A Heart Full of Lightning Bugs

I stood near the dark wooden casket, waiting for the viewing to start. Staring down at dad, dressed in the dark three-piece suit he hated, he looked as empty and lifeless as I felt. As empty and lifeless as this depressing room, with its faded wallpaper and its cloying smell of flowers and chemicals. Dad had been so full of life, then struck down so swiftly by the heart attack. A widow maker they called it, but mom had passed last year. Perhaps they should call it an orphan maker, since now there was an empty void where my parents had once stood. A void as empty as my heart. I had not wept when mom died after her long lingering illness, perhaps since she had already been gone for so long, her eyes empty for years. But dad was taken so quickly that I only felt shock; surely the tears will come later, when it all truly sinks in.

“Hey cuz,” someone said behind me. Of course, my cousin Ruth had come early. Just to annoy me perhaps, since we hadn’t gotten along since childhood, or ever actually.

I turned to greet her. With her short, business-like bleached blonde hair with gray roots, and her bright, inappropriately pink pantsuit, she looked more like a caricature of a real estate agent. She was probably here as a scavenger, to see if we were selling dad’s house yet. She seemed much shorter than I remembered, though she had loomed over me as a child.

“Hi, Ruthie, how are you?”

“I’m doing great…but I’m so sorry for your loss. “Ruthie,” haven’t heard that one in a long time. Anyone still call you little Dickie?”

“No,” I said with a grimace, “That was only ever you. Everyone else called me Richard.”

“Well, I’m glad we share that treasured memory. And my thoughts and prayers are with you and your family.”

“Well, I certainly appreciate that, and I’m sure Dad would also.”

“Yes…well…speaking of treasured memories,” her smile tightened as she glanced down at dad, “You never really told me who was behind the lightning bug incident.”

“The incident, is that what we’re calling that childhood prank?”

“Well, that incident scarred me for life! I can’t even properly enjoy watching Peter Pan with my kids, what with all the little fairies flitting about.”

“Well, I feel very sorry for your children, truly I do.”

“Humph…well?”

I looked down at dad, lost in thought. Back then Ruthie and her dad had visited us in the country every summer, treating the farm like an all-inclusive summer vacation retreat. That particular summer she was about thirteen years old and I was nine. And as always, she had told me over and over again how everything was better in the city. Their toys were better, the food was better, and their house in the city was worlds away better than this old farmhouse. But the only thing we had, that she admitted the city didn’t, were the swarms of lightning bugs.

They would rise over the fields at twilight and fill the air with a mesmerizing dance of light. Ruthie hated bugs like everything else in the country, but she loved to gaze out over the fields at the nightly show. When I had told her that sometimes I caught a bunch of them in a jar to enjoy right in my room at night, she demanded I collect up a bazillion in a jar for her amusement, since she couldn’t abide the thought of actually touching one.

My dad was finishing up some chores and found me running around the backyard, capturing enough lightning bugs to give her jar a proper twinkling glow. I explained to dad why I was jumping around the yard in the evening heat, sweating through my pajamas. Dad had winked and gave me that halfway grin of his. It was the same grin he had whenever he slyly slipped a funny line into a conversation with family or friends. Or when he played a trick on his brother, Ruthie’s dad. The same halfway grin I had inherited from dad. And that night, dad had told me if I didn’t get the lid on the jar properly tight, since I was so tired from chasing bugs, that it might come off in the middle of the night, and wouldn’t that be quite a sight. And I had taken that advice to heart.

So, right around midnight the blood-curdling screams had erupted. And there was Ruthie standing on her bed, surrounded by little blinking lights, unleashing one screech after another. There was even one blinking near the end of her nose. And when she sucked in another breath for another scream, into her mouth it went. And that was the end of the summer visits.

“Well?” Ruthie said and poked me in the chest.

I looked at the finger poking me in the chest, my gaze traveling up her arm to her face, and I met her angry glare for a long moment. She jerked her hand back and crossed her arms, regarding me cautiously.

“Well, Ruthie, that was a long time ago, and perhaps my dad had mentioned something about the lightning bug jar to me. But, as you often told me back then, like everything else in the country, the lids just aren’t as good and don’t fit on as tight as they do in the city,” I said with a halfway grin.

Ruthie huffed as she turned red, spun on her heel, and marched out of the room. I looked down at dad, and maybe it was a trick of the light, but he had the same halfway grin on his face that I did. I leaned forward, gripped the side of the casket with both hands, and wept…until I had filled the empty space in my heart.