How to Live a Life
She came over on a cold metal ship. The waves attempted to devour the ship and the shattering water broke on lifeless metal. The quarters were small and cramped; the journey was long and testing. She was running from a war that ate her parents and tortured her siblings, Day went by in a flash and night seemed to linger forever. But she found love on that boat. Found it amidst the water, found it running from darkness that threatened to eat the lives of everyone and everything she new. She sailed slowly for a never before seen coast, sailed away to be lost or found, to live or die. Sailed away on a rumor.
They were married. Wed as fast as that. They lived in New York, when it was more of a town then a city. They decided to move north, north to the cold and the quiet, north where they could escape the Death, and blood, and gore, and politics, and fighting, and to escape the America that they sailed too only a few years ago. New York was big, and loud. The people were devilish and bitter. And the world turned so fast they weren’t sure they could hang on.
So they moved, Husband and Wife, Wife and Husband, they left. The ventured through the cold and took a journey that rivaled the dreaded boat. The carriage seemed warmer, and the trees smiled, and the horse walked on. The snow danced in the fields. On their journey they made friends, talked of the first war that drove them out of their homes so long ago and so far away. They danced and they loved.
They had children. Technology came in a flash. The first couple of kids they had a doctor came and had to stay at their home because of the piles of snow. The Wind blew hard and the baby’s cried, shrieked at their lives as if they knew better then people who have forgotten the pain of breathing, watching and living. She had her baby’s in her home. They were born and raised.
The children grew up and grew out. Her husband died, She remarried. The kids married and had children of their own. The second Great War came, and friends left and died and then a great explosion quieted the whole world for just a minute, twice. The world became afraid. The children became mothers and their children also became parents. And the world turned as fast as it’s slow wheels would take it.
She watched as another husband slipped away. She sat in her house and tended to her flowers and watched the family that she had created turn into two separate families. She watched her world split in two, good and bad, light and dark. But too a mother no child is evil. She took care of her grandchildren and spoiled them when given the chance. One of her daughters became a neighbor. Her daughter was beat by her lover. Her lover beat her children. The children cried. The family moaned under the unsettled anguish. Finally, they separated. The evil father ran away to bathe in his evil oils and corrupt water.
She helped her daughter. She helped her children. And then as most old people do, she watched. She saw the little troubles of the family. She read the bible and retold stories that no one else could tell. She held her great grandchildren in her arms and cried. She cried for the life they will have. She cried for how little they know, and how much they will learn. She cried because she knew she could only hold them for so long. She cried because she understood.
Her face was old and her wrinkles showed where her life has been. Her eyes were grey and filled with old wisdom that no one knew anymore. She carried the scars of a million wars, and the life of a lost generation. She looked fragile and stiff. She needed help to walk and even to live. But she did what most of us will never do. She lived. She worked, she listened, and she saw. While her legs started to bend and she smiled at every sight she could see. While she was watching the world and her family become. Her daughter died.
Cancer swooped down, gave her hope, then took it all away, and then gave her hope again. She saw her daughter die. But she saw her die slowly. Painfully. Hard. She watched the family cry and smile empty smiles that would never be able to hide the emptiness inside. Hugs for a skeleton. Laughs for the dying. Tears for forever.
She went through the unthinkable. She outlived her daughter. And she cried for everyone. She couldn’t walk, she couldn’t see, she couldn’t take the pain that pulsed through everyone. And everyone cried to try to ease her pain and take a little bit of suffering. We all loved her. We all felt the blow. More tears fell harder that day then any rain will ever fall.
Her life went on. She gardened, and knitted. She loved people she didn’t understand. She knew no one but her family. She had won the horrid race of life. She stayed the longest. And her burden was visible on her shoulders. She soon had to leave the house she had lived in for almost one hundred years. Move to a place where she was safer. Somewhere where you could smell the grim reaper around the corner. And every face you met smiled in blissful denial. They made friends with each other and just as quick they watched them fall into that hole. Every time they saw one fall, they saw themselves in that dark certainty.
Some finally broke down, lived so long that they had to be moved to somewhere they could be helped. Somewhere quiet except for the occasional mad outburst, sane gibberish, or mad uproar that came from people waiting to die. She offered me one hundred dollars to take her back to her parent’s house. One hundred dollars to just pack her up and leave. She hated it there and all we did was ignore her. She was one of the most beautiful women I have ever seen.
My mother wept at her funeral. She cried and cried as others were saying, “it was time.” My mother couldn’t stand by herself. My mother wept for all of us. And we all wept for the beauty of our great mothers life. Something that cannot be kept in the boundaries of a hard leather cover or a frame made of wood. She had something that few achieve. She accomplished an artwork that she could never have seen. She wrote a book that no one could read. And she loved us all. She is smiling in her grave. And if she is not, then she should be.
