Summary:  A Cartwright son’s short life story.

Rated: K  WC 774

Mama Died Today

Mama died today. Or yesterday, maybe. I don’t know.

I don’t really understand the concept of time, though I’ve heard the word often enough the last few hours.

From my mother. “Let’s head home, little one. I do believe it’s time to let your father know about you. Yes, I’ll tell him tonight.”

From my father, after the horrible screams from the horse died away. “Hold on, darling. The doctor will be here in no time.”

From the doctor. “I’m so sorry, Ben. There just wasn’t time…”

And again from my father, over and over again, in a voice so wracked with rage and grief that the memory of it makes me shiver even now. “It wasn’t her time. For God’s sake, it was not her time!”

Time, for me, is meaningless. We are simply…here. Well, not exactly here, not in the way we were in those frighteningly cold moments just after the horse fell. We are drifting away, Mama and I, on our way somewhere else—someplace other than here— and we will be gone very soon, but we can’t quite let go. Not just yet. My father and brothers are hurting so terribly. Their pain is an invisible tether holding us near to them. So we stay close, so close that I am sure they would see us if they only looked.

But they don’t look. My brothers stand a few feet away from the new grave, shoulders hunched in misery against the light rain that has begun to fall. My biggest brother, wide face creased with grief, holds tight to the littlest one, wrapping his great arms about him as if to protect him from the cold and wet. My oldest brother, the one with the serious eyes, hesitantly approaches my father, who sits at the grave with his head bowed so low his hair brushes the tombstone.

“Pa, it’s time to get Little Joe home,” he says softly.

Time to get Little Joe home. Time.  There’s that word again.

Right now it doesn’t appear to have any meaning for my father, either. He doesn’t seem to hear anything that’s being said. He doesn’t see the wretched looks my two oldest brothers give one another. I know by watching him that he doesn’t even feel the cold rain. He just sits there, staring at the freshly turned earth at his feet.

I watch the little one shiver in the big one’s arms, and I suddenly wish I’d had the chance to play with him. We would’ve had great fun, he and I. Somehow, I know that.

And somehow Mama knows what I’m thinking. “Yes, you and Little Joe would have made quite a pair! But no matter. You’ll meet him soon enough,” she says, and smiles gently. “Hoss and Adam, too.”

“And…”  I remember the name my brothers use for our father. “…Pa?”

She nods, and her smile grows wistful. “And your pa. We’ll all be together sooner than you can imagine.”

I frown, studying the red-rimmed eyes of my older brothers and the tear stains covering my youngest brother’s cheeks.  The way my father seems…broken.

“If we’ll be together soon,” I say, “why are they so sad?”

Mama looks at my father. For just a brief instant she looks as sad as he does. She hesitates, and stretches a hand out toward him. But then she shakes her head, stops, and puts both arms around me instead. “They are sad because they don’t understand how short time really is. On earth, years can seem to last forever. They don’t know how quickly time truly passes.” She smiles at me. “But one day, sooner than they can imagine, they will know what we know. Come now. We must go. It is time.”

The big golden horse Mama loves so has been grazing quietly nearby, all evidence of his fall wiped clean, the pain and fear gone from his eyes. Mama catches his mane and, holding me close, climbs onto his sleek back. She puts her heels gently to his flanks, and slowly, we ride away. I lay my cheek against Mama’s soft neck, watching over her shoulder as my father and brothers disappear into the rainy haze.

Mama died today. So did I.

Time doesn’t matter to me, but I will be glad when we can see Pa again.

To tell him about me.

 

 

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