The Lost Souls' Reunion (36 page)

I held my arms out to Simon and he came into them and we cried joined tears for the one we had lost and when we could cry no more, we laughed for the times he had given us. When we could laugh no more we slept a sleep his spirit brought to us and it was one without the dreams of his loss.

And when we woke we were ready to live without him.

44 ∼ The Years Go By

T
HE CARD OF
the Leave Takers falls again.

You will go and I am left with the last of the night in which a new moon rose and heard a story and watched us all through a thin, narrow slit, a cautious eye that said all stories must come to an end. The years in which Simon grew went too quickly. I want to linger on them and make your time with me last but I know that you are fading, all of you, fading for me and from me. The years go by, Simon grown as tall as the man he chose to father him, tall and away from me.

My fire grows weak and the daylight stretches her long grey fingers and curls them round my throat and stems the talk that I would use to keep all that I love in this room and keep night with us always and day forgotten.

I could begin the story again. And I would tell it in the company of no one.

My loved ones prepare to leave. Carmel and Eddie shift on the couch that was theirs, Thomas stirs in the chair, my baby in his crib wails, Myrna stands.

*   *   *

The story is at an end. My throat dry from the telling. The moon has gone and may well have grown from new to full in one night. All lifetimes told. Day cannot be prevented.

How will you leave me? One by one.

I cannot watch it. I study the card of the Leave Takers and close my eyes, feel your going, each one a whisper down my spine. I am left only with Thomas. When I open my eyes, he is still here.

He takes my hand. The touch, all its warmth and the warmth of our time brought back to me. The opening of arms and I go into them. Then the words he once said to Simon: ‘I am not far away.'

I leave the room of telling, the cards in my hands, and step out into the early morning. I watch the grey stir of a heron across the sky.

Myrna's words come to me through the thin film between life and death, ‘Each beginning means an end, each end a beginning. All the dead and gone are contained in you.'

The lost souls have left the way they arrived. From my heart they came and into it they travel again. I have no need to pass through doors to visit with them. Their company is to be had. I will have the cards in my hands and eyes. Old friends for new times.

New times are upon us, and my heart, though sore, listens. The cards are my constant. I learned not to be afraid of them and always to respect their truth.

I learned truth in these years and will learn more from those that follow.

The years go by, people pass with them. The crib rocks, empty and ready to be filled again – we are all that is left of the lost souls who have come this way and gone. Life has all the answers and death takes them away.

End and Beginning

 

THE LOST SOULS' REUNION
. Copyright © 2002 by Suzanne Power. Illustrations copyright © 2002 by Sandra Orme. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews. For information, address St. Martin's Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010.

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First published in Great Britain by Picador, an imprint of Pan Macmillan Ltd

First U.S. Edition: July 2003

eISBN 9781466872592

First eBook edition: April 2014