End of the Line

The train car glitters with rain silently descending across its cold, metal bolts. Tonya leans into the arm rest and presses her cheek against the window, filling each drop with heavy thoughts as they cycle through her mind over and over again. Her eyes reflect dimly in the icy pane of glass, glossed over with specs of empty detachment. The noise of the engine humming underneath stole the silence like the sadness that robbed Tonya of her joy. What was meant to be a joyous return home in celebration of her sister’s first born was now a fragile journey coiled with despair.

Miles down the track lay a small village filled with red brick chalets tucked under sun baked thatches. A single paved road cuts through the town, extending out into loose gravel alleyways where young children fill themselves to the brim with the glee of simple humors. Grey clouds hang like indistinguishable mounds high above, seemingly tethered to the ground below never to be carried onward over the green pastured hills.

Tonya’s memories of home had faded in her time away, yet now they return in crisp flashes from the depths of her mind. Her mind draws the scene of friends and neighbors gathering around the ash tree at the center of town. Traditionally, folks welcomed kin from out of town and gathered to make trades of art, stories, and religious sentiments.

One particularly cool summer day, her sister made the ascent of this colossal sized tree to the highest perch her little body could reach as Tonya looked on with admiration and awe. There she remained in protest against the local butcher after learning the details of his trade. Her mother did not yell or attempt to coerce her into changing her mind. Rather than becoming enraged with fear or frustration, she sat below with Tonya cradled in her lap and patiently waited for eldest daughter to do of her own accord.

Like a clan of wise elders, Tonya recalls the sounds of townspeople taking turns conversing with her sister about her reasons for protest, until eventually it was the butcher himself who convinced her to descend. He promised to continue his trade with a great deal more respect for the creatures involved if she could find value in his promise to feed the village. Everyone in the village took care of each other with a shared understanding of what it meant to trust with kindness, patience, and compassion – an agreement simply inconceivable to the restless world beyond the surrounding hills.

The memory fades and Tonya pulls her body in tighter as if the air around her was collapsing in on itself. Home would no longer feel like home without her family there as they were all these years of her life. Now, it was the resting place of her mother, sister, and baby nephew she never knew - the place Tonya would be greeted only by Death itself for the first time. She imagines a dark figure hidden under a ghostly vail of chard cloth looming in stillness on the platform. Closing her eyes, she drifts away into the safety of sleep, leaving the raindrops outside the window empty of her dreaded consciousness.

Tonya is awoken by the arrival of a new passenger who gracefully fills the seat across from her as if she were not a mere stranger. Unwinding her body, Tonya struggles to greet her with a smile. The elderly woman fixates her gaze on Tonya and radiates a soothing warmth in silence. Tracing her eyes around the train car, Tonya discovers it is empty of the other passengers that filled it at first departure. Still dazed and slightly puzzled, she asks the woman,

“Has everyone left the train?”

She remains quiet with her soft green eyes still beset on Tonya. The silence is broken by the howl of the train whistle as it pulls forward again lazily gaining speed. Unsettled by the elderly woman’s gaze, she shifts in her seat as to shake it off with no avail. A few moments pass before the woman speaks in a quiet tone.

“You are grieving child, yes?”

Tonya is instantly filled again with the dread she had escaped while asleep. She could not conceal her emotions so easily from this stranger and, now exposed, clenches her jaw in embarrassment.

“Death is no monster, nor stranger, to this Earth. Yet, few would dare share a train car with it across the countryside.”

The woman shifts her gaze out the window as Tonya’s embarrassment morphs into bewilderment. Again, moments pass as Tonya attempts to decode the woman’s riddle. Eventually, Tonya musters the courage to question the woman’s strange proclamation.

“Who are you miss?”

“I am Death,” she responds, in a way one may greet a loved one.

Tonya sinks back into her seat questioning the sanity of the woman she shares her space with. Carefully, the woman reaches for Tonya’s hand and grips it firmly.

“When the world breaks apart and we find ourselves shattered and spread across the winds, all too often it is easy to proclaim evil is upon us and brings with it a fictitious Grim Reaper bound to capture us out of the breeze and cast us into a dark and in endless place.”

Frozen in her skin, Tonya’s weariness begins to dissipate seemingly caused by the glow emanating from the woman’s embrace. As if kissed by the sun that hides behind suspended gray skies, a strange degree of comfort replaces the sorrow in Tonya’s heart. Whoever this woman is, she seems magical and healing. To deem herself the epitome of death strains the illusion of loss Tonya so faithfully believes can only be true facing the loss of those so dear to her.

“I am not the deliverer of pain nor deceiver of souls. Carry-on child with this in mind. What is lost is never truly gone, and as you found the precious gift of love once before in the village at the end of the line, you will find it again, so as long as you fear not the presence of death, but the absence of being.”

As the train approaches the small village, Tonya finds herself awoken again to a car partially full of lingering passengers and the seat across from her empty. She notices the heaviness she carried into the train car upon her first departure had ceased to grip her mind. She stares out the window unable to find it within her to feel sorrow – only the gift of grief she knew was a reflection of unconditional love.