ON THIS GROUND

Nora was comforted to know Indians had once danced on on the ground where her son had taken his last breath. She did not discover that until today, after wondering all through summer and fall if she had somehow imagined his death. Since that rainy evening she had slept on the sofa in the front room with the shades up, waiting to see him coming up the walkway or to hear him open the door.

When she arrived at the accident scene that night, she saw the chalked outline of his body. Only an hour before, at the hospital, his young face was at peace. She was given a blue plastic bag containing his sweatshirt, keys, cigarette lighter, wallet, phone, some change, and an arrowhead he always carried with him.

She reached for the sweatshirt, held it to her face, inhaled, and pulled it over her head. She walked the few steps to the chalked outline and lay down within it on the wet, leaf-strewn sidewalk.

In his last moments, did he suffer, think of me, call out, pray? Did he know he would die, hope he would live? Was he already unconscious when he was thrown from the car? 

These were questions Nora lived with and sometimes spoke out loud or wrote down over and over again on sleepless nights. She thought of all the times she had held him, comforted him when he was a boy. In the end he was alone.

This morning in late December, she awakens to the crisp stillness before a snow.  This is the day of winter solstice with lengthening days ahead. With that promise of light, it comes to her so clearly, she must to go to where the chalk outline has long faded, where no trace of shattered glass remains.

Only burning grief remains. Each day upon wakening it assails her, but on this morning she feels moved to give over to time and reason. He is not going to call; He is not going to walk past the window. He is not coming home.

Feeling an urgency, she dresses, pulls the shades down on the front windows and locks the door. It irritates her when the phone rings.

“Hi, Addie, what’s up?”

“Hey, Mom. Nothing much. How are you?”

“Good. I’m good, how about you?”

“I’m fine just checking in. They’re calling for snow today.”

  “Oh?” Nora looks out the window. “I see it’s flurrying already. You’ll be happy to know I’m going for a walk.”

It’s a revelation to Addie. Partly elated that her mother plans to do anything at all, other than wait, and partly concerned at the sudden change. “What, where? I mean that’s great, Mom, but the snow. How about if I come over and we walk together like we used to, or maybe we could just have coffee and walk tomorrow?”

“No, no, I’ll be fine. I have to go today. I’m leaving now for Three Island Cove," already sorry she has told Addie where she is headed. "See you tonight though, right?”

“No, I mean yes, you will see me tonight, but…Mom, wait. I’ll be right over. Don’t go without me. You shouldn't go by yourself.”

“Now, don’t worry. You’ve been telling me to get out and do something, and now I am. See you tonight.”

“I…I wanna go with…”

Nora hangs up, hoping Addie won’t show up at the cove. She knows it’s been hard for Addie too, and that maybe she has made it harder on her, but grief is a private matter, to be protected not shared—not even with her own daughter—her “favorite,” as Andrew used to say.

She enters Andrew’s darkened room, which remains as it was on the night he left and never returned: curtains drawn; an unmade bed; video games; on the floor; empty cigarette pack, and batteries on the bedside table. A job application and resume on his desk remind her that, in his slow, deliberate way, Andrew was ready to make changes in his life.

Each morning since his death, she calls into the room, “good morning,” and in the evening a “good night,” but not today. She goes for the blue bag at the foot of the bed, takes out the sweatshirt, holds it close to her once again, lifts it to her lips, then slips it on. She hurries to the hall closet for coat, hat and gloves and steps out into the cold air, emerging into what seems like a new world.

It’s just the old world I hardly recognize, where people have been going places and doing things, living their lives as usual. For her, there has been no usual, no place to go, nothing to do and no life to live—only her world of grief—vast and deep.

It’s so quiet, so white, so pure.

Her senses open on the deserted street, where holiday lights glimmer from houses and trees. Head down against the wind, she sees snowflakes sparkle, then fade on the sidewalk. She hears the sounds of icy branches stirring in the wind and her quickening breath, as it turns to frosty mist in front of her.  The pace of her lengthening stride uphill sets her heart pounding; a burning cold fills her lungs. 

  Disoriented by the opening of the forgotten world outside herself, she also begins to sense something inside —unwanted and unwelcome. Out of her inner landscape, there seem to be thought threads being cast backward in time, attaching to images, people, places and events—connecting her with her son. Her impulse is to turn around and head back to the familiar stasis of home, but her intuition and the intensity of the experience compels her: Keep going.

