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Candles in the Rain

By Becky Melby

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CHAPTER ONE

Shawny


Humor shouldn’t be banned from death-bed vigils. But Chloe puckers when I quip, “It is appointed to man once to die. . .why in the world would I want to miss it?”

I see my pain mirrored in her eyes. She shakes her head, pads barefoot out of the room, full syringe in hand. She can’t understand my need. To feel, to process in these final on-earth hours.

In truth, this desire has more to do with beginnings than endings. For those blessed with warning, retracing seems a necessary part of a good death.
Having witnessed only a few, I suppose it’s egotistical to think I’m some kind of good-dying expert. But I was privileged to share in one of the best.
My husband Mose carried his out with true aplomb. In those last few moments I held his hand and breathed loud, the way he did for me the day we welcomed a child whose first and last breath was the same. His serenity, the stroke of his thumb against the back of my hand, made me forget for a space of breaths that his last would leave me without a single soul to call real family.

Somewhere, in one of the thousands of gently used books that have passed through my hands since the day I met Mose, I read about the freedom of embracing pain rather than fighting it. I’ve begun to master that approach, picturing this many-fingered blob, wrapping and winding its way up my spinal cord, as an ally—in spite of the fact that it desperately wants to be my enemy. You intend evil, but God has designed you for good.

While I can’t deny I would much prefer a gold chariot, this mass of multiplying cells that people name only in whispers is the vehicle I will ride to heaven. With aplomb, I hope.

I doze, then wake to Chloe, face still puckered, sitting in the rocking chair that belonged to her grandmother. A soft Ozark breeze teases the fluted edges of a lace curtain. A rag rug in muted blues conceals century-old scars on the wide plank floor. The old quilt that came with me to Chloe’s seems to belong.
Hair in a sloppy bun, eyes weary from my pain, Chloe picks at the frayed edges of a strawberry-stained bib apron. The apron doesn’t conceal the rounding left from the child she brought into the world three months ago. Her fifth.

We two—the dying and the nurturing—play out a scene the papered walls have witnessed many times. She has told me the stories of births and deaths and in-betweens going back seven generations to an Ozark pioneer and his bride. That man buried two wives and eight children. Their life-tales weave through semi-consciousness, making me feel I belong too. Part of the story.

I shut my eyes, giving her permission to break from her vigil to tend the children. Giving me freedom to past-ponder without the presence of her grief burden. The chair groans, the door closes, leaving a listening crack. I curl a bit tighter, putting as much distance between the blob and my thoughts as possible.

Tracing back to my first memory takes me to a splintery porch overlooking seventy acres of tobacco. I’m talking to an ear of corn. “Hi, I’m Shawny. I’m four and you’re just borned. I’m going to name you Dorothy.” No money for toys in 1953. I went through at least a dozen Dorothys in different stages of ripeness before the corn was cut that year. My tow-haired sisters.

For years, growing up an only child, I’d sensed someone missing. Not just the absence of siblings, but a particular loss. I was in my forties when my mother told me about her miscarriages. Girls, both of them.

Maybe God’s way of leaving empty spaces in my heart he’d planned to fill my first day of college.

I’d never considered writing my memoirs. It never seemed a life worth committing to paper. Until now. Since coming to Chloe’s several days ago—time has lost relevance—I’ve pictured my retracings swirling overhead. Word clouds, seeping into these old walls, drifting over the hills. Waiting. For anyone curious enough to listen, and open enough to not let the shock of my sin keep them from seeing my death as opportunity.

Stop and listen, Sunshine.

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