Call the Canaries Home

by Laura Barrow

She hadn’t known that a person could die inside while the rest of her body kept right on living.

Meemaw was a prickly person, Cricket was her equal opposite, always lathering on the praise and hugs to anyone who ventured a little too close to her orbit. I often wondered if she had taken on Meemaw as a personal challenge for attaining sainthood.

“Everyone needs to feel validated every now and then. I’d be pissed if someone walked into my job and managed it effortlessly. Especially since most days I feel like I’m drowning in all the things I don’t know.”

I had learned anything from Meemaw, it was that life was too short to wait around on other people to get things right. Maybe our grandmother had done some irrational things in her time, but maybe she’d done them because she knew that time doesn’t stand still. Sometimes it was worth risking everything to save the ones you love from heartache, from disappointment, sometimes from themselves. Her heart had always been in the right place, even if her execution had the grace of a cow on roller skates.

“She’s beautiful, by the way. Your daughter. In case you cared to know. Rayanne is beautiful.”

I was going to let myself off the hook, too. After all, I hadn’t asked to be an adult when he left us, and I shouldn’t have felt the weight of protecting a family that was never mine to raise.

“Oh no, honey. That’s where you’re wrong. I was never disappointed in you.” She spoke the words so firmly I almost believed her. “I just wanted all the best things for you. That’s all. I wanted you to have . . . all the things she never got to have.”

The pain of losing him had never really left her, but she’d been able to live with the ache because of all the pieces of himself he’d left behind.

She made space for us even when I couldn’t make space for her and all her things.

I had found myself thinking about the last weekend we’d spent with her. It hadn’t been enough, but I was grateful for the time I had to make things right.

We could never keep every bad thing from happening. All we could do was cherish the good when we had it for however long it was ours.

And I feel her here with me—Mama and Meemaw, too. I feel them in the wind as it rustles through the lofty cypress and pines that surround this lake. I feel them in the sunset each evening as it stretches across the sky, lighting the tops of the trees on fire, and in the swamp canaries that call out their songs overhead as they return to these parts every spring.