heaven

Janie sat on the curb outside her house. Her mother had platted her hair today and she had said that Janie looked like a living angel. Janie did not feel like one. Her blue eyes were lowered and gazing remotely at the gravel before her. Her daddy had died a year before on this exact day. She still missed him, the ache in her chest had dulled but it had not left; she felt as if it never would.
Janie had been ten years old when it happened. It was not expected. No one had warned her. I had not been a special day, but Janie could remember every single meaningless detail of that Tuesday. Those details were etched into her heart like a scar that would never be removed. She remembered what she had eaten for breakfast, when she spilled some milk on the counter and when she wiped it with her sleeve. She remembered walking to school and seeing a single magpie and saluting it. She remembered that after that day she had never saluted a single magpie again.
It was Janie that had found her father. She saw him in the distance first. He was lying peacefully on the grass in their garden. She began to speed up and then broke into a run. This was not because she was worried for him; just because this was their usual ritual. She would run and jump and he would catch her in his arms and squeeze her tightly against his chest. That was a place that Janie felt most safe; most happy. On that Tuesday, her father did not react to her thudding footsteps on the path. He just lay there, so still. Janie’s face began to change then, when she had nearly reached him, she stopped abruptly; dead in her tracks. One of her braids slapped her in the face when she stopped, and then she knew. She just knew. Janie did not go up to him and grab him and scream and cry and try to take back the wistful soul that had left. He was gone, and with him a piece of her.
As Janie sat on the curb, thinking about her father, his scent, his smile, the way he made her mother laugh like no one could, she suddenly ripped out her braids. Her mother watched her from the porch. She knew her daughter, she let her be. Janie tried not to cry, and she didn’t. She felt as if all the tears in the world had left her blue eyes, enough tears to fill the ocean. When her grandmother came to visit, she would always say that Janie’s eyes were the colour of the deep blue sea. Janie had always loved that, she had felt almost profound when she was told this, but now she didn’t. She felt that she understood it. She knew that when god made those eyes, he made them for a reason, so that they could carry the weight of an entire ocean.
Her father had suffered from an aneurism. Janie hadn’t known what that was at the time. But she did know that he had not suffered any pain, his life was taken from him as fast as light can be taken from a bulb. The consolation in this was that no one was to blame, they could not blame themselves for something that had shown no signs; nothing had been neglected on their part. But one thing that they did not have was time. They didn’t have time to cry by his bedside, like you can do with cancer. You can mourn before they are even gone. You can tell them again and again how much they mean to you. Janie had never had this time, and she felt as if for the rest of her life that she would chase after it, in her dreams and in her mind. She never thought for a moment she would find it.