Red Balloon

There is a red, heart shaped balloon on the hill today. It dances and bobs in the cool breeze of a clear morning on the first of July. A small balloon but a large shadow hangs over the field. Ribbons, flowers, messages from friends dapple the dried grass near the large numbers "07," for this is the hill beside the High School just over a week after graduation. There are a few people walking on the hill between the mementos, stopping to look at one or the other. They seem slow and meandering, taking time to read the messages and breath the morning in deep, to receive the imprint of the weight of the day.

 

When he was twenty one, he was away at college and woke up groggily to a phone call from his mother. He had been partying the night before and was not really ready to deal with her but there it was, his mother on the other end of the line. "…Jim….dead…. So sorry honey.." He shook his head a bit and tried to concentrate on what she was saying. "I am so so sorry honey. I know how you cared for him. He was such a good friend…." The message was starting to get through, he slumped down the wall. She was telling him that his best friend was dead.

 

At twenty one, death is never that real. It is always a distant thing, receding back to the horizon as you walk towards it. It is that black bear that you know still roams the mountains but is never really encountered. More of a rumor, an unlikely but possible moment that seems so remote as to barely hover in the dim fog at the base of the skull. "They found him in his car in the parking lot of St Francis Hospital," his mother continued. "He seems to have died from carbon-monoxide in an open air parking lot. I don't even see how it could happen."

 

It was true, Jim, his best friend in the world had died in an outside parking lot. The fumes from his Datsun B210 had drifted up through the floor boards as he smoked a joint and listened to the radio. Jim was famous for pulling off to the side of the road to listen intently if the NY Mets were playing or if the Miami Dolphins were playing. He was also known to keep the windows closed all the time. His life ended before it really began, and the shock was enormous to the community. Everybody that ever went to high school or community college with Jim showed up. The average age of people at the calling hours and funeral was way too young. And nobody knew what to do with themselves. For weeks they were lost in a haze and locked into a continual reliving of the same moment of death. This was when death became real for him, the day it transitioned from myth to reality in an instant.

 

Today, twenty six years later, his community is rocked by the deaths of five young women who graduated last week with his daughter Ellen. The five were all well known, heart of the community kinds of kids. Four were cheerleaders, one went on the tsunami relief trip to India with Ellen last year. All of them were happy and excited to have graduated and to be going on to college. Driving at night to a family cottage in the finger lakes, there was a tragic collision with a industrial truck, eighteen wheels carrying tons of paper. The SUV the girls were riding in, crashed head on with the truck, and burst into flames. The flames were high enough to completely burn through the power lines and cable television line above the incident.

 

This was the call that all parents dread. After midnight, the phone rings and you hear the police at the other end. The world stops, words travel slowly through molasses and come out muddled at the other end. We have all seen it on T.V. As young people, it is a moment in a movie, as parents, it becomes embedded in our gray matter, haunting.

 

For three days now there has been no end of it. The conversations at work and on the sidewalk with neighbors. Consoling teens who are trying to handle the grief. Constant on-the-scene coverage of students coming to the high school to find each other. There was a candle light vigil on the hill overlooking the school. Five hundred or maybe eight hundred candles under the lone voice of a saxophone, played by the jazz teacher. A bluesy goodbye, and tears. This is the moment when Ellen and her generation are discovering reality of the fleetingness of life, the conditionality of our existence.

 

This morning is the last calling hours before the funerals begin. The high school is more crowded than during the football season. The parking lot is full and has overflowed to neighboring streets. Couples, triplets, and larger groups of people are walking in Sunday best in the bright morning sun. He drives by in his car, windows open, glancing at the hill with tears in his eyes so that all he can really focus on is the one red balloon.

Comments

[Carrie Gaynor]

I have been noticing the red balloons too. The image that captures my attention is that the helium is gone and they hang limp from lamp post. I resist the urge to take them down, to take away the symbol of life gone, the breath released... The hanging balloons now exist as a space holder and make this real. No dream. No way to spin it into something more or less than it is.