The Last Firefly of the Summer

Last night, I sat on the patio and watched dusk nudge the remaining streaks of sunlight out of the way.  A handful of cicadas were humming the last bars of their songs, while the robins finally gave up their frantic Gladys Kravitz imitations, conceding the night to the owls, those no-good scalawags.

That's when a lone firefly flashed his "open" sign across the tops of the goldenrod, hoping a lithe passerby might take him up on his offer.  No other light pulsed in response, though, and I followed his scattered trail across the yard, his abdomen swollen with longing, his lighted trail empty behind him.

I know that it is a human impulse to assign our species' qualities to others.  I know that this firefly probably didn't go home and etch a glowing note of despair before offing himself in the basement.  I know these things but, when I see the last firefly of summer tapping out his Morse Code across the night sky, I cannot help but feel an ache inside.

It's the same ache I feel when I see a kid eating alone in our noisy lunchroom, surrounded by sharks and minnows, schools of frantic classmates who seem to look every way but his.  I know that this kid, like the firefly, may not give a whit about being alone, that he may be focused solely on the sandwich before him, content to be doing what his body calls him to do.

But knowing doesn't make the ache go away.

I simply can't abide the  fraying thread loosing itself from one anchor, that missed opportunity, the selfish oversight, the phone that rings while I turn and walk away.

See, I know a thing or two about unanswered phones.

The one that still haunts me today rang unanswered in my college bedroom one early Saturday morning, the result of a plan I'd forged with my former boyfriend the night before.

That phone call was my chance to see Jerry again.  Jerry, whose body had been ravaged by bone cancer.  Jerry who was heading to New York for yet another treatment.  Even though we were no longer dating, we both still enjoyed each other and so, when he proposed I drive with him to the airport the next morning, it sounded like a grand idea.

So, why did I just sit there and listen to the phone ring?  I was up.  I had no plans.  And yet I let the phone ring until it rang no more.

Jerry died a few months later and I am left to live with that phone call.  I may never be able to answer that one.

Maybe that's why the last firefly of the summer leaves me hollow.  Because a part of me wonders if, somewhere in the garden, another firefly sees the pulsing glow, but chooses to turn away and let the other think he is the last.

Needless to say, I pick up the phone now.