Previous Challenge Entry (Level 1 – Beginner)
Topic: Gone Fishing (02/01/07)
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TITLE: The Scream | Previous Challenge Entry
By Cathy Le Feuvre
02/05/07 -
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A wave broke quietly on the soft sand and the stillness returned.
Curled up in pain, clutching her knees to her heart, the woman reached inside herself and breathed deeply; so deeply that her head began to fill with stars. Her eyes squeezed tight with pain, the inside of her mouth dry and bitter with bile, her body began to give way to the despair in the pit of her stomach and to rock slightly, back and forth, back and forth, back and forth.
“Don’t keep it inside!” someone helpful had suggested.
“Scream!” yet another had advised.
“But when, and how, and who to scream at?” her mind had wanted to shout while she nodded calmly, and thanked, and smiled politely while inside her heart had quietly shattered into pieces and the tears had stubbornly refused to flow.
“It’ll take time!”
“Time is the greatest healer!”
“Give yourself time to feel!”
But their lives carried on as normal. School buses ran to schedule. Husbands picked up briefcases and headed into the city on the morning trains as usual. Girls flicked and fussed over their curls, tucking their hair behind their ears. Children still played by the lakeside. Neighbours continued to put out the trash every morning. The man next door mowed his lawn each Saturday. Newsreaders on the television with somber faces unraveled the headlines of the day.
Didn’t they know that the world had changed? Weren’t they aware that it was no longer as it was? How could they not see that the very essence of life was fundamentally altered? How dare they carry on as if nothing was different?
“And where is God?”
In the blackness of her despair, where was His Voice?
Where had He been at that moment when the water had enveloped her son, dragging him down, filling his lungs? Where was His love when the limp body was pulled from the lake? Where was His compassion when they laid him lifeless on the beach?
“I’m just going fishing! I’ll be back before it’s dark!”
His last words. Her last memory the sight of his gangly, not-yet-grown figure running towards the lake, fishing rod in his right hand, a bucket of worms in the left.
She lifted her head from her knees and stared at the dark water. The water that had claimed him.
Her heart beat faster in her chest, blood pounded in her ears, pain and anger filled her throat.
An owl screeched, cutting the silence of the night, and her heart was suddenly granted the permission it had been seeking. It opened up to the darkness. From the depths of her soul the scream that had been buried for so long finally made its escape, beginning as a deep moan and finally unleashing itself into the heavens.
“Oh God! What are you DOING? What have you DONE? Why my son? Why MY son? WHY my son?”
Hadn’t she loved Him enough? Hadn’t she always tried to follow Him? Hardly forgotten to pray and read her Bible? Hadn’t she been a good mother, a good wife, a dutiful member of church?
So why was she being punished?
“He was young. He hadn’t had the chance to live! He was only just beginning!”
The anguish that had gnawed at her insides for weeks seemed to crush her heart again and at last tears began to flow, rocking her body back and forth like one demented, sobbing into the sand, shouting at the still spinning universe, at the One who made it all possible.
Weeping for her lost child, his lost potential, for the man he would never grow to be. A man any mother would be proud to call ‘Son’.
Then suddenly she heard it. Inside her head, inside her heart. She wasn’t sure.
“Sshhh, child. Be still!”
“I know the Feeling! My heart, too, is broken. I also lost a Son. I am with you. Just listen for me. Feel my breath on your splintered heart. We will survive this. Together.”
Gradually her sobs subsided. The pain was not gone. The hole was not covered over. But somehow the anger seemed lessened.
Not yet full understanding, but a sort of peace. A beginning.
Shimmering opal white in the moonlight, the water lay motionless in the night.
A wave broke quietly on the soft sand and the stillness returned.
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