The Poppy Fields

by Nikki Erlick

Her dreams weren’t yet bogged down by reality.

Truthfully, Ellis wanted to expand more than anyone else at the table. It was her vision, her legacy on the line. The greater the impact, the better. But she hadn’t reached this pinnacle in her career by rushing or cutting corners. She got here by demanding excellence. Growing up, she was clever, methodical, eager. People expected a lot from her. She expected even more from herself.

Our sleeping mind is not truly asleep, after all. It’s still busily working, sorting through the day’s learnings and storing the most important ones as new memories to carry forward.

Emmy

Granny Mae

A hope that he would guide her through treacherous waters, never leaving her side.

we know that humans trying to play God are more than capable of doing some damage.”

and the sleep struck her parents as somewhat dishonorable. Life and death, love and mourning, should be treated in certain ways, they thought.

Sasha knew that her parents, and her grandparents especially, felt that the grief and traumas of history—both personal and communal—were meant to be carried, not discarded. Like weights to be worn all our lives, something to recognize, not to be rid of. To them, the Poppy Fields was an attempt to sanitize the most brutal, and yet most essential, elements of life.

Was there not a way to honor the past that didn’t press so heavily upon the future?

Are there not, perhaps, some burdens that are just too big to bear? Some tragedies that justify the sleep?

“Raising you and your sister has made me so happy,” Mae had said, “and the only thing that would make me happier is to see you both build the lives that you dream of.”

filial

three volunteers had survived: two college students from Texas and a recent graduate of medical school, a young doctor named Fred Robinson, who’d reportedly stayed at the scene for hours, fighting to save his fellow passengers, despite injuries to his own arm.)