by Leena Maria
Mom had made a delicious strawberry cake for coffee, and we discussed ordinary things while we ate. Kitty's death was not one of the subjects. After the pasta and cake everyone was so full, we practically rolled to the living room and almost dozed off on chairs and sofas. For a while Dad pretended to be reading a magazine, but his eyelids kept on drooping lower and lower, until his head bobbed to the side and he began to snore lightly, all cosy in his favorite armchair.
It was tempting to join my slumbering family, but I did not want to sleep, so I forced myself out of the depths of the comfortable armchair, and went to my room. Exercise, I thought. Work off this meal. My thought was to get the binoculars and go observe nature in the forest so that I could get some quiet time after what had turned out to be a demanding day. I reached for the binocular case on top of my bookshelf. The strap must have been jammed between two books and when I pulled a bit harder than I'd intended, one of them fell on my toes. That was the only explanation for it.
"Shit! Shit shitshit!" I hissed to myself and jumped on one leg holding the toes of the other. "Damn book!" Surprising how much something as relatively light as a book could hurt when it fell that far.
I heard a chuckle from the doorway. Grandma was standing there, leaning against the doorframe, laughing quietly.
"Well, excuse me if I don't share the joke. My toe feels as if it's broken!" I managed to get out.
"Sorry, dear. I wasn't laughing at your pain. I was laughing at Kitty."
"You... what?" I forgot my throbbing toes and stared at Grandma. I was still standing on one leg like a flamingo.
"You just met one of the ways they communicate with us."
"They?"
"The dead." She leaned on the doorframe. "The dearly departed, deceased, passed away, perished. You know."
I just started to say "Look, Grandma - " but didn't get any further.
"What are you talking about?" Mom shouted from the living room. She had the most acute hearing, if someone was talking about "suspect things". Much like me. It's like being in a room full of people, everyone talking at the same time. You can't tell what each individual says, but if they mention your name, you hear it immediately.
"Angels!" Grandma shouted over her shoulder. "Books about angels!"
There was no answer to that. Mom could not really object to angels, even though they were a metaphysical subject, therefore "suspect." Metaphysics was something she could not tolerate. But angels were mentioned at church, which she frequented. So even though she did not quite believe in angels, they were acceptable in her social circles.
"Well, maybe it's best we don't talk about these things in front of your mother. She feels very uncomfortable when anyone talks about death. She is so scared of it. No point in trying to change her opinion, until she is ready for it." Grandma's voice was low, as if we were conspiring together.
I wasn't sure what Grandma meant with the "until she is ready for it" part, and did not ask.
Yes, my grandmother had always been a bit strange, that was true. That was one of the reasons I found her so interesting. But we had never discussed dead people contacting us before. That was stranger that the average strangeness of Grandma.
"What do you mean I met with one of the ways 'they' communicate with us?" I couldn't help but add a sceptical edge to my voice. Grandma ignored it.
"Books are quite popular message deliverers. They drop them off shelves."
I shook my head.
"No, that's just coincidence... Has to be."
"Maybe, maybe not. But keep your eyes open. The world is full of stories about communication from the other side. Surely not all of those stories can be just imagination. Ever considered there might actually BE something on the other side? And that our loved ones might want to let us know they still exist? But we won't talk about this any more, if it makes you feel uncomfortable. Actually there's something I want to show you. How about going for a walk in the garden? I need to stretch myself a bit after that big meal."
She turned with the grace of a dancer and I followed her out of the house.
We walked past Mom's beautiful flowers, towards a little brook that ran behind the low hedge defining our garden.
"I have something for you." Grandma put her hand in her jeans pocket. She took something out that glistened pale green in the sunlight, and handed it to me.
A pendant of something that looked like jade.
"It is not jade, if that's what you are thinking," Grandma read my thoughts. "It's glass. But not just any glass - it's meteorite glass from the Western Desert of Egypt. Millions of years old."
The piece of glass was in the shape of a teardrop, but not cut or polished, it just seemed to be naturally teardrop-shaped. It was mounted in a golden fitting of the same shape. I saw indentations in the gold. Something was carved on the back of the necklace. I turned it in the light in order to see better.
A female figure, depicted from the side, the hand closest to me pointing down, the other hand straight forward, with wings attached to the underside of the arms. She had something on the top of her head that vaguely resembled a chair. In front of her were two fan-like objects, Her hair and her pose were...
"Egyptian," Grandma completed the sentence I was thinking. "It is very old. It has been passed down the female family line for at least centuries, always passing to the eldest daughter. It belongs to you."
"But why doesn't mother have it then?" I had to ask, as mother was Grandma's only child.
"Well, I thought that it's better to give it to someone who appreciates ancient Egypt. Your Mum would probably never wear it. After all it depicts the goddess Isis. Or Aset, as they called her in ancient times. And your Mum is rather strict about matters of faith."
Well, that was true. I just couldn't imagine Mom ever wearing an ancient goddess around her neck. She might even have thrown a necklace like that away, or had the gold melted down for a new ring.
