Evaleah's Wild Rose - A Short Story - Part 3

... I knew that I would always be welcome to Evaleah, but I feared her husband with the rough soot-stained hands.

Evaleah’s wild joy at finding that she was with child turned to a fearful despondency as the months left her weaker, paler, less able to see the years ahead. I found her one day curled beside the oak tree that towered over the cottage.

I sat beside her and pulled her up, picking the grass strands from her hair as she sobbed into my skirts. She cried until there seemed to be nothing left and then she looked up from my lap with eyes full of misery.

“Elise, I don’t think that I’ll live to see this baby grow.”

“What? Evaleah, what do you mean, you’re fine, you’re strong.”

I stroked her hair, but as I studied her I saw that she was weaker than I’d ever seen her, and thin beneath her loose, flowered cotton dress. But I attempted to raise her spirits anyway.

“A lot of women become afraid, Evaleah, at this strange new thing in their life, at carrying the child, at the birth…. You will be fine.”

She shook her head and gripped my hand tightly. “No, this feeling is different. It is something that I just know, I can’t explain it. It seems that each day that passes leaves me feeling farther away— as if I’m floating downstream and no matter how hard I paddle, I can’t get back.”

She lay her head back in my lap and watched the clouds pass overhead.

“What does Matthew say?”

Her eyes brimmed again, spilling over onto her white cheeks. “He becomes angry and says that I’ll be alright. He won’t talk about it at all.”

She knew that I became angry myself because she gripped my hand and added; “But it’s only because it frightens him, and it’s so, so hard for someone like him to admit they are afraid, Elise.”

What Evaleah said about slipping away became more evident with each month that followed. The last month before the birth she lay silently in the bedstead that Matthew had wrought from iron that he had pounded in the shed nearby. I had not been back in the bedroom of the cottage since their marriage, and one day when I visited to bring Evaleah soup, I heard her calling weakly from the back for me to come to her.

The small, mullioned windows were thrown open and the afternoon sun spilled onto the worn wood floor as I sat down beside her. For the end of February it was unseasonably warm and birds beyond the window sill sang in voices that made Evaleah smile as she watched the waving buds outside.

“It’s good to see you, Evaleah. I brought you some pastries and some soup that I just made this morning. There is enough for both you and Matthew. How are you today?”

I could see her summon strength to speak and I smoothed the blanket that was stretched over her swollen stomach. “Elise, the baby will be here soon.”

Evaleah’s eyes seemed transparent as they tried weakly to focus on mine. “I need to talk to you very seriously, Elise, please listen to what I have to say.”

I took her hand. “Of course, there’s no doubt that I would listen to anything you had to say. What is it?”

She smiled a smile that told me that she expected argument to whatever she had to tell me. But I squeezed her small, soft hand and waited.

“I want more than anything to see this baby grow up, to love it and to be with Matthew, but I know I can’t, it isn’t possible anymore.”

She weakly raised her hand to stop my eminent words. “Don’t argue with me now, Elise, just listen to me and, remember, when we were little, we promised to always be there for each other. I’ve already spoken to Matthew about this and he’s agreed and promised to do what I’ve asked him.”

She stared into my eyes so deeply that I tried to look away. All of her spare strength she seemed to place into that penetrating gaze.

My heart began to beat loudly and I found that my mouth had become dry.

“I want you to make a promise to me too. I want you to marry Matthew when I’m gone.”

(to be continued)

Evaleah's Wild Rose - A Short Story - Part 2

...What could I say?

Five years ago, at nineteen, I had suddenly found myself independent. My uncle died, leaving me his inheritance and I found that no more did I have to do the sewing and mending that had given me subsistence. My parents were gone, my brother at sea, and so it was just myself that kept our family’s cottage together. Before the inheritance, my brother sent whatever he could, which was slim on a sailor’s wages, but with my uncle’s benefits I became free. My freedom meant that if I chose, I need not belong to any man, work the long hours that had kept me from the sunlight before, or deny myself any small luxury that I desired. It was possible that if I invested well, I might travel, might live the life that I had dreamed of and described to Evaleah.

There were many in the village that thought it shameful for me to live alone, a young woman my age. But they soon forgot and I lived in peace. When suddenly one day Evaleah told me that she would be marrying, I trembled for her.

She had not chosen one of the mild, steady sons of the village, but Matthew Craigg, the lone blacksmith who had lived in a broken down shed at the end of the mill road, but who now would be moving in to her cottage. Where he had come from or who his family was, no one knew, and I didn’t like it.

