The Winter of Eden

Her grandmother used to say that relatives shouldn’t die in winter because they’re just too hard to bury. Every winter she vowed to live and every spring she promised to die, a commitment she renewed even after her lifespan spilled beyond its first century. As the crocuses awakened from their frosty slumber to daub smudges of lavender between the mossy tracts of sod and the twinkling patches of snow, her grandmother died. She left her life when it was practical to leave, ever mindful of the burden she never wanted to be.

So, it only seemed right that her father would die in the dead of winter 4 years later, when the drifts curled waist deep over waves of snow and the bitter frost recalled its predilection for turning bare to black. He was discovered by a postal worker entombed by a thick layer of ice, bent and contorted with a broken bottle of Jack Daniels throttled in his fist. Grace knew her father would never give his life to cancer and in some strange way she knew that the circumstances of his death must have seemed right to him, Jack died with Jack.

Grace often wondered how she would feel losing her father, she thought when the time actually came that the news might invoke a sudden rush of regret, but it didn’t. It seemed more like a to-do list fact which when she thought about it really was indicative of the kind of relationship they had. She only felt a sense regret over donating her parka to charity and for the weather reports coming out of west central, Minnesota.

She could still conjure the deep ache that seeped into her bones around January, and the sense of relief that came when the farm was nothing more than a smudge of color in her rearview mirror. For two decades she embraced Arizona’s dry desert weather, a constant that dissipated with her years. Grace found herself longing for the scent of pine trees, the smell of rain, emerald hues that spilled to blue, and yes, she even missed snow.

From the time she learned of her father’s illness the notion of her Grandmother’s farm passing to her burdened her mind, working its way back and forth like a primitive iron but when the time came her answer was clear. Grace smoothed her hand down the crisp white page of her journal summing her decision in soft, black loops that spilled across its linen-like surface:

Perhaps it is true to say that we are indigenous to the land we are born. I am of Minnesota’s earth and though I have grown and left my father’s home excited to embrace adventure and newness, it is in age that the familiar draws me. Summoned by her terrain, her familiar scent, color and shape, sky to star, earth to tree, mother to child. Her voice carried on the wind, her voice calling me home.

Except book 2 of The Eyes to See Grace: The Winter of Eden