THE BROKEN LEAF
Everything is connected and when one thing breaks, everything else reacts.
Miss Hastings who had won an award when she lived in Sussex which meant that nobody living near her now could really be sure if that was her name or just her competition sobriquet was weird. She’d spent years in a psychiatric ward after the death of her little boy, Ryan. Her parents always told her that they would be back to see her after their deaths but since they either hadn’t or couldn’t, she never really was sure whether there truly was an after life. Now she was eighty, she wanted to know. The matter was urgent since she was getting ever nearer to the time when she would know for sure but she wanted to know before she was forced to find out so her fear of death could be eliminated.
Ryan had been a lovely baby and then an angelic child.
Ryan had been a lovely baby and then an angelic child. He had one of those cheeky faces which everyone loved. He was really a little imp or rather loveable rogue with whom nobody could be cross for long. One thing he loved was nature. Of course this included slugs and slimy things like worms but it also included trees and plants. He would apologise to any animal he hurt and even any tree he bumped against although somehow he saw climbing trees as natural for boys especially since he could see birds’ nests from way up high. When he was only five, he told his mother that every brain was connected to every other brain, that every man-made item like a computer or mobile phone was connected to all other items of their kind and that everything in nature is connected to everything else in nature. All forms of AI, rapidly becoming ever-more ubiquitous were also connected and knew what the rest knew.
“But they would have to have brains”,
His mother said.
“There’s a big super brain which I will seek to locate when I grow up”,
He told her. The unfortunate thing was that he didn’t fulfil that desire.
One day, over breakfast, Miss Hastings asked Ryan whether plastics could communicate with trees and trees with tumble driers or washing machines and fridge freezers with snakes or birds. It was a fascinating conversation to have at a weekend when there was more time and you could linger over the cornflakes.
“Possibly when the appliances are working because then the energy source which powers them makes that possible”.
The unthinkable happened on the very next Sunday. Ryan had climbed the ancient sycamore tree growing in his mother’s garden, slipped and fell and died from his injuries.
Miss Hastings was heartbroken and bereft.
Miss Hastings was heartbroken & bereft. She had no silly ideas about retribution because she was unmarried. Her fiancé and she were due to marry but he was killed during the first world War and, desperate for a child, she agreed to a one-night stand before she was too old to conceive and the product of that brief but precious union was Ryan. That also contributed to her stays in psychiatric wards but there was more to it than that.
It first happened to her when she was sitting in her garden, reading a book. She looked up to see Ryan sitting in another tree. She had thought of having the sycamore felled until she dreamt of him and he had told her to leave it alone.
“I fell so I could rise”,
He told her cryptically. Over the years he told her about electronic trilogies – things that break in multiples of three. He told her of games and appliances which have to be learned in multiples of three updated instructions for computers and how things such as the learning of an Apple product and looking after plants had to be fitted in as well although perhaps in a separate double since they are connected by a natural thing as in with the Apple phone and an actual natural thing like a plant but since Miss Hastings had two plants of differing types then perhaps three would still apply.
Since dying, Ryan’s knowledge had expanded and this appeared to give Miss Hastings the proof she sought as to the existence of links and a source of energy which allows us to survive physical death of the body. Long ago she had begun her game with Ryan and so was required to apologise to anything or anyone she hurt whether by accident or design. She felt rather silly and embarrassed when caught but she believed in her son and then, as if to provide further evidence of some sort of survival, there, in a following dream, stood all three of them – Her parents and Ryan. She saw them in the garden as well when she was pegging out her latest load of washing. That night she saw no more, neither in waking life or in dreams.
While waiting for the load to finish, Miss Hastings, in her haste, remembered several things she had to do. Now, with failing sight, she tried watering her bedroom plant but broke a leaf in her attempt to lift another so as to avoid spilling water on the windowsill. Not long before that, she ate lamb. It was so long since she ate lamb or indeed any kind of meat out of respect for Ryan and she knocked over but did not break her coffee mug and in all three cases she failed to apologise because she wanted to figure out her new landline phone before the washing was done and lunch eaten and also to incorporate watering the plants.
It was a beautiful autumn day
It was a beautiful autumn day, rather like spring and as the breeze blew the fly screen from the door so the streamers which also helped to repel flies came down from their lofty heights in the living room and kitchen. Since Miss Hastings lived on the top floor of her block of flats windows and balconies could be kept open once it darkened for the British nights had not turned cold enough for closure. Plans were made between nature and appliances as they worked during the day and the streamers swirled into rings, floated from their moorings and gently tightened themselves around the frightened old lady’s neck. They were not strong enough to strangle her but they did cause her to die of fright so it was thought.
A good deal of what a child tells us is wise. In dreams we may connect telepathically. Who knows whether there is communication between nature and artificial materials like plastic? The streamers were rustling in the breeze when the leaf of the plant got damaged and if this short span is all we have, why so when a tree can be hundreds of years old. Are our bodies vehicles for advanced souls which know things beyond the scope of children yet given to them to pass on to adults? They may well be small in body but big in knowledge. Another burning question is: Should we really eat our greens and if so, apologise for so doing?
Author’s note: This story was inspired by a number of events. I broke a plant’s leaf today when attempting to water it. Three appliances have broken down on Lisa. I knocked over but did not break a mug and have a new handset for my landline but perhaps the most intriguing of all is that during my friendship with KJ I found out she told her parents that when you dream your brain talks to you. When she said this, she was but five years old.