Dead and Gone

June 21, 2055

  Of my memories, I can only think of one as I stare off the porch of my small, single-story home by the water-front in Morro Bay, California. I am sixty-eight years old now. A former senator, professor, soldier, mother of three children and grandmother of eight, lover and widower, and friend. I had done my best to live my life for all of my life. I fought for it. Looking back, I could say I lived a blessed life. Blessed with a good beginning and raised on great values by a very loving family. However, one memory stands out in my mind amidst them all. The one image that propelled me to live the most of my life, as fiercely as I ever could.

Present

  I stood on my tip-toes as I looked in the mirror. My thin, bright face beamed back at me with it’s shy, pearly white smile, it’s sun-darkened skin, and it’s bright blue eyes under long brown hair. My mother, Jessi Thompson, loved my eyes. She seemed to get slightly upset when I called her's black.

  “No one has black eyes, Anna. God doesn’t make people like that.” She had a way of talking to me that made me feel small and fidgety back then, though I was around ten years old. My mother told me once that she always wanted light eyes. Eyes as clear as bright water. Eyes that changed color like a mystic jewel.

  I had turned around satisfied that my face and teeth were clean enough and ran through the house to the living room where my father and mother were. My mother sat on the edge of the large couch with one of those puzzle books, while my father was stretched out, his head in my mothers lap with the remote control in his hand flipping through channels. They both turned in my direction when they saw me walk in. My mother looked right at my eyes, like usual, before she looked at me. She really did like my eyes. My father, Patrick, looked at me with the same blue eyes. Only they were slightly different. Filled with all the worlds strength. Papa could do anything. He was God’s right hand man.

  “Hey, critter face.” He teased with a broad smile. My mother’s smile widened, looking at me now with a love I always found warming in the end.

  “Ms. Brannen said that if it was alright with you, I could come over and visit her garden today.” I said sweetly, tentatively. A statement mixed with the hint of a question. My mothers eyes moved to my father’s and my father scratched his head.

  “Hmmm….I don’t now, baby. Last time I checked, you had a pretty shabby room.”

  “Oh, please, papa. I’ll clean it up as soon as I come back, I swear I will. You can even check after I’m done. It will be spotless.” My outburst had shocked me a little and I my cheeks reddened because of it, but I held firm and looked my father in the eye. The way I saw it, he would let me go. I knew he would. He had to. I was waiting for this ever since Wednesday.

  My father scratched his head some more, then shrugged his shoulders.

  “Well, if your mother says its okay to go out, then its okay with me.” My eyes shot to my mothers, beaming all the excitement and hope I felt, full force. My mothers own face brightened at the sight.

  “Be home before it starts to get dark, sweetheart. I don’t want to worry about you.”

  I wasn’t sure if I even let my mother finish before I darted over to kiss her and my father on the cheek, giving my mother a hug so big she was leaning over the arm of the chair.

  “Thank you, thank you, thank you. I’ll be home really quick.” I turned to go when I felt a foot shove me gently forward. I turned around, face red as a beet at my fathers grinning face. “Papa.” I giggled as I ran out the door. My papa was goofy, sometimes.

  The day was sunny and quiet just like a Sunday morning should be. I lived by the shore of the Atlantic Ocean in the town of Carrosfield, Virginia. Really, I lived on the very edge of town right off the beach. People at school said I was lucky my house didn’t get swept away in a storm. I had told my father this once and he just laughed,

  “There ain’t a wave in the ocean can stare down your old man, sweet-pea. Now go brush your teeth before they fall out.”

  I turned into the small shed on the side of the house and pulled out my bike from beside my fathers old pale-blue Ford pick-up. I loved that bike. I had gotten it on my eighth birthday two days after Easter. It was red and black and the basket was so pretty. I had grabbed my father by the neck and hung on as he rose to his full height yelling for my mother.

  “JESS, she’s gone insane. AHHHHH!!!” I giggled at the thought. My father was sooo stupid.

  About five miles down the beach, hidden by some of the trees and shrubs that grew along the shore out of reach from the waves, Ms. Brannen lived. She was one of my teachers in school. She taught reading and writing and had given me all sorts of books to read. Books she didn’t give the rest of the class.

  “Your such a wonderful student, Anna. Your quick, you really like to read and you pay special attention in class.” Ms. Brannen was pretty cool.

  Taking me aside, she would tell me all kinds of stories. Stories of places she has been. People she has met. She talked of the war and her loved ones. She talked of her children and her children’s children. I had even gone over her house many a time to help with her chores and her garden. Ms. Brannen had a big garden with all the sort of pretty flowers you would only see in magazines. She liked to grow all kinds of things.

  “It's life’s greatest gift to give life in turn, Anna. Life’s greatest gift.” she would always say.

