Onward And Upward Into The Violet Sea

Every night at midnight, the purple clouds came out to dance with the blushing sky. Their soft luminescence outshone the distant stars and set the land awash with a gentle rosiness. During the dead of night, rural Australia was perfect to bask in the glow. The city lights polluted it into a murky brown, so Charli grew up with the muddy midnight sky, never understanding why her mother went cloud visiting instead of being at home. From their small suburban backyard, the sky was nothing to admire, so mundane. 

Charli sighed, but it came out like a heaving, laboured breath as she braced herself on her knees for some respite in her lower back. The dull pain sitting above her tailbone only affirmed her suspicions: her mother was obsessed. Some women collect teaspoons, others line their bedrooms with disturbingly wide-eyed vintage dolls, and then there was Charli’s mother, Donna. Charli considered the nightly hikes to be an unhealthy obsession, but Donna was one of the healthiest women alive. Fit as a fiddle, healthy as a horse, she always said. That was before they found the cancer. In the end, all those mountain hikes did nothing for her. The thought was bitter and angry at the forefront of her mind.

“I hope you are happy now, Mum,” Charli’s voice split the silence in the woods. 

Three months of jaw-clenching habits returned as Charli gritted her teeth hard enough to shatter them. As she walked the uneven dirt trail ahead with her torch, she focused on her breathing techniques. 

In… hold… out… hold… 

Donna walked this track thousands of times. Even after her late nursing shift, she always had energy and time to hike the Dandenong Ranges. Charli often wondered if the clouds were merely a crutch to help get Donna through her shift-work lifestyle. Years of caring for the ill, years of holding people’s hands as they passed into the next life, years of being asleep when Charli went to school. Charli tried to convince herself that Donna didn’t have time for her because of work… but Donna always made time for the purple clouds. Resentment lived in Charli’s heart ever since this thought crossed her mind. 

Hiking the same path that her mother always did should have bloomed some kind of heartfelt, loving memories, but Charli only felt hatred each time her sore heels hit the ground. Onward and upward, her mother always said. Hiking a mountain wasn’t the same as sustaining a back injury. Onward and upward doesn’t fix everything. Every argument led back to this mountain and the many nights Donna spent going onward and upward, fit as a fiddle, healthy as a horse. 

Charli paused again to rub the ache in her back, wondering if this walk would have felt any different if she just joined Donna for a walk before she passed away. Her mother only asked her once, but she knew the answer was no.

Blinking back the hot tears in her eyes, Charli swallowed the lump in her throat and continued. “Onward and upward,” she choked her mother’s encouraging words out.

Earlier during the night, Charli was brimming with anger, bottled up resentment twisting into fury at her mother for all the times she failed Charli as a parent. She would never admit it, but the hike was gradually sapping her energy and draining the frustration away. The angry tears turned into fearful tears, terrified tears, as the purple hue painted Charli’s skin. The bright clouds were so low, Charli could almost reach up and put her hand through the mist.

She was close.

Her heart hammered unevenly in her chest, and her hands trembled. Midnight was upon her, and the clouds’ dance across the sky began. As quickly as her injuries would allow, Charli limped up the last steep slope and set of stairs up the walking trail, and arrived at the point the clouds kissed the side of the mountains. 

At this elevation, Charli swam through the violet pulsing river, fearing she might get swept away with the current. The luminescence sparkled as the clouds whirled across the mountainside, and where the mist touched the earth, Charli stared wide-eyed with clenched teeth at the misty figure of her mother forming from the clouds.

“Mum, I am so sorry. I should have come here with you before to see Dad -” Charli bit back her cry and felt her chest ripping with the pain.

Donna’s figure wore an understanding smile as she nodded, holding hands with a second, unfamiliar shape in the clouds. “I know. Come back to see me?”

“I don’t know if I can. Being here… I can’t do this - it hurts. I was never like you. I don’t like being close to death. All these people…”

“Onward and upward,” her mother’s voice sang, and the comforting tones sank into the cloud, spreading through the mist, enveloping Charli in a motherly love.

As quickly as she appeared, Donna dissipated into nothingness, floating away into the purple sea of mist. For the next two minutes Charli stood among the clouds, feeling the zaps of energy from the souls who had more life to live as they glided beyond her, following the purple mass onward and upward.

As the rich luminosity dimmed and the clouds stretched into the distance, two torches flicked on from two women wearing nursing scrubs sitting on the bench of Burke’s Lookout. Charli smeared her tears across her sleeve and cleared her throat, accepting the polite nods from the nurses as they returned down the track. Charli fell into step behind them, listening as they recounted who came to speak to them tonight.

“Excuse me, do you come here every night?”

The young women turned to look at Charli over their shoulders. “Only after work. It is nice checking up on people after they pass on, y’know?”

“Were you celebrating an anniversary today?”

“No,” Charli said, watching her step on the sharp decline. “Well, yes. It’s been three months since my mum passed away.”

“I’m sure she was happy to see you. Not many of them get visitors, y’know,” one said matter-of-factly. “No visits from children or grandchildren. It’s just so disrespectful.”

“No,” the other said. “It’s lazy, is what it is. As if they can’t be bothered going for a walk! Exercise is good for them. If they won’t do it for the dead, at least do it for themselves, they will live longer before they join the cloud and don’t get visited.”

Charli knew from her mother that nurses had a strange sense of humor, but their laughs still unsettled her. She didn’t dare admit this was the first time she came to see Donna since she passed. The last thing she needed to be told was that she was a terrible daughter; Charli already knew that. It wasn’t too late to turn things around, though. Better late than never. Charli was ready to work things out with her mother.

Onward and upward.