Fireflies
People disappear when they die. I suppose that is how it has always been. The same way that the rollie-pollie bugs captured on childhood escapades never lasted long in Styrofoam cups, and fireflies seemed to always burn out when kept in glass jars. They entranced you when they were here, but it was never a surprise to find them cold and still by morning. Things live and things die. This cyclical circle of life and death is unending, unchanging, and inevitable. Everything has it's time, everything has it's season, no one is exempt. The sun rises and sets, the moon passes from full to nothingness, seasons arch and fade into each other; all of these cycles continue, and we build our lives around them.
A gust of bitter wind shocked me from my thoughts. My weary eyes shifting back into focus, my body becoming reacquainted with the old rocking chair in which I slouched. It seemed that the storm I had been watching for the past while had already rolled onward without my knowing. The pale beach stretching across my line of sight sat limp and heavy from the rain, the vast ocean nipping at its heels with each pulse of the tide. The once pristine, vibrant shoreline endured much through the course of the storm, the gleam pounded out from its sandy skin. A humorless laughter bubbled within me at the sympathetic understanding I felt for the beach. In days gone by I would have reveled with pleasure at such a thick irony. Moments like this, I believed in that past life, were God's way of reminding us not to take ourselves too seriously, after all, we live on borrowed time. Without hesitation I would have thrown my head back and let laughter erupt from the depth of my being. I now rendered such simplicity of thought unacceptable, knowing that kind of naive freedom came at a hefty price. Only a child could look at the world in such a trusting manner.
My throat tightened around the sob that had begun to form. I swallowed it down and blinked back the tears damed behind my composure. I had come here in search of peace, to escape the sorrows eroding the remainder of my loved ones. My husband, parents, and friends; they had all stayed behind, making sure all our affairs were in order. I wished I could have stayed, wished I had the strength to grieve alongside them. But memories lurked everywhere in that town, in that house. My parents house, where she took her first steps. The park, where we had caught fireflies every summer. The elementary school, where she had learned about astronauts and vowed to become one someday. The hospital, where I held her in her first moments, and her last. I could not even weep to, let alone comfort, my beloved husband; for she shone through his eyes. I fled to this foreign, rickety beach cottage not in searching but in retreat. It seemed, however, my attempt at separating myself from reminders of her was made in vain; the storm had followed me even here.
Her tiny body shook with unchecked fear in my arms, her angelic face buried into my chest. Thunder clapped, the wind howled; the tree we huddled beneath despite it's colossal girth failed to fully protect us from the sheets upon sheets of rain. The summer storm had in it's notorious fashion struck without warning, catching us in the middle of one of our firefly hunts. She screeched as the lightening flashed, brightening the dark sky. She clutched a dimly glowing jar between her adolescent hand, a treasure that would glow by her bedside for the rest of her short life. I stroked her golden curls, ignorant to the rapidly shrinking window of time in which I would be able to hold her, to feel her so full of life.
The wind whipped again, the icy sensation pulling me back into the present. I retreated back into the house and ambled my way to the bedroom. Heaping my tired frame onto the bed, I reached for my briefcase. I did not truly believe I could be distracted by something as trivial as work, but despite myself I waded through the throngs of paperwork.
A yellow piece of construction paper sat within the papers, out of place amongst the identical forms and files. With unsure hands I pull the paper out and set it on my lap. Scribbled in blue crayon, crooked words covered the page. The heading was addressed the way her teacher had instructed.
“To Mommy. From Hope.” I slowly let my eyes fall to the rest of the words adorning this precious paper.
“If I could be anything in the world
I'd be a firefly.
I'd twinkle brighter than the stars
up in the big black sky.
But don't worry Mom, don't be scared
I won't fly very far.
I'll always be your firefly
you don't even need a jar.”
The dam broke, and the tears fell. Somehow though, in the midst of my anguish, as I clutched that paper to my chest, I could feel her. For the first time since her passing, I could feel Hope. My little firefly did not need to be contained by this world for her to stay with me. She was here; in me, in her father, in the lightening, and in the lightening bugs.
The cyclical circle of life and death is unending, unchanging, and inevitable. Everything has it's time, everything has it's season, no one is exempt. But people do not disappear when they die. Hope bares no flesh nor blood, I cannot hold her in my arms. Yet she holds fast, alive in those who look for her. She is the silver lining to even the darkest storm clouds, and she is my jar of light when the rest of the world falls dark.
Fly free, my little firefly; live on, my Hope.
