Nobody looked at the coffin. Only quick stabbing guilty glances, then eyes focused with renewed intensity on the minister, the hymnbooks or the floral arrangement. With one of those split-second stares I realised how small the coffin was. Flora was small, but we never noticed. (Was - how the mind accepts so quickly.) To us, she was always a hundred feet tall. She was an electrical current through our lives, a permanent adrenalin rush. She never stopped talking, never stopped moving. Even in her sleep she babbled and twisted sheets into intricate knots about her body.
The first day she arrived at school, she looked like any shy new girl. But the mischievous glint of slanted green eyes behind a wild orange tangle of hair betrayed her inner extrovert. Within a week, she was the leader of our little group. We sometimes looked at her with unbelieving eyes, awed by her sheer sense of self. We were all stumbling, trying to discover our identities in this strange new world of independence, but Flora always knew exactly who she was and what she was doing, and she bewildered and enchanted us. She challenged where we bowed down, accepted inevitable defeat where we rebelled helplessly. She lived on the absolute outside of her skin, and danced out her emotions in a constant rhythm of flying arms and feet.
One hectic, lazy summer day at the beach, we had a picnic celebrating the end of one school year, already mourning the next. The sun didn’t sink slowly beneath the waves, but vanished abruptly, as if it was a winter sun, taking a break from the drear in the Northern Hemisphere. It flared over the water, turning everything orange, then meekly surrendered to the swiftly descending darkness and hurried back to the other side of the world. All was silent. All was still. Even Flora.
Then, as if that unusual sudden stillness had attempted to enclose an active volcano, Flora erupted. “Come on!” she sang, her joyful voice slicing the silence. Laughing, she ran the curve of the black-sanded bay, jumping the incoming breakers, racing through the clinging strands of kelp that sought to stop her, to hold her back. Bemused, but suddenly lightened, we pounded behind her, bare feet sending up spray, wet and dry both on our lips.
Flora began humming. We all recognised the tune, we’d all studied the movie at school, and we all hummed along, feet settling into a steady rhythm. Da da da da daa daa... Chariots of Fire. Flora was still ahead of us, her hair a flaming beacon, and I remembered that one of the guys in that movie had been unbeatable, not because of any special speed or technique, but because he was driven by something so great, so powerful, that it lifted him beyond human qualities and set him among the heroes. Flora’s exuberance, her ever-present jubilation was a force like that. It was not due to any religion, but it was somehow holy, and it set her apart and above the rest of us. She could have made us feel mundane and boring next to her brilliance, but she wasn’t only interesting, but interested. People fascinated her, as much as she fascinated them, and she constantly, openly marvelled at the unnoticed miracle that is life. And through her, we saw wonder in our lives too.
There were boys, of course, drawn to her freedom, her vitality. But they were moths to her flame, and none lasted longer than a few weeks, doomed to plummet, wings burning. She shrugged it off, the way she shrugged everything off. “Oh well,” she’d say. “If it wasn’t working anyway...” And then she’d suggest a rainy day tramp through the bush, or a night sleeping under the stars, or maybe just a day under the trees at the Public Gardens, relaxing and talking in the green-lit shade. She ignored criticism and jealousy, and they never touched her indomitable spirit.
She couldn’t ignore the disease though, the disease that leeched her blood and her vitality. The two-pronged attack left her flushed, with chaotic colouring. Her eyes were too bright, glinting feverishly, her hair, tangled on the pillow, too strong, too vibrant. They made us aware of the rest of her, how pale and wasted she was. Aware, also, of the encroaching darkness that should never come so young. Life was always sweeter after a visit to Flora, and we were ashamed of that sweetness and guiltily returned more often than we really wanted to. And each time, it was a renewed shock, this blight on the tiger-lily we knew and loved, this parasite/predator greedily sucking the life-loving force of her.
She still retained her joy in life, but didn’t indulge in false hopes, preferring to take her strength from what she could find - the winter sun on her bedspread, the texture and sour sweetness of grapes, a sunflower picked from a stranger’s garden on the way to the hospital. She fought her foe relentlessly - not out of fear, but out of a deep-rooted stubborness, a refusal to just give up and die. A battle impossible to win. Death is the adversary none of us can defeat. Too soon, Flora’s eyes flashed for the last time, and she was permanently stilled.
Snapping out of my reverie, I stared blurrily at the coffin that contained my
vanished friend’s body. It wasn’t her. Where was her freedom, her endless energy?
We’d talked about that once, I recalled, before the illness had made me shy away
from such topics.
“Do you believe in God, Flora?” She stared out over the waves caressing the
sand.
“I believe in something,” she replied. “Some force, some form of Creator.
Don’t know if you could call it God though.”
“What about the afterlife?” I persisted. She laughed.
“I’ll tell you about it if I get there first.”
I actually can’t believe I wrote this. I had all sorts of images and feelings whirling through my head and I just had to get them on paper or I’d explode. I like the result.