What is this feeling of contracting and expanding at the same time? These intimations of truths, both light and dark? Were those days and nights of ritual sorrow preparing the ground for all that flows from her now? Maybe, yes. Something is shifting. Why? To where? Threads of questions, regrets, love and loss stream out, weave together; emotion gushes in waves, leaving her  breathless— a deluge to drown in.

The widening circumference of memory touches many truths, exposes illusions, illuminates things forgotten, brings the yet unknown to the surface. Nora had not wanted a second child.

Was that really twenty years ago? I don’t know why, but when Addie was born, I felt normal, whole again. She brought me down to earth. A beautiful gift, taking away the darkness. Life was bearable again, redemption for past transgressions. With Andrew, I had to reach into myself…find strengths I didn’t know I have. Matt said I saw everything too dark or too light… deluded myself. I knew he was right, but couldn’t let him know that he knew me that well.

    She remembers that, as a baby Andrew had been content but less responsive to affection than was Addie. He didn't like to be held and was often ill. A dreamy, independent, willful and irritable child, he tried her patience. More than that, as he grew, she felt he was asking her to change in order to see who he was, to discover what he needed, which was hard—maybe impossible.

Matt said Andrew was my “project.” He wanted no part in it, wasn’t interested in my one-woman show. I shut him out—and everybody and everything else too.

Early on there had been signs that, while Andrew may not have been as “awake” as Addie, he had extraordinary insight about the essence and purpose of things. Nora felt he was a puzzle, a paradox and, in many ways, knew more about life than she did. His intuition and sensitive nature engendered a deep love in her, but an uneasy one. Something was asked in exchange. She tried to figure out what it was, but never had. She became convinced Andrew's inherent wisdom was meant to guide his parents to discover parts of themselves that were missing, to the self-knowledge they lacked. His father did not agree, insisting that nothing had to be done—except to live their lives.

I didn’t have to push Matt away like that….I shouldn't have. I miss him terribly. There, I’ve said it. He was right. I created my own Greek tragedy, got in my own way, and in Andrew's too. It wasn’t a good place to be, above all things like that. I felt Addie had lifted a burden, but I guess I just placed it on Andrew instead. He had to tolerate my mothering and smothering; suffer for Matt's leaving us; for my trying to be father and mother; for our move away from the only home he had ever known and loved. Did he carry that resentment to his death? And I never got the chance to….I failed him in every way.

“Oh, Andrew, can you forgive me?” she asks out loud.

By the time she reaches the place she had dreaded, but at which she longed to be, a perfect, almost visible imagination had formed. Perfect in that it is whole, woven in reverse from moments in time, expanding outward, encompassing the lives of a mother, a son, and a family—then, now and forever.

Looking up, she notices a sign post rising from the pavement—one of those placards noting some bit of history.

Why haven’t I seen this before? Was it always here?

SAMUEL DE CHAMPLAIN. Due east from here on

July 16, 1605, the Sieur de Monts sent Samuel de

Champlain ashore to parley with some Indians.

They danced for him and traced an outline map of

Massachusetts Bay.

Nora remains for some time gazing at the sign   with the new-found realization that long ago something extraordinary took place here. An exchange, a sharing, a trust, an encounter between the strangers who had arrived on a foreign shore and the Native Americans who danced to welcome them, and shared their knowledge of the land—a living knowledge inside of them.

She reaches down to touch the ground.

And it was here, too, where another soul had departed—Andrew, whom she had both striven to know and to become more like.

Has he united with the others from another time?

In an instant, she became the bare trees, the grey sky and the falling snow, a small but integral part within creation, which holds all that was, is and will be.

“Time,” Nora smiles, “another illusion. We are all here—then and now and tomorrow.”

       How long she remained in this reverie of her own creation, in the light of the knowledge the placard had shed, who can say?

A few snowflakes float down like feathers. Feeling the cold more than before, even though the wind has subsided, she turns, glances back, then begins walking quickly downhill.

There is Addie coming toward her, smiling and waving as she makes her way amid the lights twinkling from trees and houses along the still, quiet street.

*“SAMUEL DE CHAMPLAIN. Due east from here…” from the inscription on the historic marker at Whale Cove on South Street in Rockport, Massachusetts.