked up the dirty habit after you were gone. Slowly exhaling he replies, still staring at the discolored wood,
“That’s what they keep telling me.”
A million thoughts are running through your mother’s mind. You always had that same thoughtfully confused look on your face when you were troubled by something. She's thinking, “Doesn’t he know that this is hard for me too? Can’t he see that I’m just as broken, just as torn, just as pained, and yet I’m the one that has to be strong. For godsakes, she was my daughter too. My life. My child. “ But she says none of that. For unlike you, she does not speak her mind and express her feelings about every situation. Instead she quietly took your father’s hand and grasped it tightly.
Your father’s eyes have become permanently tired. He knows that your mother is hurting, he knows that he should be the strong one, but your mother wasn’t the one who had to live with the regret. You butted heads with your father on almost every issue discussed. After every shouting match he always wanted to tell you that though you two disagreed, he still loved you. But he never did. Now, you were gone and he had missed his last chance, his last opportunity to tell you how proud he was of you, how much you meant to him. They sit at that table every night, staring silently into space, holding onto each other’s hand for dear life. They needed you, Anna.
You made that city a beautiful place to live in. It is slowly losing its allure with each day that passes without you. There are some days when I just want to pack up and leave, start over in a new city with new places and faces. Those are the days when I can’t feel you anymore. But then I go to the coney shop, or to the graffitied rock, or to that one, swirling whirling point where all three river’s meet and I sense you once again. So I stay. And I know that someday I’ll go to the coney shop and the memories of you laughing at the counter because you spilled your coke all over the floor will have faded. Someday, I’ll go to the graffitied rock and the image of your beautiful figure, standing, arms outstretched, welcoming the world will no longer be there. Someday, I’ll go to the swirling whirling point where all three river’s meet and the ancient reverberations of your joyous cries [because the water is so cold that it makes you feel alive] won’t be echoing off of the cement tunnels. But until that moment, I’ll stay here, soaking up your essence, remembering the tremendous life force that you were.
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