Not Dark Yet
Not Dark Yet is a sad tale of redemption and hope, inspired by the Bob Dylan song. Click for complete lyrics.
Not Dark Yet
by TJ Hawk
Emma’s daughter was dying. They had no visitors. It was just Emma and Marie, like sixteen years before, after Emma had given birth to baby Marie.
This room at St. Luke’s looked the same as before, but the feeling was opposite. Then Emma felt acute joy as she held her newborn. Now she embraced Marie, but with unspeakable sadness, and the horror of impending doom.
Sixteen years ago, Emma spent a few hopeful days in the hospital, eagerly preparing to go home with her baby, to start a new life together. Now hope was frail. She feared going home without Marie, and being alone.
Shadows are falling
And I've been here all day
It's too hot to sleep
Time is running away
“Mom, water,” choked Marie. She did not sound like a teenager anymore. Sickness had also devoured her youthful beauty. Emma was weathered from a hard life, but Marie looked even worse.
“Yes, honey,” replied Emma, quickly grabbing a cup of water.
Why did this happen? Emma kept asking, though she knew the answer, and it hurt. Nothing mattered now. Death was approaching, accompanied by cruel separation.
Emma knew about separation. When she was seventeen, she became pregnant with Marie. This angered her father. To be truthful, Emma matched her father in stubbornness, and exceeded him in pride. The fight was intense. As a result, Emma left the house, vowing to stay away forever. She kept her spiteful promise, leaving her father enraged. Furthermore, she left her poor mother in utter dismay.
I just don't see why
I should even care
It's not dark yet
But it's getting there
Marie fell asleep again. Emma was relieved because every conscious breath brought Marie pain. Sleep was a reprieve.
Emma staggered to the window. “Sixteen is too soon,” she whispered to no one. “Is this truly the end?”
Looking outside, she could only see the brick sides of other wings of the hospital. When she looked down, she saw a black roof. She never bothered to look up.
“Emma,” whispered the nurse.
“What?” uttered the grimacing mother, previously unaware that the nurse had entered the room.
“My two supervisors need to speak with you,” mumbled the nurse with a frown.
Emma followed two strangers into a small chapel. They said her daughter would not live through the night. Emma should call her family and friends at once. It would be the last chance for them to say goodbye. Yet, Emma had no one to call.
Well my sense of humanity
Has gone down the drain
Behind every beautiful thing
There's been some kind of pain
Earlier in week, Emma had been fired from her job at 7-Eleven for missing too much work. Yet, it was more than missing work at a convenience store. Depression hurts customer relations. It is bad for any business.
After the two messengers left Emma alone in the chapel, she looked up at a crucifix on a wall. Her father had hung them as ornaments in every room. She hated seeing them then. Now it comforted her. Perhaps the man suspended between earth and sky knew something about separation. Perhaps he too had a broken heart, and knew about rejection and pain.
Three years ago, it was Emma struggling to survive. She almost had died of the same disease that was killing her precious Marie. Emma had gotten the disease from the baby’s father, some teenage boy. If her doctor was correct, Emma had passed the disease to her baby during childbirth.
Why did this happen? Emma was again asking, by some gross impulse. She knew the ugly answer. The blame for the sickness was hers. How could she live with this fact? Indeed, nothing mattered now.
Sometimes my burden
Seems more than I can bear
It's not dark yet
But it's getting there
Emma fought the exhaustion and trudged back to be with her daughter one last night. Marie was awake. When the dying girl saw Emma, she faintly uttered, “Mommy.”
After the hullabaloo with her father, the Mississippi River and the Rocky Mountains were not enough separation for Emma. When she had left her big home in Connecticut, she kept moving until she reached the Pacific Ocean. Now the separation of three thousand miles was her curse, a curse of her own making. Now she needed her mother.
Emma curled up next to her daughter in the deathbed. She stroked Marie’s hair. Not long ago, it seemed to Emma, Marie was learning to walk and talk. She thought about Marie’s first day at school, her first ballgame, her first music contest. Emma smiled as she thought about Marie’s sweet kindness, her playfulness, her humor. She could not imagine life without her. Though these memories were captivating, Emma again found her thoughts gravitating from her daughter to her mother.
Emma had sent her mother notes on three occasions during her West Coast saga. She wrote her mother about her wedding, followed by news of her divorce eight months later. Then, three years ago, Emma sent a note home, when she feared that she was dying. Each time Emma had the note mailed from a faraway city, and NEVER with a return address.
I've been down on the
bottom
Of a world full of lies
I ain't looking for nothing
In anyone's eyes
Sensing the end, Emma embraced her little Marie. She said, “I love you,” while grabbing Marie’s feeble hand and kissing her face.
“Do you hear me, honey? I love you. I love you so much.” Perhaps it was a cruel joke of hope, but Emma honestly felt Marie squeeze her hand.
For the past few days, Emma had been careful, never crying around her daughter. Yet, with the squeeze, Emma began weeping. The tears were splashing off Marie’s face like raindrops.
The ritual of tears and love continued for twenty minutes. Emma never quit speaking to her daughter with passion and purpose for twenty intense minutes. Finally, Marie died.
Later, when the nurse came into the room, Emma was no longer crying . . . or speaking. Yet, she was still clinging to the body. In fact, she had been alone with the corpse for an hour. The nurse tried to speak with Emma, but encountered eerie silence.
Don't even hear
A murmur of a prayer
It's not dark yet
But it's getting there.
Emma never acknowledged the misty-eyed nurse, and left the room in a trance. She got in her old Chevy and drove toward her ghetto home. Turning east at her driveway, she was blinded by the rising sun.
When Emma entered the side door, she noticed a card in the middle of her kitchen table. Who could have left this card? The door had been locked, and nobody had a key.
Emma’s quivering hand picked up the card. Something was strangely familiar about it. She gasped as she read:
Mom,
Always remember,
Death is not the end;
You will see me again.
Love, Marie
Examining the card more closely, Emma recognized her own handwriting. She had written most of the card. She had written, “Always remember” and “Death is not the end” and “You will see me again.” It was definitely her note, but she did not remember when she wrote it.
Suddenly, it came to her. She wrote those words three years ago. It happened when she was so sick. She left the card for her daughter to find, supposing she would never return.
She looked at the first word of the card, Mom. It was in Marie’s handwriting. Under the word Mom, Emma could faintly see the word Marie. Her daughter had erased Marie, and lovingly replaced it with Mom. Likewise, on the signature line, the word Mom had been replaced with Marie. Somehow she did all of this, while sick, and left it for her mother to find.
A tinge of pride for raising such a thoughtful daughter broke through Emma’s pain. The card was more precious to her than life. Yet, Emma could not keep it. She had to share it with someone else. So she took out a pen and wrote two words, and Emma, at the bottom of the card, beside her daughter’s name. Then Emma placed the card in an envelope and addressed it to her mother.
As Emma wrote her mother’s name on the envelope, she sounded out each letter. She then gently spoke that wonderful name to the quiet morning sunlight that was flooding her tiny kitchen. Her raspy voice extolled, “Sarah Marie Gallo.”
With the insane silence now broken, she spoke those three words again. This time she uttered them more gloriously, with emphasis on her mother’s middle name, “Sarah Marie Gallo.”
And she sent the hallowed card through the dark separation of three thousand miles. This time Emma even included her return address.
