The Shattered Pond

The pond is still, long frozen over for the winter.

I am the one who is shattered.

Momma is dead now.

After all the evening frozen margaritas, which led to the morning bottles of wine, shots of whiskey, and then bottles of vodka instead of the cups of coffee, Momma is dead. Even though everyone saw it coming, even though I saw it coming, I am still shattered.

Just beyond her house (a beautiful two story log cabin in the mountains) there’s a pond almost the length of the cabin itself. As a little girl, so many nights were spent sitting in lawn chairs watching the sunset or watching the sunrise on the mornings I felt like getting up with Momma. During these moments, Momma told me stories about her childhood, about her parents and the days they all lived in North Dakota. Her early mornings, her late nights, all of the manual labor that her father always made Momma do because he claimed it would make her stronger.

Momma may have said in it in so few words, but I knew then from seeing her drink the way she did and listen to her tell these stories that Papa was wrong.

The hard work, the lack of emotional support from her parents, their strict religious beliefs, the sudden death of her own mother from a massive heart attack, all of it only led to shattering her spirit.

With enough time, that much on one person can just be too much.

I stand at the edge of this frozen pond, the crisp winter air of the night burns my face. A hunter’s cap on my head (Momma’s cap) and a full parka, I still feel the coldness of the night, of the bond I shared with Momma, of my grief.

Before I take the five seconds to think over the insanity of what I want to do, I start to strip off the snow overalls, the parka, the long johns, the snow boots, until I am completely naked. In my bare feet, I start walking across the frozen pond.

At first, my feet stick to the ice. Without the potent grief I feel inside me, I would panic. With this grief, however, I feel so empty I barely notice the cold sting as I lift each foot from the ice and press forward. Lifting my feet each step is a struggle, but one I take without flinching. I force myself to peel my feet from the ice with each step, and still I feel nothing, only shattered from the inside and out.

Though the pond isn’t much bigger than Momma’s cabin, it’s a deep pond when you come to the middle. Good, I think.

Reaching the middle of the pond takes little time. For a long time, I stand there in the middle, the wind blowing my strawberry blond hair, the tears on my face quickly forming icicles on my cheeks.

“Misty,” Momma say during their times spent together. “don’t let yourself be imprisoned to by your pain. Live on your own terms. Not for anyone else.”

“Is that what your drinking was, Momma?” I call out into the night. “Living life on your own terms?” Fresh tears freeze over the old frozen tears on my cheeks. “Well I call bullshit, Momma! I call bullshit!”

The wind pushes my hair off my shoulders. My teeth chatter from the cold. Then, unable to hold it in any longer, I let out a scream from deep inside me. It echoes through the mountains. Birds fly out from the branches of the surrounding trees. I don’t stop. I keep screaming, until my throat is raw and frosted over with the winter air, not caring if anyone has heard me.

When I can’t scream anymore, I start jumping on the ice. Winter has only just hit the pond, so it won’t take much to shatter it.

Even in my anger at Momma, life without her is dark. A dark life spent chasing the bond we had, even at its hardest moments. I don’t want to spend the rest of my life chasing that feeling, the love, the way Momma spent hers chasing her first drink, the first time she went into complete oblivion.

The ice cracks.

I fall through.

The cold hits me like flames, but I don’t fight it.

My legs, my chest, my face, my grief; all get smothered by the ice cold water.

I’ve spent most of my eighteen years of life worrying about falling in bodies of water. When you’ve fallen into water this cold, it doesn’t take much time for hypothermia to set in.

Once I’m submerged, the stillness follows. I open my eyes and see only darkness, the darkness beyond the shattered pond.

A force pulls me. I think it’s death approaching, taking me back to Momma. Then there is nothing.

I wake up to bright lights in my eyes, tubes in my arms, my body wrapped in heating blankets. I look around, my eyes slowly adjusting. I’m in a hospital. To my right slumped over in a chair is Papa, his eyes red from the cold and crying. When he sees I’m awake he gets up and approaches me.

“Misty, thank God.” He says, grabbing my hand. “What were you trying to do?” His hair is white like the snow outside. His face is lined from stress, no doubt the result of years worrying about Momma, his only child.

“I just wanted to see Momma again. She loved that pond.” I say.

Papa’s face softens, the sadness even more evident. “Of baby girl.” He says, running a calloused hand across my forehead. “I lost my daughter, I’ve never known pain like this. I’ve blamed myself for everything she became, and her demise. I wasn’t good to her. While she may have made the decision to drink and keep drinking, I wasn’t good to her like she needed me to be. I know this hasn’t been easy for you either. All I ask is that you let me try and make things right. I want to lose my grandbaby too. You’re all I have left.”

Part of me wants to be angry with him, for how hard he was on Momma, how he treated me like the bastard out of wedlock that I was to the family. The bastard no one but my Momma had wanted. How until this moment, I’ve been the baby that changed everything when Momma was only fifteen with her life ahead of her. The result of Momma’s quest to seek out the love her own father never showed her.

Even with all of this spinning in my head, I can’t be angry, not when the genuine remorse for everything he wishes he had done differently is written all over Papa’s face. I let my own tears fall. He lets his own tears fall. And just like that, the pond is shattered.

The End