The Wind in the Willows

They warned her against leaning into the whispers of the wind, warned her of their influence. 

But they must not have heard the voices that spoke to her, the words like sweet honey she stirs in her morning tea. She did not know where they came from and she often searched, both within herself and within the bright places, for promises like these would not come from a place of darkness. 

It was her mother’s voice at first. Her mother had passed to the next world a great many springs ago, a season of rebirth for all but her. She had sat there beside her mother, holding her delicate hand speckled with freckles of age, as the light drifted from behind her eyes. Watched as her chest rose and fell one last time, breathing in a heaviness that would not leave the body that would now rest beneath a willow sapling. She could not see the wound caused by this loss healing in her lifetime because a mother soothes the aches as deep and true as this. A mother holds her child when her child weeps from the petty lessons of life. A mother makes ginger tea with the perfect sweetness for stomach aches and makes a cold cloth for a fevered head. She would now have to soothe herself, make her tea herself, and cry into the night when the world has fallen silent. Her mother would no longer walk the earth beside her, but she may not be alone as the willow grows, giving her shade to enjoy the stories of other worlds and whimsical branches to be animated like a phantom limb.

Then it was her father’s voice that spoke to her. Her father followed her mother the spring of the next year when his heart could no longer beat with life without the soul, partner to his own, resting only a few yards from his favorite spot on the porch. The spot where his oak rocking chair, accompanied by a twin that had not been used in a year, faced the solitary willow swaying in the wind. So her father rose and started his final descent to the tree, stopping to kneel beneath its shade and whispering, “I love you and I shall see you soon.” He laid down on the soft grass beside his wife, his eyes closing and never opening again. So she unearthed a small space next to her mother’s willow and laid her father to rest with his beloved, tears leaving salty trails down her cheeks and falling into the earth beneath her. But he had known she would be okay, had braved the pain of grief to be assured of her strength, her maturity. Because a father is tough, but never cruel, to push his children and make them see the heights of their potential before they see it in themselves. A father makes his children brave, shows them the darkness does not hide the monsters. A father builds his children’s defiance against the monsters that walk in the light, to make sure they would not falter. She would now have to pick herself up and keep the might of the monsters at bay on her own. So her father’s soul sprouted and grew with her mother's, the long limbs of the willows intertwining as their love had lent their souls to join, knowing their children had the strength and compassion to help each other through the agonies of life. 

Next, it was her baby brother’s voice, begging her for the help she had failed to give. Her brother had passed in spring several years after her parents, the mantle of responsibility falling upon his young shoulders as the house needed a new head. He was a young man built to weather any storm and to love any life without judgment of its form, spiritually or otherwise. His own life, though, claimed too early, a sad story authored by senseless manipulation of his kind heart. Those who named themselves friends asked too much, knowing his unwavering loyalty to others and inability to deny his hand. So he lent them his hands and when the task grew too large for those, he lent them his arms, his shoulders, his back and legs, until they were all broken. And when he could no longer stand on his mangled legs, no longer breath beneath broken ribs, they walked over him, whispering, “What are you worth now?” as they went. Her brother was buried beneath the cruelty of the world and without the knowledge that his sisters still loved him so dearly, that he was worth the heavens to them, because they were too lost in their dire straits. She was not there to help him and then she had to bury him beside their parents, his sapling as young as he in the light of the life he should have had. Her parents’ willows leaned into their son, embracing him as she wept for the brother she should have protected. The brother who would have protected her as all brothers did. The heart within her chest tightened with the grief laying heavy, a weight that would not lift. But her brother’s willow grew, just as tall and sturdy as he had been, the joy of his heart expressed in the jubilant dancing of the tree limbs and abundance of blossoms. Although the sorrow forever lingered, she knew he would no longer suffer the rotten selfishness of others.

And then it was her little sister’s voice, taking her on the journeys they had shared with the characters of literature. Her sister embarked on her journey after their brother’s passing, running from the suffocating grasp she had cast on her. The desperate attempts to keep her sister’s wild soul within her reach only pushed her further from her arms. A sister is a friend she could not refuse and could not live without, giggling about the boys met the weekend before and putting on dance shows for their families in their youth. Sisters are for the most brutal, vicious quarrels, only to crawl into each other’s beds that night, howling with laughter until their mother scolds them for being awake so late into the twilight. She only wanted to keep her from harm, in the ways she had failed her brother, his willow a steady reminder that smiles and good times could quickly turn bloodied. Her sister would not be caged, though, and fled from quiet nights wrapped in their mother’s blankets and reading their father’s stories. She could do nothing but watch as her friends, whom her sister deemed family with the only prerequisite being encouragement, jumped from a cliff and her sister followed, expecting the river below to break the fall. The luck of life could not give its blessing to all, so her sister did not land within the calm waters her friends swore would save her, but rather she was pulled under the violent and uncontrollable consequences of her choices. She could not save her sister and so she buried another sibling on that plot of land. Her sister’s willow grew a twisted trunk, full of knots and holes as if her soul refused to grow as the tree demanded, still a wild thing meant to run free in the afterlife. 

She stood on the porch, listening to their perfect voices carried on the winds that weaved between the willow branches and caressed her skin. It was spring, the season in which so much death had given light to the life of these four willows. A season where the sadness of winter lifted from the land and flowers bloomed, fauna emerging from where they had hidden.

They had warned her about the voices, that she should not heed their temptations. But he was so tired, left to tend to the land that was the sole reminder of the family she had torn from her too soon. 

So, she sauntered to the spot beside her sister’s willow, the final spot to complete the circle of their family, and lay in the soft grass her father had laid. There were no tears to stain her cheeks now for she had shed too many. No, it was a smile that formed on her face. This was a smile of happiness as she let her soul go from her body, to join her family in the skies at last. 

And as her body gave way to the earth, a willow sprouted from the ground, eventually maturing with the others, and the wind no longer carried the voices of a family separated by death but rather a song of spring, of birds and flowers and life.