A Sparrow’s Grave 

By Kathryn Fitzmaurice 

Walking through fog so thick I am almost swimming, I sweep my arms to and fro to ensure clearance forward in my blindness. I find myself exploring the grounds around an old home. It was just past dawn when I had stepped onto the quiet high street peeking into windows of yet- unopened shops. It began to drizzle as I veered onto a sloped path that took me past a field of moss-covered boulders and wild heather. Pulling my hood over my head, I followed the meandering road past well-loved cottages and centuries-old farm structures, of which only a few stone walls remain. I had passed other forgotten buildings, but this house, that I now stand in front of, about a mile from any other building, felt like it was waiting for me.

The building I find is invisible to me through the fog until I am almost at its doorstep, close enough to hear that the only sounds from within are made not by people, but by the house itself. Small cracks in the stones whistle as the wind whips through. The structure cries with the noises of settling into the earth, or perhaps they are cries of despair. The side of the building that has no doubt met the rising sun for at least two hundred years is so densely overgrown with ivy that the windows are completely obscured. The only evidence of windows there at all lies in a broken shutter, one half-fallen off its hinges and caught within the vines' grasp. The red of its chipped paint peeks through the leaves. Soon, it will be completely devoured.

I walk around the back of the house. The fog has fallen to my feet, and I can now see the hilly landscape beyond. The fog is so low now that it creates an illusion that the land is floating above a body of water, lifted on the mist. The back of the house is free of vines, allowing me to take in its full beauty and sadness. Between the panes of glass of a dirty window is a spider, perfectly preserved and frozen in time, just like the rest of this place.

Everything since I have arrived here feels impossibly old, yet timeless. I must have driven through a portal after I passed the city limits and entered a realm where a spell was once cast so that things stand still. I  have always wondered why my grandparents would have left such a beautiful and serene place or a loud polluted city across the ocean, and it makes even less sense now that I am here. Unlike everything else, the weather passes very quickly in this place. A clear dawn, an early drizzle, an impenetrable fog, and now a beam of sunlight is peeking through the separating clouds. All before 7 a.m.

I’m not used to meeting the sunrise from this side of the day. I’m more accustomed to bumping into it accidentally after a long night, a little embarrassed to be seen in such a state, muttering a midwestern “ope” and “excuse me” before scurrying home. It’s different on this side, meeting it with intention, eyes puffy for a very different reason. From an end-of-the-night perspective, a sunrise is humbling and jarring after the magical quality of the blue hour. The sunrise you meet in the morning is a harsh contrast in a very different way. It can jolt you from the nightmares, bringing instant comfort that what you saw was not real. For those in grief, it ushers you into the blissful few moments before full consciousness in which you are able to exist outside of your reality. In those moments, those you love are returned to you because you haven’t yet remembered that they are gone.

Looking at this stone cottage, discolored with age, it strikes me that a family that has endured loss is akin to an old house. Like mushrooms growing on a rotting log, grief accelerates decay. Like a stone house, the facade fares much better than the inside. To the outsider, it may look only a little worse for wear: missing a shutter or two, but still structurally sound. Those inside know that everything is crumbling. Only they know that every single corner is changed, every floor joist unstable, every stud in the wall weakened by irreparable damage.

A large black bird flies overhead and up into a rookery in the trees across the road. I am reminded of a time when I was about five. I found a dead sparrow on the sidewalk in front of our house, probably killed by the tabby that accepted the hospitality of about four different households on the block. It was the first dead thing I’d ever seen but hardly the last. I was trying in vain to wake it when my mother found me and explained why the little bird wouldn’t get up. We held a ceremony in the backyard and buried the sparrow under a tree in a shoebox. I cried and she sang, though I no longer remember what song. When the weather warmed, she planted forget-me-nots over the grave. The tiny blue flowers bloomed every year for the rest of our time there. I often wonder if the owners after us left the flowers there, if their children made them hold ceremonies for dead wildlife, and if they, too, found the old oak tree to be the perfect resting place.