  I rode down the shore looking at the waves rolling in and out calmly as the ocean stretched into the horizon. A lightly frothing grayish blue. Back then, I had seen brighter water on the TV. Water you could play in and splash around and the kids looked so cool doing it. I asked my papa about it and he said,

  “That water is young, sweet-pea. The Atlantic’s old as the mountains. Maybe older. It knows more and has seen more than any other ocean in the world. One day, when your ears are sharper and your eyes see deeper, it will whisper its secrets to you.”

  The road bent around the curved shape of the shore and I could see Ms. Brannen’s home in the distance. It was a taller house than mines. Old looking. Three floors instead of two. It had a bigger porch also, and sometimes I could find Ms. Brannen sitting out on it with her photo album in her lap either looking at it or out into the ocean. Ms. Brannen sometimes looked as if she were dreaming. Dreaming of something far, far away. When she was out there, she was usually looking at pictures. Hundreds of them. From when she was a baby till when she was as old as she was then. She had more pictures than I ever saw one person have. At least five large and heavy books. Pictures of all types of places and things. She was very proud of them. She would sit out on the porch with me sometimes and watch as she flipped through page after page- each picture having a bunch of writing next to and around it denoting the pictures meaning and context.

  “Life’s so full of memories, Anna. So many I have trouble remembering them all. I’ve had these pictures since I was a little girl. When pictures meant a little more than they do today with all this technology. Back then, a picture was special. Like the stones of Egypt, anything on them was destined to last through the ages.” Ms. Brannen also talked in a dreamy way, too.

  I pulled up by the worn wooden fence in front of Ms. Brannen's house and leaned my bike against it. I had long since saw that she wasn’t on the porch and went right up to the door and gave it three good knocks. I hadn’t been here for a while. My mother didn’t want me outside in the cool early spring air, but now summer was here. At school, on Wednesday, Ms. Brannen had told me to come by if I could. She had a very special surprise waiting for me in the garden. I had been excited ever since. After that, Ms. Brannen seemed to take especially good care to avoid me. She would shoot me a smile and then duck off to some other work around the school. I couldn’t wait to see what it was. Did she get a puppy? A bird? I loved animals. My father always said it was too early for one, though. I asked my mom, but my mom told me not to argue with my father. By the look of their faces, I had begun to think something bad happened in my fathers past.

  I heard Ms. Brannen in the back and my excitement mounted. I all but bounced in place. When the door opened, I beamed up at her with my biggest smile and Ms. Brannen returned one just as bright and cheerful.

  “Right-on-time, Anna.” She cooed as she opened the door wider. “Let me get my coat, and I’ll show you what I’ve been cooking up for you.” she said with a wink as she disappeared around the corner.

  This was so cool, I thought. The images of a brown little puppy skipping around through the garden made me tingle all over. I wondered if I could name it. Or keep it. I was grinning to myself when Ms. Brannen came back through the door with a brown sweater over her shoulders. Without a word, but a bright smile and eyes, Ms. Brannen walked off the porch and around to the back where her garden was surrounded by a green wire fence. She slid the gate latches up and walked through the small gate made of creeping vine arched over the entrance. The border of the fence was covered with the blues and whites of Summer Dunes. Further inside, they changed to the pinks and purples of Allium’s and Anemone’s. Along the left side of the wall hugging the rear wall of her house grew Cornflowers, Gardenia’s, and Daisies. A tall hedge of bushes formed a square about fifteen feet across in such a way I couldn’t see over them. They had a variety of blue and white flowers sticking out of them.

  I followed her over the path to the squares entrance and turned into the middle where I fell silent. My jaw dropped. I only looked and almost felt tears come to my eyes. Before me, surrounded along the hedge wall by alternating plots of tomato’s and cucumbers, stood a solid square of the brightest yellow flowers I ever saw. My memories flooded back to me instantly.

* * * * *

  It was my ninth birthday and I had been at home eating dinner on the living room floor. My mother and father rarely ate at the table. My mother always tried to get us to do it, but my father was usually the first to defect to the living-room and sit on the couch. I would pout till my mother threw up her hands and I would follow, with my plate, and sit on the floor, eating at my fathers feet. Sometimes he would stretch out on the floor and I would stretch out beside him. We had been watching The Lion King that day- a new movie my father got from the store for my birthday. He seemed to like cartoons just as much as I did. Even my mother came to sit on the floor, which she never did, on my other side. My father kept making snarling sounds and one time bit mother on the butt when she wasn’t looking and she yelped just like a dog and slapped him on the back. I was laughing so hard, my face turned red. My mother was laughing too and tickled me so hard I could barely breathe. My father grabbed my mom up in a bear hug and, lifting up her shirt from her stomach, blew a big fart into her side. I ran to her feet and tickled them and my mom howled for mercy through uncontrolled laughter. We were all having a great time when someone knocked on the door.

