Breaking Free

When I went to my daughter Alix’s funeral, she didn’t appear. The Georgian era mother depicted on the pendant saw her daughter burst from her tomb in the arms of an angel. Her child died on February 29th, 1792, at age twenty-six, one year older than Alix. The daughter’s brown woven hair on the back of the locket memorialized her. At Alix’s burial I peered at her coffin in the freshly dug grave. I shoveled dirt on the coffin and flinched at the sound. I couldn’t bear to have her imprisoned in the cold earth. If only an angel swooped down and carried Alix off to heaven. That would have been a joyous liberation.