dead-and-gone

I don't want to see no dead body. Willie ain't in there. She put her walkin' shoes on. She gone to see the Lord.

I drag the body out into the snowdrifts, as far away from our shack as I can muster. I put her in a thicket of trees, where the green seems to still have a voice in the branches, and try not to think about the beasts that__l soon be gathering. There__ no way of burying her; the ground is a solid rock of ice beneath us.I kneel beside her and want desperately to weep. My throat tightens and my head aches. Everything hurts inside. But I have no way of releasing it. I__ locked up and hard as stone.____ sorry, Mamma,_ I whisper to the shell in front of me. I take her hand. It could belong to a glass doll. There__ no life there anymore. So I gather rocks, one by one, and set them over her, trying my best to protect her from the birds, the beasts, keep her safe as much as I can now. I pile the dark stones gently on her stomach, her arms, and over her face, until she becomes one with the mountain. I stand and study my work, feeling like the rocks are on me instead, then I leave the body for the forest and ice.

Mama wasn't dead...exactly. They all said she was, but when Elma was small, she seen Mama creep into her room at night, half-naked, head all bloodied red like when they found her by the well that day, and Elma reckoned dead just meant pretendin' you couldn't move or breathe until nightfall when you got up and walked around like you was free.

Only the dead, can speak about their world.

It's not that people don't know when they'll die. It's that they don't seem to know they'll die.

Deep down inside we always seek for our departed loved ones

Death is more meaningful than just being dead.

When I thought of the ferocity and strength of the fairy race, and the fact that it took all I had to open the damn blister pack and extricate the water pistols, my chosen method of defense seemed ludicrous. I'd be armed with a plastic water pistol and a trowel.