  My father let go of mom and went to the door and I could hear Ms. Brannen’s voice through the door. My father walked back into the living-room with Ms. Brannen behind him saying,

  “Look, baby. Ms Brannen came to see you.”

  “Hey Ms. Brannen.” I beamed as I ran up and hugged the woman’s legs. She was more a friend than she ever was a teacher. Ms. Brannen had been carrying a bag in her arm. She waved to her mother.

  “I just came by really quick to wish Anna happy birthday. I also brought a gift….”

  She fixed Anna with a twinkling look and from the paper bag she pulled out a single yellow flower and a small mirror the size of her hand. The yellow was so full and bright it caught my attention immediately. No one probably knew more than Ms. Brannen how much I loved the color yellow. Ms. Brannen walked over to me and placed the flower gently in my hair.

  “It’s called a goldenrod, dear. Now you’re a regular princess.” She held the mirror for me to look at, and I felt my face turn bright red.

  “Awwww baby, she looks so sweet. Look at her.” my mother cooed. I turned to my farther, and he only looked on with a silent, beaming expression of his own I never seen before. It looked like he was really proud of me. I couldn’t break his gaze. My father was speechless.

  “Do you like it?” asked Ms. Brannen. I couldn’t even answer right. I just ran to her and hugged her legs again as tight as I could.

  “Thank you, Ms. Brannen.” I sobbed. She bent low to hug me back.

  “If you like them so much, then I will make more for you. Enough to last forever.”

                                                                 

* * * * *

  I stared at the bright yellow flowers in amazement. I ran just like I did a year ago and hugged the woman’s legs till she rocked.

  “Careful, Anna, careful. I’m an old lady.” she laughed. “Go ahead. Take as many as you want. They are yours to have.”

  I beamed my sweetest face at her as I picked through the flowers for the best ones. Ms. Brannen watched silently as I gathered them up in my arms till I could hold no more.

  “Run on home, now, and put them in some water. They will last much longer that way.”

  I thought about hugging her, but I couldn’t let go of the flowers.

  “I’ll show my mom, Ms Brannen. She likes flowers too.” Ms Brannen only smiled.

  “All ladies like flowers, dear. Go on, now. Have fun.”

  With a big smile, I ran out the garden trailing flowers and I packed them into my basket. I took care to arrange them neatly so they looked prettiest as I rode with them. I was about to swing back on my seat when I turned back around. I would invite Ms. Brannen for dinner. Mother wouldn’t care. She always made extra food anyway, I figured. I turned back through the garden and called for Ms. Brannen. I rounded the corner by the tomato’s and turned into the center when my breath caught in my lungs again- this time a chill running straight through me. There, in the middle of the flowers, Ms. Brannen lay face down and silent. I didn’t know what to do. I felt like crying and running at the same time. I stood there in shock before I suddenly bolted into the house and ran to the kitchen looking for the phone Ms. Brannen kept by the wall. I called home and when my mother answered, my voice broke and I spilled my words over the phone through heavy crying and sobs. Catching the main words, my mothers voice took on a note of alarm as she yelled for my father. She then told me to sit tight and my father would be there in just a minute. I only nodded, then said okay when I realized my mother couldn’t see me.

  I let the phone hang, however, and went back into the garden and tentatively knelt by the woman’s side with my arm around her back rocking back and forth. I stayed there till I heard my father's car pull up and he came running into the garden. He gently eased my arm away from Ms. Brannen and buried my face in his chest. I broke down then, falling into him till the point where he picked me up and took me away to the front of the house.

  When the paramedics came, I couldn’t even look any of them in the eye.  I only stared at the road, at my bike leaning against the worn wooden fence. Those flowers, still bright and yellow, ever so softly now seemed to sing a long and silent song of death.

*  *  *  *  *

  My father, my mother, and I all attended that funeral. There were a few other teachers there, the principal, and some other people I wasn’t too familiar with as well. There were remarkably few people there and it made me very sad. She was so lively. I thought Ms. Brannen would have a thousand friends all over the world. People that would be sad when they knew she passed away. As I watched them lower her body into the ground, I realized that this was what was going to happen to me, someday. I looked on her remains and wondered when I die, will people remember me, or will I die alone?

  I look back on that day now, staring into the goldenrods that sat in the clear glass jar by my feet. The day continued to rain and in the distance, I heard the low rumble of thunder in the sky. I leaned back and let my mind roll over the face of my old teacher once more. My old friend. One of the best friends I ever had, now dead and gone, laying in the midst of the most beautiful flowers at the very heart of my memories.

word count: 3207