" Hippy - Asprins "
Explaining death. There is no formula to do it. Designers use it as themes and combine it with design concepts to acquire a design conclusion. It is an artistic means to an end…..just as our lives are a means to an end. I wrote a short fiction piece for an assignment submission recently. As a puppeteer will tell you that every puppet must have a reason to be made, this story was written for the the mother; for the soldier; for the day any adult needs to explain softly about death to someone's child.
" HIPPY - ASPRINS "
There had been fourteen days of catastrophic rain. Dead stock lay near dams and the seeding wet grains could now only be used for animal feed. A baby rabbit lay near the porch steps…drowned in the deluge and washed out from it's warren. I buried it in the corner of the hospital garden and planted a pale white and pink Hippeastrum next to it. One of the flowers had withered and fallen off, leaving three strange spell - like balls filled with seed wafers, suspended on an elegant stem. Leia had watched me from the ward window.
Leia was a translucent, blue veined eleven year old with eyelashes that swept the room like a butterfly-wing flicker. We spoke about the fragile grey animal and we talked about death…it wasn't the first time. Carcinoma was her uninvited daily companion. As I was leaving the ward, she said, " Do they come in different colours?". I said, "What?". She answered, "The Hippy-asprins." I laughed and said, "Yes, they come in all sorts of colours. The wild ones in South Africa are called 'Naked Lady' but centuries ago the Greeks called them the 'Knight's Star' . The silver - eyes love them".
The silver-eyes are a shivery, little smokey green- grey bird with silver rings around their eyes, outlined in black. Their tiny bowl-like nests are crafted from spiderwebs, grass and a little bit of moss. They migrate North at the end of summer in flocks, travelling unbelievable distances during the night. They love fruit and shoot across the garden like electric bullets whenever anything disturbs them while they are chatting or feeding. Every year, a handful migrate South and return to the garden of our hospital near the Springs.
Sybil the giant walked in to the ward with two tiny silver-eye finches held captive in her big fists. She was in a good mood today. Be careful…..she's going to eat them for breakfast on the first day of her holidays, Leia thought. This nurse was a deadly weapon on two legs with military training in weapons disposal : that is exactly what she looked like…..a giant weapons disposal unit with a voice like a projectile missile about to explode. Her age belied her strength. The earth shuddered when she moved and she could lift three children off the ground with the swoop of one arm. The silver eyes had flown against a large window and stunned themselves into a dazed stupor. The imprisoned birds enchanted the delighted Leia into a mesmerised silence which faded when the birds were released into the courtyard.
Every morning, J.J 's flotation chair was wheeled outside into the haven of this courtyard garden. Her paralysed hand would rest on a soft, purple butterfly cushion and the breeze would stroke her old face. Leia ate her hospital breakfast of fruit and brown bread next to J.J and would watch the silver-eyes bounce between long soft, moving plant fronds and Hippeastrum straps, sometimes clinging upside down like delicate trapeze artists as they sipped a little nectar from dainty flower cups. The days were changing and all the spoilt summer fruit under the trees had been eaten. The birds didn't return to the garden one day.
" Do you think J.J is scared of dying? " Leia had asked. She had been more tired than usual and was struggling with her bird-sized breakfast. The child waited for the inquisitive pale green- feathered garden bullets and they did not come.
" No, she is ready … the day J.J goes to sleep forever, she will leave with the silver- eyes and fly north in the dark. She can fly back next summer and eat fruit from the apricot trees in the courtyard. It will be her turn next. Her life is almost like that special shadow that roses cast when the sun flickers through onto a white wall in the early morning", Sybil the giant had said. The child understood. She was ready too. Her life was like the seed of a 'Hippy-asprin', she thought. The following afternoon, it was Leia who went to sleep and no one could wake her up. The last thing she had said to J.J was, " I don't like the stuff in the bread".
Every year one little silver - eye makes it's nest in the hospital garden, close to old J. J's chair; sometimes in the old apricot tree. It makes a swift flight across the garden in front of her chair as she is wheeled out in the mornings. The garden has filled with hundreds of majestic pale pink and white ' Naked Ladies '. In my own garden, a little further from the Springs, the Western silver-eyes bounce on the Hippeastrums in the large shaded pots outside my window. Like the little girl that left to look for her "Knight's star" at the end of her eleventh summer, these are not quivering, frightened mice-like birds…their wing-beats are fierce; their eyes are calm; and their spirits are as big and tough as the old forgotten size 16 leather army boots of Sybil the giant.
Written by Dheborah Quirke
8th January 2012.
