The Sparrow by Stacy Stiles

My daughter died yesterday. I say the words in my mind but they fall through all the cracks that came when I heard the news. I've been calm since they told me. I haven't even shed a single tear. The hospital won’t let us see her body. I wish they would listen when I tell them that reality is better than my imagination. At least then I would know what she suffered. I wouldn't keep imagining all the different ways she could have been killed. I wouldn't keep hearing her bones break one by one. It is all far too much to handle. I am too numb to cry.

Not so my husband. Ever since it happened, he hasn’t stopped crying. It is a silent kind of grief, a pouring of tears in twin continuous streams down his face as he goes about his day. Today, when he cooked breakfast, I sat in the kitchen and listened to the sound of his tears sizzling as they fell onto the frying pan. As I ate I closed my eyes and imagined I could taste his sadness. It was bitter and harsh against my tongue at first, and then faded to a tingle that doesn’t seem to go away. It has stayed with me for the rest of the day, the only hint of the emotions I've buried.

"My daughter died yesterday." I say aloud.

Something in me goes rigid, but it doesn't rise out of the depths. I give up. I don't really want to feel anyways. I don't want to be like my husband, who sits in the pitch black of our bedroom, drowning himself in memories and trying not to remember the present. We don't all have the luxury to be broken. I can't help but think of all the little indignities that lie ahead: the funeral, the cremation, the pitying eyes of family members. The piles of food brought to us from people we barely speak to, as if we've become ravenous at the news of my daughter's death instead of losing our appetites altogether.

I sink deeper into the cushions of my chair, watching the recordings of the accident on the news over and over. I keep skipping back, watching the moment the eighteen wheeler comes barreling over the median and into oncoming traffic. The sound of the impact sinks into my bones; it's the moment everything changed.

When I let the news move forward, they tell me that over twelve cars were totaled. Thirty-two injured, four dead. It doesn’t seem real to me that my daughter was one of them. I’ve watched tragedies like this on the news what seems like a hundred times before, but I’ve always been looking in from the outside. There is always this feeling of disconnection; an admitting of the horrific repercussion of these events, but an ultimate separation from them. I can’t seem to break through that feeling. I can’t seem to let myself acknowledge and feel what it’s like to be on the inside.

I think that is part of why I can’t stop watching. I’m waiting for the moment where it all hits me. Where suddenly the grief comes crashing through, shattering glass and tearing down walls; I’m waiting for it to drown me. But what person with self-preservation can force themselves to stop treading water?

It is while I watch the footage of fire and explosions and cars folded up like empty soda cans that I hear it. A slam, a percussive slap of a sound. It is the kind of noise that would be made by a bat bouncing off a bulletproof window. The sound is so loud and unexpected that I jerk hard in my chair, almost falling to the floor. I stare at the sliding glass door behind me in disbelief. It seems impossible it hasn't shattered.

I stand up, swaying on clumsy feet, and pull the curtains back. A sparrow lays on its side on the ground, convulsing and awkwardly trying to flap its wings. For a moment the world turns on its side. I see my daughter, laying on her side on the ground, blood dripping from her mouth onto the darkness of the asphalt. She reaches out to me, eyes pleading, mouthing words she can't find the breath to speak. And then suddenly the bird is just a bird again.

I turn away from the window, gasping, but I can't wipe the sight from my mind. I can see the cars crashing and hear the bones breaking. I can hear the screams and smell the scent of burning rubber and gasoline.

I feel sick. I stand there, holding my stomach, with the news chattering on the TV in front of me. They've moved on now, to a piece about a family whose house burned down and then to a debate over the merits of leggings. I wish that I found moving forward so simple and easy. I wish that I could smile and laugh like those news anchors, erasing the remembrance of pain in a matter of seconds.

I turn back to look at the bird. It's laying on its other side now. It's stopped moving, and its chest lays still. I can't see its face. Tears well up in my eyes, but they don’t fall.

I see a red flash as a cardinal shoots across the backyard. A warning sign come too late. I wonder if it was chasing the sparrow, following a little too close. I wonder if that's why the sparrow never saw it coming. In the back of my mind, I hear the spinning of wheels, fighting for traction; I hear them screech against the pavement. I see an outline of a face, frozen in shock. The features won’t fill in, but I know they’re there. The soft turn of her cheek, the delicate swoop of the tip of her nose. The lovely blue-green of her eyes. I put my face into my hands.

Oh, baby, I think. Why did this have to happen to you? Out of all the people in the world, why you?

In my mind I hear the sudden thump as the sparrow hits the glass. Such an inauspicious way to die. So very undignified. I wonder if the sparrow saw it coming. If it realized, seconds before impact, that it was going to die. I wonder if it saw its life reflected in the glass before it crashed. I wonder if it had a family, a small group of sparrow friends. I wonder if it had parents. I wonder how they’ll grieve.

I lower myself to my knees and look at my face in the glass. I don't recognize myself anymore. There are grooves in my face that weren't there before, marks of pain and sadness. I suddenly feel struck with the knowledge that my body has already etched itself with feelings I can't even access. I curl my hands hard into my chest, right over my heart. They’re shaking so hard I can barely move them. I can feel my heart pounding in my chest. It’s a hard realization to come to terms with: my heart beats and hers does not.

For the first time since I heard the news, the tears come pouring down my face. I can hear myself sobbing quietly over the sound of the television. I don't even know who I'm crying for, the sparrow, my husband, my daughter, myself? My husband comes out of the bedroom and sits down at my side. He looks at the sparrow, and when he looks back at me I see understanding. He wraps his arms around me, and I press my face into his shoulder. I let the feelings come rushing to the surface and make an animal sound of pain. We stay there for a while, crying together, and I feel the knowledge sink deep into my skin. It’s hard, almost impossible, to breathe past the weight of it. But I have to. I don’t have any other choice.

I take a deep breath, the air forcing itself through my chest. I grab my husband’s hand and stand up, unsure of who is leaning against whom. For the first time since the phone rang yesterday morning, I let myself truly let go. I let myself feel it. I take my first, halting step forward.