Under the Cover of Night

I pulled the blinds shut on my window thinking that it could block out more than just the sunlight, that it could somehow muffle the sound of the birds chirping outside, too. Their happiness felt like a slap in the face, a callous way of laughing at my misery. I rolled into a ball and yanked my tear-soaked pillow over my head. It did a better job of shutting out the cheeriness of the world, snuffing out all the light and letting me retreat into the near-silence of my muted thoughts.

Time had stood still for the past week and I only knew it was morning, that a new day had arrived, when the birds woke me with their trilling chatter. My eyes were swollen and raw, the type of puffiness that comes from too much crying and too much sleep. Small lines were carved into my face where it had been pressed down into the mattress all day and night. If I laid there quietly I could feel my pulse in the rounded hollows of each eye. A pitiful ache.

I didn’t know if I could ever get out of that bed, if I could throw my feet over the edge of it standing up on my flimsy little legs and walk out into the world again as if nothing had ever happened. People expected me to patch up the splintered pieces of my heart with their condolences and flowers and cards, arranging their pity into shapes that could somehow make me whole again. I was supposed to go back to work the following week and sit at my desk typing up meaningless emails that would probably never even be opened anyway. Pretending that when I left I wasn’t going home to a house that shouldn’t have been empty, that should have been filled with the chaos of life, of the living.

It felt like too much effort to go through the motions, to do all the things I was supposed to do. My time was better spent laying in bed trying not to listen to the songs of those obnoxious birds outside and wondering what could possibly make them so happy all the time.

A few more days passed and I finally got out of bed. My mother had called a dozen times, message after message lighting up the glossy screen of my phone. She had stopped by every afternoon, letting herself in the back door with her key, and spent an hour or two tidying up in the kitchen. Watering the vases of flowers I had left carelessly on the counter, filling them up even after the blooms had wilted and drooped, darkened petals littering the floor below with their sad passing. The first couple of days she had climbed the stairs up to my room with quiet timid steps, not sure if she was welcome. Not sure if she should come into my room and penetrate the high-built walls of my sorrow. I had kept my bedroom door locked and ignored her gentle knocking, listening silently as she’d left tray after tray of food along the baseboard next to the door.

Now, I stood up and stretched backward until my spine popped a few times. I knew that I should call her back and ease the worry in her mind, knew that I should thank her for everything she had done to help me. But I couldn’t. I couldn’t find a way to feel grateful or appreciative for anything yet.

Instead I felt angry, bitter. Like I’d been punished just for wanting what came so easily to everyone else.

In the kitchen, I rummaged around in the cupboards looking for the bag of coffee grounds I had stashed away months ago when I had given up caffeine. I opened the lid of the coffee maker and pulled out a crinkled and stained filter that had been left inside forgotten and unneeded. The smell of the coffee filled the room before the pot was even half full, a soft coil of steam rising up from it and dancing through the house.

I thought about going out into the yard, sitting on the porch swing, and drinking my coffee in the velvety sunlight of dusk. But even that seemed too bright and cheery. I wanted to be bathed in darkness, shrouded in the type of blackness that matched what was inside me. Nightfall was the only time that I could be awake, that I could set foot outside and not be blinded by the glowing reflection of my loss. I would just have to wait a few more hours, would have to busy myself a bit longer with the task of being idle.

When the last glints of daylight were finally gone, the sun hidden away casting its tepid rays on some other part of the world, I carried a little shoebox out into the night and stopped underneath a piney tree at the back of my property. There was a full moon in the sky that shone down on me with a yellowish tint, a soft beam that lit my path. I looked up into the branches of the tree searching for the little birds that had been taunting me with their laughter all week. But they were tucked away warmly, burrowed deeply down into their nests, tufts of fleecy feathers keeping them cozy.

Part way up the tree there was a barn owl staring back at me, a round white face that seemed to have been pushed flat by calm observation and reverie. Its head twitched gently from side to side like it could hear the caustic stillness of my broken heart. I was scared that if I moved too quickly it would come flying at me, shattering the silence of the night with its sad screeches and glaring talons.

I tiptoed closer to the base of the tree and turned to look back up at the owl when my head brushed through the lowest layer of branches sending a gentle tremor up the trunk. It didn’t move, didn’t even bat an eye.

I dug a hole with my bare hands - one that was just big enough for the shoebox - clawing through the fallen pine needles and dry dirt that covered the ground. My fingernails filled up with soil and the creases of my knuckles collected brownish filth in their wrinkly crevices. It would be another few days before I could finally wash my hands clean of that tint, digging the last of the dirt from underneath my nails later that week.

When the hole was done, when it sat ready and waiting, deep enough to hold the weight of my grief, I couldn’t put the box in it. I couldn’t bury it so coldly. So unceremoniously. A single tear snaked down the side of my nose and landed with a slosh on the lid. It felt like putting that box in the ground would kill me. That the permanence of planting it down into the earth, of covering it up with loose soil and dead leaves would take the last breaths right out of my chest. But I had to. There was no other way for me to move on. I peeled back the corners of the top to peek inside.

Two pink baby slippers.

Hand-knit with doily lace around the edges.

Never worn.

A life that would never live. I looked up to the branch where the barn owl sat still watching me with its knowing black eyes. I needed that witness, that quiet observance of my pain. I needed to know that I’d been seen like this: on my knees in the middle of the night. Digging a shallow grave that was sodden with my tears. I needed someone - or something - to see me at my worst so that I wouldn’t feel guilty about pretending to be better.

When I was finally done burying that shoebox, the owl blinked one time, it’s pitted eyes closing for a moment, and then it flew off soundlessly into the night.

It left me there beneath a towering tree of sleeping fowl and nestled chicks, looking over what was left of my baby that had never been.