Trepidation

October 10, 2017

I wrote this story for a writing contest.  

The goal:  Write a story about the photo below.  

Trepidation

She came for the Aurora Borealis’ nightly show at her boy’s bidding.  So far, the first two evenings had been a bust.  Snow had blown in and obscured the sky.  The blizzard hit just after she arrived.

He’d said, ‘You have to go see the ice castle, Mom.  Arctic Ice Castles, can you imagine?  Even your room is made of ice.’  Her Henri, her boy dreamed of wonderful things as she’d held him tight, squeezing him forever.  ‘The light is as white as heaven up north, and at night, it’s so cold it goes up in straight beams, Mom.’  He was beaming himself.  ‘And sometimes it even dances in rainbows.  I think I’d like to see that.’ 

The thought stuck.  So far it was just a damn cold disappointment.  And the Aurora Borealis, with its pure greens and blues hid their faces like her little boy had under a sheet as she tucked him in.

Bitter cold, Damn cold. 

Emilie zipped up her jacket with false hopes her shivering would stop.

What was it that Lucile had said?  You couldn’t know joy without grief.  A hollow answer for a counsellor.  Could Lucile even sound the depth of the ocean Emilie sank in?  It was fathomless.  So Emilie travelled to the place the ocean itself froze.

The last year had been grief enough.  Maybe it was the same with cold, you couldn’t feel warmth without being frost bitten first. 

Emilie couldn’t feel the rabbit fur lining her mitts as she tugged them on.  Cold was numbing.  Emilie embraced it.  Numbing.  Her shivering stopped.

Bitterness grew with ever deepening roots if a body let it.  A perennial plant that became harder to uproot the longer you let it.  So did icicles over the eaves.  Big ones that fell suddenly and could stab you in the heart when you walked out the door if you didn’t knock them down first. 

Sometimes all the options suck.  Even with treatment, things wouldn’t have been much different.  Leukemia still stole her boy, her Henri, over the summer.  Dr. Charbon had promised more time.  How appropriate his name meant coal, for he’d turned her dreams to ash.

Emilie left her room.  White and cold, still glowing in the lamp light behind her and before her.  Big glyphs lined the walls.  Hyberbolized waves on water rose along it the length of the corridor. Swirls carved by hands, lovely and artificial, stiff and frozen, reflecting the light outside.  A hint of what was yet to come.  A captured shadow in crystalline of what was. 

Outside lay wind carved snow and ice in graceful, transient forms cruelly shifting, eroding what lie from the moment’s breath before.  Light, storm and shadow.  Time was a beast untamed.  In this place, it had a voice.  Its breath stole the breath of men. 

            Emilie sucked back a draught.  It bit all the way down her windpipe into her lungs like breathing in dry ice, but it didn’t freeze her solid even though she felt like she was shattering.  Really, she’d been shattering for a long time, a slow fracture with every blood count.  With one tap of a hammer, she’d be in pieces. 

            Her guilt rode heavy like a stone resting on her heart, squeezing, pressing out blood with each beat.  What choice did she have?  She held her baby’s hand until the end.  With each tick of the clock, wishing for more time as the IV pumped its poisonous cure. 

Her Henri, a frozen moment in crystalline, life in a snowflake.  Intricate fragile perfection until it melts in one breath and slips away.

The ground she stood on crunched and shuddered as she walked. 

Emilie imagined glacial ice creaking and cracking as changing climate sent it on a hundred-year march to the sea.  Then in seconds, one shift too many sent big chunks plummeting into the sea, ties to solid ground severed instantly in the breach.

The gaping maw to the outside world waited before her.

            The chill went all the way to her bones.  Emilie’s breath came in puffs, small clouds of warmth.  One halting step at a time she moved forward.  Arctic wind harshly slapping her exposed face, threatening to devour the remaining heat.  Emilie imagined her blood cooling, arteries struggling.  The flow ebbing with time, a river under ice.  Her heart pounding in her ears, pushing congealing blood until it burst, all under the constant growl of the wind. 

As everything slowed in the absence of heat, so did the pounding of a wounded heart, ebbing tides solidified.  No tears reach the ground on the tundra. 

Eternity if there was such a thing, eternity might exist here in wind and ice. 

Emilie let go and stepped over the threshold of the tunnel.

            This time, the sun shone in bright brilliance, unhindered from descending to the ice below.  Light so bright it was unbearable to glimpse wide-eyed.  Emilie shielded her eyes with a mitted hand.  Wind swirled snow over the drifts.  The air itself shimmered with crystallized stars everywhere.  The very ice beneath her feet became alive with moans and cracks and groans under the weight and strain, yet remaining stoic in the harsh wind.  Emilie’s admiration grew as she turned around.  The castle shone in sunlight, its edges rounded and cloaked in snow.  Behind it and beyond, a clear sky.  Even a vacant void could give a sense of absolution.  Emilie could live.

            This moment couldn’t mend a heart wrenched in twain, but for a breath, peace covered wounds.  Grief is like a waltz.  Breathe, though it’s so cold it hurts.  Emilie just might see the Aurora Borealis tonight.  Even if she couldn’t, it would still be there.

Light and damn cold, empty, bitter cold, painful, but beautiful.  That was life.  She’d go with it, even though it might carry her along into the sea.

Grief can be a heavy topic.  When I saw this photo, I pictured a grieving woman moving into life without her child.  I can only imagine.  

I have come close to losing my son a few times because of health issues and I am grateful my son survived.  I have had my times I've almost felt the abyss of loss in front of me when my son was ill.  I have my faith, I believe in God, that death is not the end.  At the same time, it does not fill empty arms.  Mine were filled again when my baby was well enough I could touch him, I could hold him.  Since then, I have held him when he was weak, when he was well.  I have rushed him to the hospital for help and gave him an arm to lean on when walking hurt and held the handle of his bike so he could peddle and learn to ride his bike.  His life is different, my life is different, crossroads lead to new places, some beautiful and some painful.

Crossing the wilderness of living that's difficult at times.  Living with whatever loss has happened and surviving.  

I am a cancer survivor of 21 years.  I was 19.  One of the things I worried about while I was walking through my illness was what would happen to my parents should I die.  

I will admit though, it was harder to watch my son battle for life than walking through it myself.  My heart goes out to all those who have lost a child.  

This topic is so very difficult to write about.  All I can say is open arms.