"How old is this?" I wondered, turning the pendant so that the sun's rays hit it from different angles.
"Ancient, I think it may be even be thousands of years old... If you look at the work it doesn't seem modern. And so - well, perhaps you'd better keep it hidden, since we don't know its full history. And even if you told someone with an interest in it that it had been passed down for generations in your family, it might be difficult to explain to officialdom that it hadn't been stolen from some ancient tomb or something."
"Why are you giving this to me now?"
"I thought it might cheer you up after Kitty's death."
The sun reflected softly from inside the green glass. I looked at the carving in the gold again.
"What do these two fans mean?" I pointed to the fans with long handles in the space between the outstretched arms of the winged goddess. "I mean, they are fans, aren't they?"
"Yes, they are. They read shuet. It means shadow. It does not make much sense. The placement in front of Isis would suggest you read it 'the shadow of Isis'. It may be this came originally from a priestess who called herself that. We will probably never know. Shuet certainly was not a real name as far as we... I know. The ancient Egyptians believed the soul consisted of many parts, and shuet was the 'shadow self' if you will. No parent would have named their child Shuet."
For a fleeting moment I wondered who the "we" were, but did not ask. Probably some of Grandma's Bohemian friends.
The pendant felt surprisingly heavy in my hand, and it was as if it made me feel the pulse in my wrist beat much more strongly than before. I felt a slight tingling sensation, or so I thought. Perhaps it was just Grandma's story.
Suddenly I thought I saw some shadowy movement at the edge of the forest not far off. Grandma must have seen it too, because she turned to stare intently in the direction of the movement.
Nothing was moving there now, and after a while we walked back towards the house. When we came closer to the porch, we could hear my parents discussing something. Or rather, someone.
"Why has she turned
up now?" I heard Mom ask Dad in the living room. She was trying to keep her voice down.
"Why not?" Dad laughed so loudly that Mom shushed him.
Dad had always liked Grandma, just like I had. No talk about any difficult mother-in-law relationship there. It was as if they were chips off the same block. They understood each other's jokes and spent a long time chatting and laughing on the phone as well. Mom, on the other hand, almost never called her mother, and if Dad gave her the phone after talking to Grandma, she usually took it with a long sigh (which I am sure Grandma always heard), and her words always sounded awkward.
"She is so strange!" Mom complained. "We're just not on the same wavelength, never have been..."
"It's a good thing that she doesn't hold your differences against you then, eh? She's always cheerful, always the same," Dad chuckled. "Come on, Hun, you'll get along fine. If not, I'll keep her busy so she won't make you lose your cool. Besides, it will do Dana good. She needs cheering up. She has no close friends now that Kitty is gone. Maybe she'll get new friends in the fall, when school begins again, but right now she is pretty lonely."
Mom mumbled something under her breath.
I glanced at Grandma, wondering if she was upset by what was being said. She just grinned back at me and gave me a wink.
"You wouldn't believe we are from the same family, would you?" she whispered. "To tell you the truth, I sometimes find it hard to believe as well."
I couldn't help but grin back.
I had always wondered what my Mom really held against Grandma. She didn't hate her, but there always seemed to be something unspoken bubbling under the surface, as if Mom was somehow indebted to Grandma. I wondered if she had lent my parents some money in the past, to help them over a rough patch. That would explain it. Mom did not want to be indebted to anyone, about anything.
"Well, let's get inside before they wonder if we've disappeared," Grandma smiled, now digging in her jacket pockets - the contents of which never ceased to amaze me. "Anyone for a game of cards?" she asked with a loud voice and stepped on the porch, waving a worn packet of playing cards in the air.
CHAPTER FIVE
5. Kitty's Letter
That night I finally had the chance to read Kitty's letter. I took it from under my mattress where I had hidden it. Glancing at the door to make sure it was closed, I opened the envelope with a little knife, as quietly as possible. Then, taking a deep breath, still standing in the middle of my room, I began to read.
"Dana, If you read this, I am dead," the letter began. "Sheesh what a cliché of a sentence! Like something from an Agatha Christie novel, isn't it?"
After this, she had drawn a smile. I was horrified to read on, somehow. But I could not turn my eyes away from the paper.
"Look, I know this is going to sound crazy... In fact I cannot quite believe I am writing this. If I am wrong, you'll never know, and we'll see each other soon, and I'll know it was just my imagination. I'll collect the box, or maybe leave it and this letter where it is for us to find sometime in the future. We can then have a good laugh about it when we are old and grey... Oh, I don't know. Maybe I just better stop rambling and write what I sat down to write."
Curiously I turned the first page of the letter to see what was written on the reverse of it.
"You remember when we talked about ghosts and what will happen when we die? Well of course you do, and have probably been wondering about it now that I am... gone. Gone to wherever it is we go when we die.
"I need to tell you that I somehow know this is going to happen. I have had such vivid dreams lately where Darryl has come to meet me."
Darryl was her brother who had died of a brain tumour. Four children in Kitty's family, now two of them dead...
