The Family Curse

The owl was back. A sign that something bad was on the horizon. Just as I had dreaded.

It always began in Autumn. When the trees wilted and withered away. Ironically, the outside trees were not the only ones to suffer this fate. For the curse of the Jovan clan was also about. Not only were the leaves of the outside trees picked off, one by one, but also the leaves of my family tree. Every year a tragedy would befall one with the last name Jovan.

And it all started with that horrid barn owl. Its ghostly white face tilted to the side, its midnight eyes burning a hole through my skin as if taunting me with what was to come. Family legend has it that the owl carried the spirit of Meredith Jovan, my great, great, great, great grandmother. A spiteful woman who was devilish in life and even worse in death. The story goes that Meredith, a dictator to rival Hitler himself, was the tyrant of our family, the reason why generations of Jovan’s lived off of therapy.

She was cruel, arrogant, selfish and worse she hated life. But like an eternal cancer, she refused to hit the grave. Living until she was 151 years old. 151 years is a long time and a lot of damage from a bitter woman. Rumour has it that in the end, it was her eldest son who suffocated her in her sleep and sent her to pits of hell from which she rose. But apparently, 151 years of torment was not enough. Because here she was again in the body of an owl, perched on the old apple tree in our front yard. Perhaps she was a witch, it wasn’t uncommon in her time and maybe with her dying breath, she cursed us all. It was the only way to describe the inexplicable yearly deaths in our family.

At that moment, Theo, the youngest in our family, waddled outside. His small body was engulfed by the large loaf of bread he held in his hands. He sat below the tree and slowly tore the loaf into pieces, his small fingers only able to pull off the littlest of chunks. Finally, he collected all the bits of bread into a pile under the tree and ran back inside.

“Theo,” I whispered kneeling down, “Come here.”

His little form ran to me, falling into my chest in a hug, his face enlightened with a beaming smile.

“Why did you do that my boy?” I asked curious about his peculiar actions.

“It’s for the bad owl, maybe he’s hungry. If he eats then he’ll become my friend and stop sending people to heaven,” he mumbled out.

I couldn’t help but smile. The first smile I’d had in a while. I squeezed the child in my arms and let him run off to play. If only it were that simple.

But it wasn’t. A curse is a curse. And for the sin of a son, our whole bloodline would suffer. Every year one of us would fall, dying while fighting for breath. Just like her. The phone rang in the distance. But I didn’t run to answer it. I already knew.

Another leaf of our family tree fell to the ground, like clockwork.

Maybe the plain old barn owl wasn’t Meredith at all. Simply just a bird flying into town for the season. Perhaps we blame all this family tragedy on the poor owl to escape the true terror we face. The terror of paying for one’s sins, for being held accountable.

Meredith may have been the devil’s advocate, but what right did her son have to end her life? He committed the unspeakable and now we will all suffer.

Our only hope? The future generation. Our children, like little Theo. Who see the world with new eyes, filled with hope and love. Perhaps they will help us repent for our signs and finally break our wretched curse. Perhaps they will be better.