"... Both of them pushing Gloria in a wheelchair along the banks of the river. Up a lazy river where the robin's song wakes a brand new morning as we roll along. It was a celebration, that day. They had dug their feet down into happiness and weren't prepared to let go. They threw sticks into an eddy and watched them circle. Put a blanket down, ate Wonder Bread sandwiches. Later in the afternoon her sister started crying, like a change in the weather, for no reason except the popping of a wine cork. Jaslyn handed her a wadded tissue. Gloria laughed at them and said that she'd overtaken grief a long time ago, that she was tired of everyone wanting to go to heaven, nobody wanting to die. The only thing worth grieving over, she said, was that sometimes there was more beauty in this life than the world could bear.
Gloria left with a smile on her face. They closed her eyes with the glare of the sun still on them, rolled the wheelchair up the hill, stayed a little while looking out over the land until the insects of evening gathered."
by Colum McCann in Let the Great World Spin
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| Sunset on Murray River © Jennifer Phillips |
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