The duck egg balloons.
The 7th of April.
That one sentence means so much, to my family.
It carries huge loads of emotion on it’s back.
Mostly sad emotions;
Sadness, grief, loss, helplessness.
Mostly loss.
We go to the cemetery,
release balloons, like we do every year,
On the 7th of April.
They are a different colour this year.
Blue, as usual, but duck egg blue, this time.
The prettiest colour I have ever seen, I think.
We let them go, and watch them float away into the overcast sky.
They float peacefully,
In the same direction they do every year,
like something is pulling them.
We all stand there, watching them drift higher and higher,
until they are nothing but tiny black specks against the grey.
We shift and move, as the trees hide them from us.
We all stare, silent,
until there is nothing more to stare at.
The balloons are gone.
"They’re flying up to Heaven," Noah whispers, "I wish I could fly up to Heaven."
"You will, Noah. We all will, one day. And then we can be with William again," Ivy says.
I look at her, that beautiful little girl, wiser than us all.
She’s right; We will all be together again, someday.
As we walk back to the car, blue sky appears.
The clouds dissapear, slowly.
Shrinking back in the direction of those balloons,
almost like they were trying to take away all the sadness,
and leave us with the prettiest colour
I had ever seen.
