The Origins of Snow

I watch the window. I focus on the foggy glass, on the grey skies, foggy glass, grey skies, foggy glass, snowfall. Outside I can see snowflakes whirl around the garden, chasing each other in chaotic clouds, up and down, round and round, round and round, circling trees, diving under cars, swirling through the tyre swing. It’s difficult to tell where the snow is coming from: the sky or the earth or from nowhere at all.

“I’m sorry to inform you, but we have some unsettling news regarding Sarah.”

Unsettling news. I’ve broken it down many times, sorr-y / we have / news / Sar-ah, a muddled collection of monosyllables until eventually, all that’s left: Sarah.

The kitchen is overheated, there are too many people, a deep drone of unfamiliar voices fills the space. I might as well be standing in the middle of an anonymous crowd; this doesn’t feel like our kitchen. All faces have the same expression. A new person enters and their face quickly melts into the same, sad smile of everyone else. I scan the room, looking for something to do. Grandma Nell lifts a heavy box into a cupboard. I tell her to sit down, she waves her wrinkly hand. I steal the box anyway and place it on the shelf. She would never have been able to reach it.

I can’t block it out. Two men, sharp uniform, formal, direct, ready to destroy everything you ever knew with a sentence. And the struggle that came after, the struggle for words, to make them go away, to tell them they’re lying, to scream without sound.

I turn to the large oak table. Her portrait locked in a golden frame. The photo was taken by our uncle during his photography days, a hobby quickly overshadowed by fishing then French cooking and now, I don’t even know, I suppose I should ask him. Next to the photo sits Bill the Bear. He shouldn’t be in the kitchen. Somebody must have taken him from her room, somebody must have.

A large lady dressed in a crinkly black dress pours mugs of tea, mug after mug after mug. She’s mumbling to no one in particular. She’s mumbling to me.

“I just couldn’t believe it, she was such a sweetheart. Why would?…how can?…some people…this is what the world has come to.”

The mugs overflow, brown puddles leak out over the table. I reach to save Bill but someone else grabs him before me.

“You never think something like this will happen to you.”

“She was found”

I wasn’t able to say goodbye, my mother said it wouldn’t help, it would make it worse, it shouldn’t be my last memory of her, but now all I see is an oppressive blank: she was found, she was found.

“We’ll be driving over to the church soon.”

I leave the kitchen, walk up the stairs and cross the landing, I stop in front of her bedroom. Softly, I press my knuckles against the door. I open it. Her room seems strange; my father is sitting on her bed.

“Oh…sorry.”

He doesn’t respond, his gaze is fixed on the window, caught in a violent whirl of snow. He was the first to see my sister, he saw her as they found her. When he came back I searched his face for answers, analyzing every frown, every twitch but there was nothing, nothing but a marble glaze clouding over the hazel in his eyes.

I leave her room and walk back down, past a friend weeping on the stairs. I leave through the front door, my feet glide over snow-covered grass. Icy flakes blanket my hair, my black clothes and my cold red hands. The monotone sobs, the kitchen clutter and my father’s marble stare all drown in the overwhelming stillness of snowfall. I pull myself onto the dusty tyre swing, the place where we used to go for our secret meetings, our “sister sessions.” I close my eyes and try to imagine what life will be like without you, my feet still can’t touch the ground. The snow has stopped its frantic whizzing and whirling and now steadily falls from the sky in a vast sheet of white. I open my eyes and focus on an individual flake, I follow it down as it falls in a sleek horizontal streak but my eyes can’t keep up, I re-focus. It’s impossible to know if this is the same flake as before. Everything is going to be different. I stare across the silent landscape, over the frothy hills and I notice a single snowflake dancing out of line. I follow its route spiraling through two barren trees and suddenly, out of nowhere, I feel a gentle push. The push sends me forward, swinging through the snowy sheet into an infinite veil of crystal drops.