“Evaleah…” I pleaded with her to wait, “Your parents are gone now, just as mine are. I know that you don’t want to be alone, I didn’t at first, but Evaleah— choose carefully!”

She sat very still in the rough wood chair at her hearth. Her eyes, as pale and blue as a clear morning, stared straight into mine and the soft golden locks that framed her face waved gently in the breeze that entered the doorway beside her.

“I couldn’t be more sure, Elise. I’ve loved him for a very long time. I met him four summers ago in the north wood just beyond Ivy Manor’s Pond. I was there hunting berries, and he passing through.” She smiled with remembrance. “We started to talk, somehow… He’s gruff in his own way, not the most sociable in his manners, but…he truly loves me.”

And so I stood beside her in the church. I dared not look past her to the tall, swarthy, muscular man who loomed on the other side of my frail, gentle friend. My heart ached and I wondered what her life was to be.

That next year I didn’t see much of Evaleah. She lived quietly as Mrs. Craigg and they didn’t invite friends to visit.

I knew that I would always be welcome to Evaleah, but I feared her husband with the rough soot-stained hands.

(to be continued)

Evaleah's Wild Rose - A Short Story - Part 1

I could have traced the path with my eyes closed in the darkest of nights, so often had I walked it. It was the way to Evaleah’s cottage.

It was a square, solid structure molded from nearby river stone and held together with beams hand-hewn by Evaleah’s father from the oaks that thickly overhung their long, narrow plot of land. My father was a furniture craftsman in town and I met Evaleah when I rode with him one day to pick up a choice load of oak lumber from Evaleah’s father. As little girls of the same age, we took to one another right away and became the closest of friends.

As we grew up, our families allowed us to be together as often as we liked. Invariably, we found ourselves in Evaleah’s garden. It was our favorite place. She and I would plant flowers and herbs, sail petals down the bordering stream, and talk about what our lives would be. Evaleah wanted a husband and dozens of bright, happy children around her skirts. I asked only for the distant seas, the dirty cobblestones of London— anywhere but our remote village that boasted a yearly fair, four dozen cottages, a few tiny shops and a broken down stone church.

In the garden I loved to grow herbs, pungent and rich; peppermint that bit your tongue and sweet parsley that we threw into the soup that simmered on the hearth. Evaleah’s unwavering favorite from the time we first met was the wild rose. She had a way with them and they grew like the stream that tumbled riotously beside us. She had the wayward vines creeping among the stones of the wall, along the front shutters of the house, everywhere where their roots could catch hold. They thrived on the touches she gave them, it seemed, and flourished.

But today I crossed the crashing waters of the river that edged the village and carried a violent dread in my heart for this particular visit to Evaleah’s more than any I had ever made. The bantering spring morning flung daffodil heads toward my passing skirts, and I breathed in the air that March winds seemed to pull from the moors beyond us and send cutting through the thin curtained windows of the cottages.

Overhead, to the west I could see slate gray thunderheads and I knew that it would rain today at Evaleah’s funeral.

Just yesterday I had taken my sister-friend’s newborn daughter and held her in my arms for the first time.

“Elise, remember…remember what I asked you to do…” Her pale blue eyes held me tightly in their wake. “Do it, Elise, for me…for her.”

What could I say?

(to be continued)

Loss

It’s hard to understand
where they go -
these people
we love.

With us one minute…
it seems…
holding hands
laughing
arguing
crying -
and then they are gone.

And we grieve.

This we do
in different ways.
We are angry
Or afraid.
We deny
or reluctantly accept.
We beg & plead
Or bargain.

But in the end,
we still miss
the lost one.
And our hearts
find themselves
searching.

As a child
crawls tearfully
to a parent -
holding up an injury -
so we come
to You.

We drench your lap
in tears
and try to lift
flowing eyes
up -
up to where the answers
become less important
than the comfort
of Your arms.

And we discover
that the comfort
is real,
and solid,
and warming,
and never ending.
Like a parent,
You don’t mind
the questions.
You graciously welcome
the interaction
whether we are wrongfully petulant
or blissfully thankful.

And as we walk on
without the lost one,
our healing
is realized in their own Heavenly healing
and we rejoice to remember
that our loved one
beholds Your face.
And we are
thankful
to simply
know
and be known.

Written in memory of Nancy Demus and Joshua Ragsdale on 6-30-10