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Natural Causes
Today, they are all long dead, but their lives, I assure you, were full. Full of the usual things: birthdays and weddings and evenings spent dealing cards on the porch. Lemonade. Oatmeal on winter mornings with just a dash of brown sugar mixed in. Harriet (left) was the first to leave this world. Death by drowning—unrelated to the photograph seen here. Cynthia (center) passed on at 71—the victim of an operation gone bad. Emily (right) was the last to go. She woke one Thursday morning in December, prepared to rise, but her heart was no longer in it. It seized, a great internal churning, and then, rested for the first time in 81 years. In that final beat—that final, lurching thunder—Emily’s eyes flittered toward the ceiling, returning to a scene in a stream alongside her dear childhood friends. How fortunate I am, she thought, to be reunited by natural causes. Words by BJ Hollars. Audio narration by Jan Larson. Audio recording by Scott Morfitt. |