Can't Wait to Get to Heaven

Irene Goodnight

11:20 AM

After Irene put the phone down, she felt sick. She looked over at the small bunch of yellow daffodils in a jelly jar Elner had brought over a few days ago. She felt a huge wave of sadness hit her as she realized that Easter was only a few weeks away and Elner would not be here this year, or ever again. Every Easter, for as long as she could remember, she had taken her kids, then later her grandkids, over to Elner’s yard to hunt Easter eggs. Every year without fail, Elner had dyed over two hundred eggs and had hidden them all over her yard. She always held the Easter egg hunt for all the neighborhood children. Irene’s own five-year-old twin granddaughters, little Bessie and Ada Goodnight, had found the golden egg one year. What were the parents and the children going to do this year with Elner gone? What was going to happen to the Sunset Club? What was she going to do without Elner? She had known her since she was a little girl, and remembered when Elner used to keep chickens in her backyard. Irene’s mother used to send her over to Elner’s house for some eggs, and she had always left with a sack of figs as well. One time Elner had said, “Tell your mother my hens have been laying double yolks lately, so be on the lookout,” and sure enough there had been five in a dozen with double yolks. When Irene had been younger, she had only thought of Elner as the egg and fig lady, then as she grew older and spent more time with her, she came to know her as plain Miss Elner. And Miss Elner always had some funny story to tell, mostly about herself. She remembered the story that Miss Elner used to tell about what had happened in the snowstorm the first Christmas she had moved into town from the country. She had been waiting for Norma’s husband to come pick her up and take her over to their house for Christmas dinner, and when a green car slowed down, she thought it was Macky and ran out and jumped in the front seat. She said a complete stranger had been driving around looking for Third Street, when all of a sudden a big fat woman jerked the door open and hopped in beside him. She said she scared that man so badly he almost wrecked the car. Irene and Elner had laughed so hard over that, tears had run down both their cheeks. Little silly stories, like the time when her husband, Will, had swallowed a mother-of-pearl button she had left on the bedside table, thinking it was an aspirin. She said she never did tell him. No matter how blue Irene had been, Elner could always make her laugh. It was going to be sad to go by the old house on First Avenue North and not see her out on her porch waving, and knowing she would never be there again. But Irene had discovered over the years that unfortunately that was the way life was, something was there for years, and in an instant, it was gone. One day Elner’s out on the porch, the next day, it’s just an empty swing, another empty chair, another empty house, waiting for the next people to come and start all over again. She wondered if the houses ever missed people when they left, or if furniture knew anything at all. Would the chair know it was a different person sitting there? Would the bed? She sighed. “Death—what was it all about?” She wished she knew.