Editor's Note:
This is the second of three installments of “The Magic Rain,” a series of short stories by the author.
Several weeks had passed in which time was a whirlwind and I was a hapless kite caught in the invisible currents. My parents, family and friends had all seemed to move forward while I remained.
My parents talked about my grandmother frequently in the first two weeks of her absence, then conversation began to dwindle. It wasn’t that they forgot her. They loved her too dearly, everyone knew. There’s no use in shackling yourself to the chains of the dead. You’ll only wind up chaining someone else’s spirit, not to mention your own. My parents knew the dead found their place when they left, and there was no sense in holding onto the ashes of memories. So they stopped talking about her and once again became involved in their jobs and raising me.
I too became renewed and vibrant after the passage of time as I found the ability to move on, but it was difficult for a while. Every night I thought or dreamed about her memory and sometimes woke up crying because I missed her.
I hated the phrases “just give it time” or “everything heals with time.” They were unfeeling statements because time does nothing other than steadily move forward. It’s the soundtrack to a movie, weaving in and out of the background, affecting our moods, warning us of things to come and erasing the memory of things behind. What a person really needs to move on are reserve and maturity, and yes, those take time. But time is not the mechanism of change, only the indicator.
Two months passed and it never stopped raining. It seemed daily my life was consumed by the rain. The school week was kind of miserable because every morning I had to wait for the bus in the rain, walk through the rain from the bus and then do the opposite in the afternoon. I had my umbrella and boots, but this wasn’t the kind of rain that just fell straight down. No, it would come at you from the side, then from an angle and then from the other side. Recess was ruined every day. We still played in the gymnasium, but there was a deeper quality to playing outside, almost like it rejuvenated not only physical attributes, but also attributes of the soul.
I looked forward to going home and spending the dreary afternoons in my room nearly all alone. I was nearly alone because there was one hint of sunshine amongst the shadows: my pet rat, Remy. She was small and white, a cotton ball that breathed and moved and had a tail that most people thought was disgusting but I didn’t think so. I took good care of her and she was a caring and loving pet in return.
I’d rush in from the bus and throw my wet things on the floor by the doorway, then I’d ramble up the stairs to my room, toss my backpack by my desk and go over to her cage. I’d take her out and kiss her little head and she’d nuzzle right back before I set her loose in my room. She ran around my room each time like she had never been there before, every corner a promise of something new, a momentary adventure.
This was my afternoon, repeated every day for two months until it wasn’t.
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