The memory of Kitty's parent's at the funeral flashed vividly into my mind's eye: ashen faces, humped shoulders, unable to speak when they lowered their flowers on her casket - I couldn't bear the word coffin... Little Ella standing behind them with round eyes, not understanding where her big sister had gone. And Andy, Kitty's big brother, holding Ella's hand with an expression somewhere between grief and rage.
I felt like choking, cleared my throat and continued reading.
"Darryl was so real, and I felt so totally happy that there I began to wonder whether I was getting closer to the veil between our life and... well, whatever you want to call the afterlife. I have read about such things happening. People who are about to die, feeling very happy and unafraid before it actually happens. And that someone from the other side comes to fetch them, someone they know and love. Darryl certainly fits that description."
Kitty had been interested in NDEs or near death experiences, and had read a lot about the subject on the net. But it was something she could discuss with no one but me. It was not a topic most teenagers at school would talk about - death was somewhere too far in the future for them, and older people seemed too scared. Kitty's loss had awakened her deep interest in the subject. She had tried discussing it with her parents, but they were churchgoers like my mother and thought it was dangerous for Kitty to investigate anything of that kind. That did not stop her, of course, and we had been talking about NDEs. I had also felt a bit queasy about it, and changed the subject as soon as it didn't feel impolite. Death wasn't my favorite subject either. Now I wish I had listened more to what she had to say.
I read on.
"And then, in my dreams, I began to see glimpses of what was likely going to happen to me. I had these dreams often, and they became more real, dream by dream. I saw a car, and I was looking at myself on the ground, floating above the scene, and I felt totally calm and happy. Yes, calm and happy, as if nothing was wrong in those dreams. I observed myself there on the roadside, probably dead, or at least dying, and there was nothing to it. Can you believe it? To see your own death and not feel fear?
"In some ways it was scary, I admit, but I could not feel afraid. It just felt the way things were meant to be. And you may call me crazy, but I felt like my... mission in life, for lack of a better word, would begin there. And Dana - it was all about you, whatever it was I was supposed to do with my life. Yes, I know. It sounds strange. I wonder about these dreams, and whether they are a warning to try to prevent this from happening. But how can I avoid all the cars in the world? Well, I can't. So I decided to live on, come what may. And, as you are reading this now, we know that death came.
"I want you to know I am not afraid of death. When I think of it, it feels like a bright light in my mind, and I feel Darryl there. How could I fear my own brother? If he is there, then all my other loved ones will be too. Grandma. Grandpa. Misty."
Misty had been her Shetland pony. Too small to ride, but she had been in the family for thirty years and her death had been a difficult thing for Kitty.
I reread her words about her mission in life, and that it involved me. A horrible thought came to my mind - had her strange dreams caused he to step in front of the car so it would not hit me- had they given her the illusion she was meant to protect me? But no, something did not match here...the car had swerved from the curve directly towards me, and Kitty had stepped sideways... but not in front of me - she had stepped away from me and the car, a basic reaction to avoid being hit.
To my eyes it had looked like the driver tried to hit Kitty on purpose, which I did not understand. She should have been able to avoid hitting Kitty, but did not. Instead she had swerved towards Kitty again, when Kitty tried to jump away. If the car had continued on its original course, it would not have hit her... nor me, having made the first evasive move.
For a second I had been staring straight at the driver, but for the life of me I don't remember seeing her face. It was as if there had been a shadow behind the wheel... A psychologist said that was caused by the shock, and I might remember it later. She had asked me to call when it did, if I needed help when I remembered her. But I doubted I'd ever call - why would I?
If the shrink was worried about my reaction to remembering the driver, she
need not be. I remembered the drunken lady very well from the moment she stumbled clumsily from the driver's seat, and wobbled out on her high heels, supporting herself against the car. And I hated her already. I did not need any shrink to tell me I should let my emotions out.
I could still see the dent in the hood and the shattered windscreen in my mind's eye, and hear the sickening thump in my ears. The memory made me gasp for air, and I had to sit on my bed and bend down with my head between my knees for a while. Slowly I relaxed, my lungs began to breathe normally again, and I managed to go on reading.
"Those dream discussions with Darryl felt very real. One night he showed me a big orange butterfly and said he would send it to me. It was wintertime, so I did not take this promise seriously. Do you know what happened the next day? You should. Remember that biology class, when Eva fell over backwards on her chair?"
I did. Eva had been tilting the back legs of her chair, something she often did. That day she rocked further and further back until eventually she managed to tip it right over, and she lay flat on her back, shrieking, much to the joy of the whole class. And during that same lesson, suddenly a big orange butterfly had flown into the classroom. Where it came from, no one knew, but in an instant it was there, and it flew right down onto Kitty's desk.
"Quiet everyone!" The teacher had calmed the class, which was in an uproar by then, because like all students we relished any unusual happening that gave us the chance to rock out a bit, and two such in one class was almost too much to hope for. Then she explained that some butterflies wake early in the spring, when the sun gets warm enough. Yes, even with snow outside. Ours was an old school, and probably the butterfly had hibernated in some crack in the wall, now warmed by the early spring sun.
