Sheena

Sheena

Thursday, March 11, 2010

In the land of Sady

In the land of Sady Originally written in 2009


From the very first moment she opened her bright golden eyes we knew she was special. Everyone says that about their children, but it wasn’t just us. People couldn’t take their eyes off of her, they would gravitate around this beautiful child as if she held the key to some great and wondrous secret.

When she was four years old, she was a surprisingly nostalgic child. She would force her way into every picture taken. When questioned she would advise the curious adults, that someday she may want to remember this moment and would look back at the pictures and time would stand still allowing her to escape to that moment once more.

We worried for a while that people would fear her, for she was definitely odd by the standards of the average child. Not in looks but in wisdom, spirit, and character. She was, with every fiber of her being, unique.

When she was eight she voiced her fear that the world only existed so long as she was aware of it. She wasn’t being conceded or self absorbed she honestly feared that if she forgot someone they would simply cease to exist until she remembered them again. If she remembered them.

She was always short, with beautiful long dark hair and those same bright golden eyes that had surprised us so, on that autumn morning when we first brought her to this world. Although I never really felt she belonged here. Not that I didn’t want her here, there was nothing wrong with her. She just seemed out of place, like she lived in her own world. Sady’s world or as she would later refer to it, The Land of Sady.

Sady was very curious, she yearned for knowledge and ached for wisdom. She wanted to know everything there was to know. She wanted to solve every puzzle and unravel every mystery. She had a way with words and could tell a twisted tale like no other child could. She had the confidence of a 30 year old business woman on top of the world, but the spirit of the child raised by wolves.

She would dance and sing constantly and wanted to be the best at everything. She wanted to do everything, she could never settle for just one thing she wanted to grow up to be. When she was ten she stated that her goal in life was to obtain the Life time achievement award. I don’t think anyone doubted she could do it either.
As Sady reached her teens, she grew into an amazing beauty, but was never so aware of it that she became cruel. She seemed to have no enemies, everyone liked her, sometimes in spite of themselves. She was never mean, and rarely angry. She had an undying urge to help those in need and to spread her own insatiable joy to the rest of the world. She was calm and rarely stressed, always in control.

I recall at age 14 she aspired to someday visit hungry children and deliver them food and build them shelter with her own hands. She wanted to meet them and tell them in person that, if no one else did, she cared. So, that they would know in their darkest moments, that someone, somewhere, cared about them.

Although, as I said, she was always in control when it came to anger or stress, she was often overwhelmed by other emotions. She could honestly not help but cry at the site of a wounded creature, or a dismayed person. She would actually feel physical pain and distress at the thought of others suffering. She had been described as being empathic also. She was a wiz at reading how others felt and would often feel it too. She used this as inspiration for her writing.

By the time she was sixteen she spoke four languages fluently, had published over a dozen poems, another dozen short stories. She had been offered a scholarship at Julliard and had organized entire charity events to help the needy. She had saved a child from drowning, nursed a puppy, two birds, and a litter of kittens back to health. She had her first kiss, drove a car, and met the president on a trip to Washington DC.

Sady never made it to Julliard. She never got a second kiss. She never visited the hungry children around the world. She never received the Life time achievement award. She never turned seventeen.

The night before her seventeenth birthday, Sady had gone for a walk. Before she left she told me that the sky had more stars than she could imagine seeing again, and that she couldn’t live with herself if she didn’t experience it. She walked out into the crisp night air, her long hair flowing in the wind, smiling as she breathed in the scent of the night and gazed about the endless sea of stars above. She never made it home.

As she crossed the street on the corner of Main and 4th that night, her fate had already been decided. A midnight blue mustang, driven by an angry and intoxicated man, ran a red light and like so many before her, Sady was instantly reduced to another statistic.

She didn’t die right away, she lay in excruciating pain before and looked to the stranger that held her in her arms. She whispered her last words, “Is he ok?”. Even in her last moments, with the very last effort of her amazing being, she found forgiveness and concern for the life of the person who took hers.
Sady once admitted to me her biggest fear, was of being forgotten. I am comforted in knowing that no person who ever met her, would or could ever forget her. Least of all the man who took her away from us.

I sometimes think she’s merely asleep somewhere still dreaming, so that we can all continue to exist…. In the Land of Sady.


Author’s Note:

This is not a true story. This is a complete work of fiction dedicated to the many lives lost to drunk drivers. Any similarity to any actual people or events is purely coincidental and not in anyway intended. Sady was the name of my cat, SadyLady, whom I loved very much and was ran over by a car when I was sixteen.

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