Forever Beautiful: A Tale of Growth & Change.
Life was a traitor. And a deceiver. Three weeks ago life spread a silken road before me, full of promise, enticing and liberating. Since then, she’s turned her two-faced, silky self away, abandoning me in the suffocating arms of death, her immortal enemy. Hopes and dreams have scurried to the bottom of a deep hole somewhere I can’t see or reach, leaving me harnessing tears before this hungry, open earth waiting to consume my mother’s remains.
I wanna weep and wail like crazy!
I couldn’t mourn the way my shattered heart craved, no matter the impossible grief pressing against my back like boulders and bricks. I was the great granddaughter of Profit Coleman. As a descendant of one of the founders of Colemanville, conducting myself like a lady was essential to my heritage. Especially today as Mr. Saunders the town mortician motioned the pallbearers to gently lower my mother to her eternal resting place.
My eyes closed, my teeth clenched at the sound of the coffin’s descent.
There’d be no making a spectacle of myself, crawling into that open earth on hands and knees, cajoling my beautiful mother from that casket, begging her to please wake up and come back to us. Or reversing our roles and cradling her in my arms, forcing fresh breath into her chest and convincing her she was too young to lay in perpetual darkness. Death should not have come for my precious Iva Rae, a mother of three, four months shy of forty, who lived as if kindness was the cure for all the world’s ills. Yet death had–leaving me defenseless and pleading with the Almighty for a Lazarus–like miracle that was still missing.
Death should not have come for my precious Iva Rae, a mother of three, four months shy of forty, who lived as if kindness was the cure for all the world’s ills. Yet death had–leaving me defenseless and pleading with the Almighty for a Lazarus–like miracle that was still missing.
Dammit! Even the day refuses to cooperate.
The June sky was clear, the air sweet. From atop the cemetery’s emerald green, grassy knoll Copper Lake was visible, sparkling in the distance–a watery sanctuary of bountiful fish. Nearby honeysuckle and clusters of lavender perfumed the air beneath a sun shimmering as if heaven delighted in its newest resident.
Where were the annual summer rains that plummeted just before Juneteenth in such angry torrents they threatened Miss Greenie’s crops and overflowed the lake so badly Miss Dimple’s house threatened to float off? I hated storms, but craved that heavy, gray rain. Wanted Nature to mirror the sorrow pressing against my spine with such sharp ruthlessness I felt split in half. Instead, the cemetery’s undeniable serenity, Colemanville’s lush foliage framed our vast gathering as sweat sent a sticky trail down my black-clad back that was rounded with grief, while butterflies flitted airily not giving a damn that three Negro children were now nearly orphaned.
