Apricot Press

Grace has never written a funeral speech; in fact, she has never been to a funeral before. Her pen hovers above a white page, ready to flood it with a tribute to Aunt Orla. All she has is:

Free spirited

She stares at an old photograph, searching for inspiration, a wave of guilt seeping in. Has she already forgotten her face? It has only been two weeks since she received the call. Aunt Orla’s dark eyes stare back at Grace, forming part of her mischievous smile, and the mane of her deep auburn curls is brushed over her head to one side – untamed. The silver feather necklace that she always wore rests on her chest. Grace was fascinated with the necklace when she was young and she used to tug at its chain playfully, asking whether Aunt Orla was a bird. She holds it in her hand now.

Staring carefully at the photograph, Grace considers whether Aunt Orla’s eyes could even be described as black, their darkness somehow emulating light. Her body jolts when nighttime silence is pierced with the distinct cry of a tawny owl. Its haunting calls have recently become more frequent. Grace soon becomes comforted by the echoes of its keewiks, as she pictures herself standing in a room full of people she knows and people she does not. Trying to paint a clear picture of Aunt Orla, trying to do her justice yet not too much. She has her mother to consider.

Memories of when she was a teenager appear, so vivid, as if she could reach out and touch her teenaged self. In a fit of rage, she had said to her mother, ‘I don’t want to be like you, I want to be like Aunt Orla – free. Not stuck behind a white picket fence with children to weigh me down.’ Grace had watched the colour drain from her face, instantly regretting her words. Her mother had erupted with, ‘She’s not all fun Aunt, you know. She drives your Uncle Ian mad, and she can be so bloody unreliable sometimes.’

Grace thinks back to her eighteenth birthday party, when she had expected her to be there, excited to introduce her to her friends. Instead, there was an empty seat at the table.

Unreliable?

She moves towards the kitchen window and stares out into the darkness, where the slight crescent of a moon is visible in the sky. She thinks that she catches a glimpse of the owl, settled on a lower branch of the oak tree at the far end of the garden. A flash of the black pearls of its eyes, perhaps ready to scour the night for food – her tiny chicks ready and waiting. Her boyfriend, Martin, had attempted to feed the chicks himself but had then read that this was unwise. Grace thinks how Martin often has so much faith in his decisions – in his knowledge. When she had been worried that her stomach illness might affect her contraceptive pill, he’d said – with complete conviction – there was no need to worry. She wonders what Aunt Orla might make of her predicament. She wishes that she could talk to her.

Good Listener

Grace walks into the kitchen and switches on the kettle. Startled by the owl’s silhouette on the window ledge, she lets out a gasp and when she moves closer, she sees the white mask of its strange face. Her hand instinctively covers her stomach.

When Grace discovered that she was pregnant, she had cried more than she had ever cried in her life. A tidal wave of fear had washed over her – pulling her under. She had refused to speak to Martin for a week, but it was the anger towards herself that was hardest to deal with, and she wondered what it might be capable of if she set it free.

Something compels her to open the back door and as she does a beam of artificial light floods the garden. The owl retreats towards the tree, raising its silent wings, as if ready to jump from a high place. Grace wishes that her own spine would curve, that her bones would seep into each other, that her arms would spread, feathers shooting from her limbs. The cold night sky pressing at her feathered face, as she hungrily gulped freedom.

Gravel crunches below her slippers as she moves towards the oak’s trunk, still carrying the silver feather necklace, remembering how she had read that tawny owls are often extremely protective of their young.  She sees the shape of the owl’s face in the dark cavity – beckoning. She places her own opposite. Nestled within, the owl sits amongst her young, their tiny, feathered chests puffed like white bibs, and when Grace stares into the jet pools of its eyes, something other than fear arrives.

Photo credit: Kai Wenzel