My mother just called - her voice hushed and breaking. I wanted to blame our cell service, the storm or technology ineptitude. But I knew, it was the beast that follows the reaper, the one that brings pain to those left behind. A mother should not outlive her children. It is a cruel burden I wish on no one.
Matt brought Nyx home tonight. He placed her high in the their closet. Nyx’s closest female friend Carrie wants to take her to the place they met. I want to take her back to shark fin beach in Santa Cruz…
...and to Narnia where we played as children.
The children will shampoo and brush out the length of of their mother’s hair taken before the flame took her form down to ash.
When I was nine I read my first book in the Chronicles of Narnia while lying in the spare room of the single wide we were living in at the time - The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe. I cried when Aslan was killed and yelled out in joy when he came back to life. I would over the next few years read the rest - all but one that is - that one would remain unread - until now.
Growing up, Narnia became our childhood mythology - we would head out towards Ashburnham, into the deep woods behind Ridgewood and around Dunns Pond - each area a different part of our Narnia.
Our mother would ask - where are you going? when we would say we were going outside to play - "Narnia !" we’d exclaim and she would say “be home by 6” and asked no other questions.
It was not until perhaps a year or so ago did Nyx ask her if she even knew what Narnia was - and to both of our utter shock, she did not even know of the books, let alone where we actually went. In a way, that was perfectly aligned with the stories CS Lewis wrote, the adults rarely knew of this other world. And it was of course a different time.
So all these years I have avoided reading The Last Battle because I knew it was the end of Narnia (not just the series, but the land). I never wanted to face that. I wanted Narnia to be forever.
The day Nyx passed, I took the book off the shelf and started to read.
Today the king and the children learned that the castles were ruined, the talking animals silenced, that Narnia was destroyed.
...and I may never stop crying
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