The Death Date

Prologue

Memories are a funny thing. Some cling to us like wet sand on our feet while others wash away into a forgotten sea. What forces are responsible for deciding which memories we remember and which ones we forget? Maybe it's emotion? If one is so strong, maybe it forces the memory to stay, because the feeling only makes sense with its recollection. The feel of coarse sand between your toes, the smell of salty ocean air, the sight of the glowing sun sinking into the horizon. When linked with emotion, each memory harbors the possibility of being imprinted.

I was five years old when both combined to create my earliest memory, a collection of moments carved into my being by a wave of fear riding in. It happened the day my aunt was in town. I was meeting her for the first time. Mom was buoyant with excitement when she greeted her sister, as they hadn't seen each other since my mother had been pregnant with me. When I first felt an electric humming coursing through my veins, I attributed it to her contagious happiness, but then I felt a foreboding prickle sweep up my arms and light each little hair on fire. My ears buzzed-- static and chaos-- and the air around me whirred and condensed. Then the buzzing stopped. Silence sliced through my surroundings with a sudden chill. I fixed my wide, oak eyes on the woman before me, blonde hair neatly parted, eyes whole and welcoming. This is when I heard words being whispered as if through a long pipe:

October tenth, two-thousand and four.

Maybe if what happened afterward hadn't occurred – along with the fear it evoked – the memory wouldn't have imprinted. The fiery, prickling charge and chilling air would have been washed away into that sea of forgetfulness. But that was not what happened.

The following day, my mom's buoyant expression had vanished and was replaced by something quite troubling: she looked like a wreck, almost as though she had been tossed about in a storm. I glanced towards the window to see if it was raining, but only sunshine spilled through. Confused by the contrast, I really looked at my mom again. The light from outside wasn't enough to brighten her dimmed eyes – all puffy and red – and I realized at once the storm had been inside her.

"Oh, Cordelia," she had sobbed, the spilling tears falling in streams down her face. "It's my sister – the woman you met yesterday. I know you just met – met her, and didn't know her well, but I..."

My tiny five-year-old shoulders compressed under the weight of my mom's shaking hands. Her broken words punctured something inside of me, but I didn't understand what she was so upset about.

"Oh, honey. She's gone – she d-died – in a car accident this morning." Her head dropped. "That's why I'm so sad. I'm just – just – so sad."

I knew the days of the week because we sang them in school. Yesterday had been October ninth, making today October tenth. As if the same electric energy returned, the hairs on my arms tingled once more, and I realized at once the date I had been given: the day my aunt would die.

My mom had started to sob profusely, tears slipping from her cheeks and tumbling to the charcoal tiled floor. The puddle left at my feet was another memory I would never forget, shimmering and heart wrenching. I didn't understand death then. It was simply when people vanished and left behind a trail of misery, and my mom was the soaking, sorrowful example. Looking at her gloomy expression, I quickly arrived at the understanding that death was something to fear.

And so I did. In the thirteen years that followed, I heard countless death dates, and each one felt like a toss of dirt into my own grave.

For over thirteen years, there was no end in sight to my fear of death dates.

xxx