How learning about death changed everything.
Jenny Chang / BuzzFeed
One day when I was 9 years old, I walked through my hometown wearing a white cotton T-shirt, handmade polyester pants meant to look like real jeans, and North Star runners. Everything felt good. I wasn't wearing socks or underwear. I couldn't feel any of my clothing. Nothing bothered me. I felt weightless, like I could walk forever, like I was a natural element, like wind, something that had always existed and always would. I didn't feel anything but the sunshine on my skin and pure joy, pure confidence in myself and in my world. I can't remember what happened that day before I started walking around town or why I felt so free. I just remember thinking everything was perfect, everything in life was perfect, and I fully belonged in the world, in that town, in those clothes, in my body.
By the end of the day I would stop believing in God but I didn't know it at the time.
At first I walked with my uncle Edward. He was very tall and had red hair. I had bumped into him by the feed mill. I was climbing down from the top of it and he was watching me with one hand on his hip and the other shielding his eyes from the sun because he was afraid I'd fall. A teenager had fallen from it, he said, and was paralyzed for life. He told me he was a "good man." He said it in German. That meant he'd been appointed by the church to help out a widow in town. He had to do good things for her, he said, fix things and help her budget her money.
I asked him what a widow was. I told him I'd never get married and he laughed.
"Do you want to bet?" he said.
I shook his hand and said yes, a million bucks.
I said good-bye to him and walked to Main Street. I waved at a lot of people and they all waved back because we all knew each other. I walked into the funeral home and saw old people gathered around a small coffin. I knew there was a little boy in there. I went to have a look and I touched his arm. His mother was my mother's friend. When they came to visit I'd run and hide because I didn't want to have to play with him. I pressed hard on his arm with my finger but he didn't flinch.
Jenny Chang / BuzzFeed
Sorry for running away when you came to my house with your mom.
I didn't say it out loud but I knew that he was an angel now and could hear everything. I looked at him until a woman gave me a popcorn ball from her purse and told me to eat it outside on the sidewalk.
I was on my way to the old folks home to sing for Grace. She was the reason why I was walking around town. My mother was trying to do housework and wanted me out of her hair. She told me to go sing for Grace, like usual. When I got to the old folks home, I had popcorn stuck in my hair because I had eaten it in the wind. I walked to Grace's room. I walked past very old people in chairs. A woman called me by my mother's name.
Do a cartwheel, she said.
I did three in a row in the long corridor and the woman shook her head and wiped her eyes.
Grace lay in her bed and looked dead. She didn't open her eyes the whole time I was singing. I sang "Children of the Heavenly Father." I got bored in the middle of a verse because she wasn't smiling or reacting at all so I stopped and flicked the light off and on in her room but she still didn't do anything. I left her room and thought about telling someone that Grace had died but I was suddenly afraid that I'd be blamed for it. I walked outside into the sunshine; I had been breathing through my mouth so I wouldn't have to smell things inside, and ran on the giant spools of electrical cable that were stored in the empty lot next to the old folks home. If I worked hard I could get them to move like giant logs, like a log-rolling competition, all over the lot.
A man drove up in his car and asked me to stop rolling the spools of cable. I was standing on one, high above him, and I smiled and said OK. I jumped down and kept walking. I walked to the farm on the edge of town and Frank Klassen was standing in the driveway talking to his friend, Harold. I asked them what was up and Frank said, "Stillborn calf this morning, not pretty." Harold put his engineer cap on my head. I picked up stones from the driveway and asked them why.
"It happens," said Frank.
I asked Harold if I could keep his hat and he said sure, why not? I kept walking.
