The Phoenix (A true story)

         This story takes place about two decades ago, when I was a girl in the fourth grade. I haven't told anyone about this until now, not even my parents or my husband. But I think it's time I did.
         It starts in a car. Myself, my older brother, our grandfather, and our parents were en route to the hospital to visit our grandmother, Granny. She was ill with leukemia, and had been for some time. Perhaps it was my childish naivety, or because everyone else was very good at hiding how serious things were, but I had no concept that the doctors wouldn't make her well. She'd been hospitalized before, once from a hip broken in a fall, once from when a fiber pill shattered in her throat and a piece lodged in her lung. Both times, she'd come home. Now would be no different.
         It was night. My mother was going to stay overnight with her. I remember the tall, tan side of the main building as we pulled into the visitor's parking, and how suddenly I really didn't want to be there. I adored Granny. She was my mentor, confidante, best friend. We watched Price is Right together and played along. She taught me to crochet scarves and shirts, and how to sew. She'd held me when I got a splinter in my foot that my mother had to dig at to get out. But at that moment, I wanted to be as far from there as I could!
         I stayed quiet as we parked, only speaking up when we entered and I began to feel physically queasy. I don't know what my parents thought - overly tired, over-ate, extreme hunger, plea for attention - but they told me to sit tight during the visit. We went up to her room, my queasy tummy and all.
         Granny was always pretty to me. She never wore make-up to hide her age or dyed her short-cut, curly hair to conceal the silver. Although her face has faded somewhat in my mind, I always credit her with my desire to age naturally, and pray I do so with half the grace she did. I didn't think she looked any different then as she always did when she greeted me home from school. She gave me a hug, and was very sympathetic to my weakness, and after some conversing I spent the remainder of the visit in the green-padded hospital chair, half hanging over the armrest staring down at my mother's brown and tan purse. We said our good-byes some time later, and I felt fine by the time we got home.
         I awoke the next morning to both my parents entering my room. I don't know if it was that, or some sixth sense that told me the truth, but I knew what they were going to say before they said it: Granny was dead.
         "Oh."
         Heh, it's funny, in that sad kind of way. All I could say in response to the news was 'oh.' Not an 'oh' of shock, or in a tone of grief. Just a calm, flat of-course-that's-what-happened-I-knew-that-already kind of Oh.
         The next few days have been blurred by age. I remember telling teachers I wouldn't be in class that Thursday (heh, remember the day) for the funeral. I remember the dark brown of the church's walls, and my parents holding hands across me and crying so hard their hands shook. I remember the graveside service, and a woman in a pastel pink hat holding both my hands in hers and saying tearfully 'I'm so sorry," bringing a sheen of tears to my eyes for the first time.
         What I do recall clearly is the three-hour car ride home.
         I was in the back seat next to my mother. We were all rather somber, them from grief and I just never really talked much. I remember feeling sad but not sobbing or anything (that would come later). I was kind of slouching, looking out the window at the flat Texas landscape, when I saw it in the otherwise cloudless sky.
         On the far horizon there were some purple hills. And above that, a large puffy cloud formation that seemed to fill the sky. Towards the right side was a shape that I instantly recognized as a phoenix, for it greatly resembled the Phoenix in one of my favorite childhood oriental movies: much akin to a small crane in form with a long tail that equaled the length of the rest of it's body from beak-tip to tail-base, wings spread as if flying eternally upward.
         And, holding to its tail was a woman in a dress. She had long hair, and there were as little details about them as a child's clumsy drawing, but I instantly knew without a doubt that it was Granny being flown to Heaven.
         I watched it for a long time, but I didn't say anything to the others in the car about it. Now I have to wonder what would have happened if I had. But somehow I suppose I felt it was special, just for me. A final message from Granny.