Death is a funny thing, when you think about it. One day the person is there, and the next day, they’re not. It’s a hard concept to grasp for anyone. It’s odd, bittersweet, and a wake up call. It’s even more peculiar when the death is unexpected.
I remember the first day I saw Clarabelle. I was 13 and was riding my skateboard around the park. She was on the swing set in a white flowy dress that made her look like she was floating. Her frizzy curly blonde hair was whipping back forth and adorned with flowers that you could find scattered around the park. To me, she looked like an angel, giggling to herself as if she was in her own world. She would hum to herself while going up to reach the sky and then giggle on her way down. Her mind was her own private wonderland. An escape. It was her paradise she could run away to. It was her heaven, but it was her also her hell.
I looked back down at the casket. She still looked beautiful. Her blonde hair was in her natural curly-frizzy state and fanned around her like a halo. Whoever did her makeup did a good job of making it look like she was still alive. It was almost a tease. She looked like she did last week when she had fallen asleep on the sofa in my room; except more peaceful and not moving. My heart ached in hope that she would suddenly open her eyes and give me that signature smile and giggle then tell me about the fascinating dream she just had.
But none of that would ever happen again. I would never be able to see her smile, or hear or giggle, or even feel the wetness of her tears when they would stain my shirt as she cried of my shoulder; which she did commonly. She was gone, and there was nothing I could do about it. I failed her, I really did. I tried to protect her from everything, from the world. But the only thing I couldn’t protect her from was herself.
She was so full of life, so free. We use to go out to the grassy field behind the park and sit underneath a willow tree that looked out of place. We would just sit underneath the tree and talk. We would talk about everything that ranged from things as simple as what we ate for breakfast to what we thought would happen after we died. Clarabelle believed that we each had our own individual heaven, and whatever was in it reflected how we acted and what we believed when we were on earth. She said that her heaven was similar to the large grassy field that we were sitting in but you couldn’t hear anything besides the wind and the grass blowing in the trees; there were no sirens or cars honking or people yelling. It was peaceful.
One day we were sitting underneath the willow tree together. She had her head in my lap and was talking about her heaven again. I looked down and asked her if I was allowed to be in her heaven with her and she just looked up and me, smiled and said “I’ll let you know when I get there”. And then she sighed, put her head back in my lap, started humming to herself, and continued to look up at the sky with a knowing smile on her face.
