The Winds of Change - Melody Cryns

When I was a little girl I believed in magic. I believed Peter Pan really could fly, and so could Mary Poppins. I believed my mother was magical and knew everything and that she would never die…

Nana passed away late Sunday night, within hours after we left her side. It was as if she was waiting for everyone to say good-bye and then she slipped away…such an incredible life. When I awoke this morning, I pulled on my sweats and dashed outside into the cold early morning air towards Curves. I could feel a cool wind whip through me and I shivered, pulled my jacket hood over my head. I wondered for just a moment if the wind was coming from the east or west. Mary Poppins said she’d leave when the wind changes – how does one really know when the wind changes, I thought, as I continued onward, so many memories swirling around me on a chilly Tuesday morning. The Ides of March…

It was chilly and cold like this in January 1997 right after my mother died – icy winds blowing as we stood on Nye Beach in a circle with the metal box that contained my mother’s remnants…my brother and I had both seen Mom’s body before she was cremated. She looked like she was sleeping – but something was missing. She was like a china doll, not really there. Her magic had disappeared and gone elsewhere – my brother and I both noticed it when we looked at Mom stretched out on that cold metal gurney.

The icy cold wind blew and whipped against our faces, salty and damp. This all happened just the way Mom wanted it – not the way anyone else did. The ceremony on the beach where everyone said something about Mom. Of course I was late, but my brother said Mom had planned for that too. She orchestrated her own passing, it seemed, including telling my brother to give me an earlier time for the funeral so that I wouldn’t be too late. Only this wasn’t really a formal funeral – but what is?

What will they do for Nana, I thought as I continued walking down the street. Did she want anything in particular done? What will happen to her beautiful paintings that hung in her apartment and I’d seen them at her house before as well? I wondered.

The only thing I could do when they got to me was sing a song – I thought it would be a Beatles song for sure. But no, it was an old drinking song that I learned at school in second or third grade – probably Miss Evans, the music teacher who was my idol all through elementary school, taught it to us. “I’ve been to Harlem, I’ve been to Dover, I’ve traveled this world all wide over, over, over!” I started singing it slow and soft, standing there at that beach, the icy wind practically blowing through us, holding on to Megan’s hand – she was only four years old then – my older kids on the other side of me, my brother and sister across from me and all of my mother’s closest friends who were like family to her.

I just couldn’t think of anything to say, so I sang – and my brother who had been so stoic and strong and who led the ceremony, smiled and started to sing along. My brother NEVER sang along. Melissa sobbed uncontrollably for the Grandma she was so close to – they had shared more than just the same color eyes – Melissa was my mother reincarnated – even at the age of 14. “Listen to your daughter sometimes,” my mom used to say. “Sometimes I think she’s the only one in your family who makes sense…”

The words all floated through the wind, the song that I sang –one of the many songs Mom and I would sing while walking down the street, embarrassing my brother and sister who didn’t want to be seen with us. We’d shout at the “over, over, over!” part.

Will they sing any songs for Nana, I thought? Will anyone take her remains out on a fishing boat and fight seasicknesses and waves higher than the boat to scatter her ashes into the ocean like we did for Mom?

I didn’t know, but I knew one thing for sure. Nana was loved…like my Mom was…and my Grandma who lived a couple of years longer than Mom.

Where do they really go when they die, or when the wind changes and they fly away – like Mary Poppins? But Mary Poppins did come back.