Short Death Stories: Car Seat on a Highway
When life's edges are made vivid.
A softer, more melancholic space—elegy and obituary, beautiful words both, language for the abyss.
The sky was heavy and my friend called to cancel. “I don’t want to drive on the highway in this.”
Outside, the rain let loose: the sky became water, nature’s cleanse, the clouds so dark that it appeared to be midnight. We were supposed to pick up our sons from a party on an acreage, driving out together for a Saturday night adventure.
Such are the thrills of adventures at this stage of life. In our mid-forties, two women taking a car to pick up kids, visit with our friend and see her new acreage, perhaps having one drink between us is as wild as we get. Another mom out at the acreage texts to say there is hail the size of loonies falling.
“I’ll go and get them.”
Raised in London, I have a nostalgia for rain. Only occasionally would it rain like this, and the sheer volume of water reminds me of once when I was caught as a teenager walking home from school. I passed the pub and the sky opened. Unzipped. Drenched. My uniform sodden. And a wild, wet glee at the abandon of it all.
Saturday night. Alone now. The sky indulges itself. I grab the van keys.
My daughter, thirteen, in that place between, where everything is raw abandon, dark eyeliner, small stars hand drawn on her shoulder, comes into the kitchen.
“Do you want to come with me to pick up your brother?”
She rolls her eyes. Why would she want to do that when she could stay home and eat cereal and watch TikTok?
Outside, I’m soaked running to the car. I abhor umbrellas. I start the van, damp and ready, when my daughter appears at the van window and jumps in.
She puts Chapelle Roan on the stereo so poppy magic fills the air, the sky, calming suddenly, clears as we hit the highway.
Halfway there, the flashing lights of police and a flattened white car. The rip in the sky between the dark clouds exposes a sunset, the light of which catches a lone car seat on the highway. A hundred feet, more, from the accident. Another vehicle, unrecognizable as what it once was beyond.
Chapell Roan sings, “God, what have you done?”
This happened earlier in the summer, the lilacs have gone now and the air is already heavy with heat. Later, my daughter will emerge from her room, roll her pretty eyes at my existence.
But we’ll always be on the highway together. Her hand, not much smaller than mine, resting on her thigh, the highway before us, a plumb line, the stereo blaring. The infinite sky and the finite child’s seat in that split moment of light.
*
Writing through the summer looks like this. Small moments and sharp memories.
Your turn?
xoxo
Alice
PS: Could you share a poem with me or words that you find inspiring (see mine for you below)?
And please, if you enjoyed thinking about this with me, feel free to share it with someone you think would enjoy reading it, too.
If you’re new here, my name is Alice Kuipers and I’m a writer, mother and dog owner transplanted twenty years ago to the Canadian prairies from England. I’ve published fourteen books in 36 countries and my writing has been described as: “For storytellers and story lovers,” by Kirkus Reviews; ‘Gorgeous, heart-ripping, important,” by VOYA; and “Intense and wonderful” by Bif Naked.
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Love this: My daughter, thirteen, in that place between, where everything is raw abandon, dark eyeliner, small stars hand drawn on her shoulder, comes into the kitchen.
“Do you want to come with me to pick up your brother?”
She rolls her eyes. Why would she want to do that when she could stay home and eat cereal and watch TikTok?