Country

Nothing was ever spoken of it, but the procession did slow to a near halt along Cumberland Street as she was carried past her home of 35 years for the very last time, the small brick rambler that sat atop the little knoll looking out upon a town that lost its purpose with farm mechanization decades ago. Nothing was said as my foot gently held the brake, but in the pits of our hearts an emptiness that couldn't be put to words was in full control. As we turned onto the dusty county road rimmed in by cornfields I was thrown into uncomfortableness and confusion. For six years I had rode as a passenger along these forgotten byways where once their were towns, churches, and country stores listening to 90 years of lore about what had happened at that corner or what house with its bursting bluebells and whitewash had once stood beneath the huge lonely oak in the slowly reclaimed field. Every acre told a story, and now for the first time she wasn't there to speak of it. Instead she rode unseen at the head of the procession traveling the country lanes so laced into the mythology of her family, unable to tell us the message of the landscape any longer as it was when she knew it best. This last somber ride along the roads she knew with her eyes closed a tribute to a life we would never forget.