Feathered Angels…

 

Feathered Angels…

I have enough memories from the past to last me for the rest of my life. My unstinted memory will not bury them so deep that I cannot bring them to the surface in a moment’s notice.

In the deep recesses of my mind, I see a small country church, a chorus of crows; the splashing sounds of the brook running through the Birch trees. The wind caressing the colossal row of Oaks in the field. All memories from my early days.

I see death, going down the road moving away from the weathered house of worship, a wagon that carried my beloved great-grandmother; I envisioned it being followed by feathered angels. No longer will the little branch of water beneath the Birch taste fresh and cool, nor will the winds surrounding the Oaks in the pasture embrace warm flesh.

I relive a sad memory, my great-grandmother’s heart had been silenced, and the rocker on the porch stilled, no hand wave’s goodbye. In a cobwebbed corner of the room where she slept, the sun shines through a cloudy window, as the image of tattered curtains dance in a nearby cracked mirror. Everyone we love soon leaves us. Sitting on the steps of that old weathered church, I have but one memory it is that childhood is dead.

©elizabethannjohnsonmurphree
AUTHOR’S NOTE: My Native American great-grandmother lived 105 years 1849 – 1954. She lived through 23 presidents. American Indian Wars; Civil War; Red River and Pine Ridge; Spanish American War; Philippine-American War; Crazy Snake Rebellion; Battle of Ganghwa-Korea; WWI; WWII; Korean; and her last battle with death 1954. She was raised Chickasaw in the Black Warrior Forest Alabama. Worked on a Plantation; Lived in Slave Quarters; Lived a prominent life in Birmingham Alabama and Died in the arms of her grandson, my daddy.
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