Upheaval

Waking out of a stupor Di's first coherent thought came.
'The Bomb. My God, it's The Bomb!' The rational part of her brain told her this was silly but her bed was shaking, her walls were shaking. It was like her home was trying to uproot from the foundation. Fear shot through her.  Her heart raced from the adrenaline pounding through her body.  'A gas explosion!' she thought.
'The house is going to collapse.' 
Thoughts struggled to form in her confused mind. She couldn't make sense of the shuddering world.
The mirror on her wall freed itself with a crash, scattering glass across the floor and onto her bed.
'Earthquake, it's an earthquake!'
The convulsing seemed to go on forever. Then suddenly, just like it had began, it was over. From nowhere, to nowhere. 
    Diana's body now shook.  She never had felt such terror before and the trauma and shock of the earth's agitation made her gasp for air.  She lay petrified in her  bed.  She stared around bedroom sparing a glance up at the ceiling, hoping it was not about to collapse. Her brick house was over eighty years old and she had no idea if it had been built to with stand an earthquake. There hadn't been a quake in this area for a century.
    Calming now, Di stared at the clock by her bed. Three  in the afternoon.  She'd slept half the day away, again.
'Fuck, I suck! What is wrong with me? This could have been my last day and I'm lying here in bed like a wet sack of sand.'
These negetive thoughts were nothing new for Di, she woke every day hating herself, hating her life.  She never felt like getting out of bed. 
'I used to be so active,' she moaned, 'up early working out, off to the daycare, I was full of life and now look at me, I'm such a loser'. 
She loved kids, and used to treasure each day spent drawing, doing puzzles and playing with clay.  Now she could never think of a reason to start another day.  They were all the same. Miserable.   
    She tried her best, set her alarm for eight but, when it went off in a sudden blare, jolting her from some disturbing dream, she turned it off and rolled over, working herself deeper beneath the covers.
'I should get up now, maybe get dressed, wash the dishes or something', she'd  think to herself, but it never happened.  Apathy struck a few seconds after the alarm. She'd close her eyes, drift back to sleep, not caring if she ever woke again.
    She knew she was  depressed, she'd been diagnosed over a year ago.  Medication had been prescribed, she took stess leave, went to therapy, but Di still found herself in a constant state of sadness and despair.  She wanted to feel better, she really did, but she always awoke with the feeling that life was futile, chaotic, ridiculous.  What was the point of living when anything you cared about in life could be snatched away, like her parents had been. No reason for it, no explanation, 
no way to justify what had happened.
    Still quivering, Di rolled over in bed.  She thought of how she was supposed to go see her therapist today. He was a good man, a decent man, caring, sensitive, and receptive.
'Forget about it.  I've just been through an earthquake, and there's glass everywhere.  I'm staying home.'
She knew she should go, try to work out her grief but even with his help she could not express her feelings and it all felt futile.  She did not have the energy, the strength. She was numb, her emotions as frozen as the ground in which her parents had been laid.
'If I ever start to cry, I'll never stop, I'll rip my eyes and throat out with tears and sobs, they will drown me, drag me down into madness.' 
She wished the world would  disappear, evaporate, just as her Mom and Dad had.
    Sitting up, Diane felt as if the earth continued to roil beneath her. Crawling out of bed, she aimlessly started to pick up the shards of glass. 
'Great, seven years bad luck.'
Walking into her kitchen she could see the china plates handed down through her family for generations, had fallen from the display case. Toppled olive oil, vinegar and spices jars pooled around the shards.  The smell was musky and pungent, making her nauseous.  She cursed furiously, sickened by the loss of the heirlooms and the mess she did not want to deal with.  She noticed a large crack running down the kitchen wall near the window.
'Hmmm, some serious damage done then,' she mused.
Then it came to her.  Her parents' graves!  Could the quake have shifted the earth beneath them?  Shifted the coffins, loosed their bodies from the ground?  She grew dizzy at the thought.
    Di pulled her coat on.  She stumbled downstairs and towards her car.  People stood gathered in small groups looking bewildered and frightened.    Driving slowly past downed branches and fallen power lines, she made her creeping way towards the old graveyard on the hill.  Shuddering all over with anxiety, she timidly crossed the rolling ground towards the ancient tree that marked her parents' place of rest.  She could see that some of the large tombstones were upturned or listing badly, and her unease grew as she closed the distance towards her parents markers.  Di collapsed on her knees in front of their graves. 


Granite plaques had been laid into the ground to mark where her Mother and Father lie together in eternity. All was quiet here, undisturbed, peaceful. No eternal slumbers had been disturbed. She slowly drew her fingers over the etched names and dates, Martha and John Barron, 56 years old, killed by the drunk driver who already had a suspended license but was driving anyway,  Her memory brought her back to that horrific night that destroyed the peace of mind that had once been hers. She'd been invited out to the barbecue along with her parents but instead chose to stay at home and read. Then, the police, the explanations, the  funeral, the sympathy.  How she hated it all, how she hated them all.


Not since the day of the burial had Di returned to this spot.  But she remembered the tree.  The entire time the priest droned on about life and death and heaven and God, she had stared up into the gnarled branches of the old tree and wished that everything would just vanish.  Then, as they shoveled the first clumps of dirt into the open grave, Di did vanish.  She felt herself going, escaping, turning away from life, life that only bore pain. 

From that time, Di had rarely been outside her apartment door.  She'd shunned the world and the people in it, thinking there was nothing left there for her, only pain.  Now, finding herself back in the natural world she couldn't help but notice how soft the grass was under her knees, how good the wind blowing gently across her face felt.  She thought again of the frightened faces of her neighbors and felt a strange kinship towards them.  She almost wished she could have stopped to see if anyone needed help.  Maybe when she got back home, she'd talk to some of them, she how they were.


Now, kneeling over her parent's plot, Di's attention returned to the tree looming above her.  The tree was dark and craggy, faintly frightening, like the face of  an ancient god.  Its twisted branches reached far up into the sky in the age old sign of supplication.  An eerie light had fallen over the clouded hills upon which the graveyard stood and limed the boughs of the proud tree.  She gazed up into the limbs and her gut churned in anguish.

'Why her?  Why had her life been torn from her, ripped to shreds?  Had she done something wrong?  Was there something she should have done, something that would have prevented her parents from dying? Maybe, if she had just gone with them, maybe...' 

No, it was no use, she was alive, her parents were dead.  And what was the point of these self recriminations now?  Would her parents want to see her so hurt, so alone.  She began to realize she had a duty, a duty to the dead who'd loved her so much.

'And the tree, the tree, the tree, it's OK, it's still here,' Di chanted softly, a mantra.

The  tree was leaning heavily, heaved to the left by the land's gyrations. Slightly uprooted, slantingly akimbo, it remained very much standing, clinging fast to the earth that nurtured its very soul, upright, holding on.

Di felt her chest and throat tighten, felt her stomach clench. The branches of the tree began to blur and Di began to cry.

Daily, Di dealt with these thoughts.  Her mind and body cringed from having to deal with anything in life again.
Forgetting her own misery and self loathing in the immediacy of what she needed to do,