Grounded

I buried my three year old daughter, Ariel, in the corn field where I taught her how to fly a kite. Just beyond the rail tie fence the stalks of corn stood stiff and tall as if they were soldiers. Sometimes, when the corn was still green, a strong gust would knock the corn out of its husk and send it into the yard, or even the pool of our country home. Ariel and I would pick up each of the corn cobs and toss them in the trash. The empty husks would lose their stiffness, easily submitting to the direction of the wind; as if they knew they could no longer fulfill their duty to protect and mature their cob.

Ariel loved to swim; she was standing in the doorway of our sliding backdoor with a popsicle grin, hot pink floaties in hand, and her favorite The Little Mermaid one-piece on. She was giving me no choice but to take her out to the pool. I had Ariel hold her arms out as I slipped the inflated Life Savers onto her arms and set her into the shallow end of our fiberglass pool. The stone deck scratched against my palms as I pushed myself into the abdomen level water. The sun burning behind the clouds reflected Ariel’s pudgy, crimson cheeks and blue eyes into the bottom of the pool. I couldn’t help myself but to send a tide of the reflection her way, raising some purple from her plastic floaties.

The plump, pure white clouds were shoved aside by the wind and allowed the sun rays to shine against the aqua blue background of sky. I looked at my princess’ shoulders to see they were turning pink under the cruelty of the sun. “Time to get out,” I told her.

“But, daddy, I want to become a mermaid like princess Ariel!” she exclaimed. If that weren’t enough to convince me, she poked out her bottom lip at me and widened her eyes.

It was the same face that her mother, Heather, had made the July day we went to Disney Land when she asked to stay for the fireworks. Heather’s blue eyes welled up with fake tears; I laughed at her charade, agreeing to stay and giving her a hug with one hand entangled in her red spiral curls. I sent a quick text to Ariel’s babysitter attaching a photo of Heather with her pout in front of the castle and informing her that we would be back later than expected.

We were almost home from the colorful display when a drunken driver sped through a red light into the passenger door of our gray Buick SUV. I felt Heather’s hand go limp in mine within seconds and that’s when I knew that she was gone. The door of the SUV was pushing into Heather’s side and her legs were caught under the dashboard. I had been so focused on my anger and Heather that I hadn’t noticed the car had spun.

By the time the paramedics had arrived, I was more wrecked than the car. My throat was sore from cursing God and her yellow sundress was completely drenched in my tears as well as her own blood when the paramedics pried her lifeless body from my arms. They put her on a gurney to check her vitals, but I already knew that she was dead. A paramedic who was probably in his mid-thirties came over to check my pulse and my blood pressure – which both had spiked due to the trauma – and told me with sympathy in his brown eyes that my wife had died from tearing a heart muscle in the spin.

The police ride home from the accident was the longest ride I had to endure. We sat in silence the whole ride home and I tried to focus on the radio and police radar, but my thoughts still attempted to fill the void. I wondered how I would explain death to a child that mainly spoke gibberish and I wondered if she could ever forgive me. I had been driving that night so the guilt consumed me. There was no way I could forgive myself for not honoring my vow to protect Heather, so how could Ariel ever forgive me for killing her mother?

With a sunscreen bottle in hand, I ran back outside to apply it to Ariel’s pale skin. The sun was so bright that it took my eyes a moment to adjust to the light change from indoors to outdoors. I had stumbled up the steps to the pool deck, holding on to the railing, by the time my vision adjusted to a horrific sight. Ariel looked as if weights had been applied to her shoulders, keeping her head completely under the water. Her wavy, red hair was suspended in the water and enveloped her as if it were a gossamer veil. The water was no longer clear or blue; it looked as though a plague had happened and turned the water to crimson blood.

I sprinted over to the pool and jumped into the red sea to rescue her from the curse of death. She felt completely limp in my arms as I laid her out on the stone deck and I saw the gash on the side of her face. There wasn’t a pulse to be found, so I started giving her CPR, but with shaky hands and no proper training it was nearly impossible to perform well. Ten minutes had passed and I knew that I had failed to protect another loved one that had sworn to protect. Ariel was dead. I wondered how many more people would have to be cursed by my vow of protection. Two casualties and no one to blame but myself.

Ariel was just sleeping – or at least I convinced myself she was – so I gathered her in my arms, her shoulders resting on one of my arms and her legs bent over the other. The limpness and weight of her body gave me too much proof to deny that she was dead. I had killed yet another loved one. I remembered the blackness of Heather’s body bag around her and the zipper being closed causing her to disappear into the blackness of night. Her burial disgusted me; the way that she was lain back into the earth, next to hundreds of others who were taken after their prime. I told myself that I couldn’t let the same happen to Ariel.

The moon filled the clear sky more than the night before, both in size and in brightness. The rows of corn seemed to glow bright green under the gray light source. I was hidden between the stalks as I stomped on the metal of the shovel and scooped out one last heap of damp, brown dirt. Ariel was dressed in her favorite outfit – a purple dress with rainbow colored peace signs and pink tights. I hoped that the corn field could better protect her than I could as I laid her face up in the fresh grave.

Once the last bit of dirt was settled over her lifeless body, I cried for my little girl. I had hoped that I could one day get the chance to tell her about her mother, but she had been too young to understand where Heather had gone. The picture of Heather from Disney Land sat by my bedside, but Ariel never got a chance to ask about her. If she had, I would have told her everything I loved about Heather and told her that her mother flew up past the clouds to be with the angels. A girl that didn’t even comprehend death was lying in the ground dead herself. I hoped that she was not looking past the dirt to the night sky, but rather looking from the stars to her grave.

I stare at the little boy with his dad learning to fly his kite over Ariel’s grave, which has since been paved over by asphalt. The little boy loses his grip on the string of the kite and it starts to float off into the clouds. Without anyone to ground the kite it can choose to fly away from this place. As the kite soars upwards, it chooses to be free. I used to think about how similar I was to a corn stalk that had failed to mature a corn cob, but as I hear the moving truck’s horn from my driveway, I think that I am more like a kite that has lost its grounder.