TheBanyanTree: The Window

[R J Fernalld]

There is a window in my mind that opens in the darkness when the drugs spare
me a little clarity. It is always winter through this window, a snowy winter
lane bordered by sparse trees. I sometimes remember it, other times it seems
new and unfamiliar. Tonight the window blew open and brought with it a
deepening cold air upon which I was carried. Carried backward through my
years to a day that happened in my youth. I feel even now the tears that I
cannot wipe away turning to ice upon my wrinkled cheeks. Odd, but it is good
to feel anything these days.

The sound of the ringing silence as I stand in the lane is exhilarating!
Total silence that stuns the ears...the muffled sound of the snow falling
without care...without inhibition. Glorious silence...it is a gift I thought
I'd never again receive.

The window has also clothed me as I passed through it, for I appear to be
warm and the snow now is noiseless beneath my new leather bound feet. Beyond
the curve in the lane, just beyond the range of clear vision, I hear voices.
.young voices....My heart leaps! Will it be Davy and Ted, my buddies from
school? Will the window give me their faces? Oh! Davy! Ted! My school chums!
This must be my dying! This is surely God's gift to see my chums at play..
sledding upon Old Calder's Knoll!....I can feel the tears melting...

Oh...godammit....no...no...no

The artillery, the shouted orders, the soldiers pouring through the trees...

"Get those troops beyond the berm...run!"

Comes the slaughter, the screams of the dying, the bloody snow....nonononono
....

Dead friends, dead Germans, dead dreams of home, dead legs. The Bulge where
we all died.

Thank God....the window closes in the haze of drugs. The nurse hears my
choking screams and mercifully closes the window....goodbye dead Davy,
goodbye dead Ted.

I hope I die in springtime. 


copyright R J Fernalld 2003