It's hard to tell how long this house has been abandoned or whether it was already in disrepair when its last tenant left. The back door isn’t fully latched. Against my better judgment, I step inside. It’s not completely empty. A few pieces of furniture have been left to be covered by dust and debris. A thick layer coats everything in sight. Some of the outside stone is visible behind the crumbling plaster walls, the parts of the walls left intact have been written upon with marker and spray paint. In the piles of debris are the remains of junk food and beer cans. The kitchen cabinets are open, except for the one under the sink that is without doors completely. It is dark inside despite the sun having returned temporarily. The rays cannot penetrate the overgrown ivy outside.

There is still a smattering of dishes in the cabinets, a pile of empty picture frames on the crooked table. Someone fed their family at this table after toiling over the antique stove in the corner. The fireplace has a pile of logs yet untouched by flame. Someone thought they'd be back to light them. They kept this house warm, full of laughter and loved ones, but now it is cold and empty. She was the one who kept our fires burning. No matter how many matches we strike, that fire is never the same. I walk past the kitchen/living/everything else area and into a bedroom that is a step up from the rest of the house and was probably added at another time. There is a bed frame propped up by three legs and an antique dresser with glass fitted onto the surface. Under the glass are the impressions of several photographs that have since been removed, except for one.

The time-stained photograph is of a woman no older than forty wearing a simple white blouse and a cross around her neck. For a moment, I don’t see a stranger. I see her. The same gentle slope of her nose; the same prominent, deep-set, haunting eyes of generations of women before and after her; that same smile, made more perfect by the two front teeth of slightly different lengths. The same thin upper lip and fuller bottom lip that taught me everything I know about how to love. The prematurely worn hands clasped in her lap are the same that crafted so many of my most cherished possessions and taught me to craft my own. Hands that, though rough with hard work and creation for decades, were so soft at the end they were unrecognizable from the woman to whom they belonged. The same ears that listened to the problems and triumphs of an entire family tree, disseminating necessary information amongst the branches, gathering the leaves together for moments of celebration and sorrow.

I smell her perfume as if someone has just sprayed it in the room with me. I smell her breath, always with a lingering sweetness to it, as if she has just embraced me, exhaling as her cheek rests against mine. The air feels as if she has just walked out of the room, like if I were to turn a corner, I would find her waiting at a kitchen table, eager to hear about the latest events of my life. I close my eyes to resettle the tears that are about to fall, and when I open them, I refocus on the photograph. But I am looking at a stranger. No, those are not the same caring eyes I have known since my first days. Those are not the hands that made my family's favorite meals. Of course not. Though I am in the country of her parents, I am nearly 4000 miles from where she lived and died. The person in the photograph is not mine, she is just another woman who was stolen before her time. Another woman whose family and home, without her to support the structure, without her unwavering love and matriarchal persuasion, without her resolute oversight, without her, all came undone. And now, the house sits empty, decaying quietly, waiting for another grieving traveler to stumble upon it. The house, like my family, is irreparably broken and scattered. If we are the stones of a house, she was the mortar and the foundation. If we are a group of related trees, she was the mycelium that connected our roots. If we are the planets of the solar system, she was both gravity and the sun. And she is gone.

I walk back outside. The weather has changed again. A much harder rain has started to fall, and the wind sporadically blows it sideways. She never got to see the land of her parents. She didn’t get to drive the winding rural roads during lambing season or walk the earth touched by generations of our ancestors. She never got to feel the magic of this place. We made plans to come here together “once she recovered,” as if we could, by planning for the future, make it real.

In the end, the best I could do was a four-pound Ziploc bag in my carry-on luggage. A trowel in my checked bag. A handful of seeds in a pouch. I walk a few hundred yards behind the stone house near a tree and sit down in the lush green grass, already soaked and sparkling. I take the trowel and Ziploc bag from my backpack and dig a small hole in the earth about the same size as the one we dug for the bird all those years ago. I wait for the wind to settle and gently pour the contents of the bag into the bird-sized hole, the rain tamping down the fine gray powder. I cover the ashes with the displaced dirt, sprinkling a handful of forget-me-not seeds from a pouch as I do. I sit for a while in the rain and stare at the little mound of earth. I’m amazed that someone so large of spirit could be reduced to a sparrow’s grave.

Kathryn is a current EIU student pursuing a graduate degree in English with a concentration in literary and cultural studies. Though she took a pause in creative writing after completing her fiction writing degree at Columbia College Chicago, she is easing back into it. In her free time, she finds joy in crafting, especially knitting and embroidery, tap dancing, traveling, and spending time with her dogs.