Chloe
Chloe prefers days that are cool and shady, the sky dotted with enchanting and thought-provoking cloud-pictures, days that are peaceful, that have about them an air of gentle calmness. Days that are hot and sunny are too busy for her, too high-five and energised, all chest-bumps and shouts, ball-throwing and loud laughter, they are distracting, too frenetic. She dislikes anything that is needlessly excessive. Her demeanour is one of gentle stillness, of quiet awareness. She is not given to frequent smiling, but is not sad or discouraged.
Chloe is strikingly beautiful but wears her beauty with captivating modesty, acknowledging it without swagger or strut, completely lacking in guile. Without conscious effort, and seemingly without awareness, she invokes in others an unhurried caring, a willingness to listen. Her easy demeanour is so naturally genuine, so powerfully honest, that it transcends envy and criticism. She deeply touches all those that she meets.
Chloe lives her life alone, keeping her own counsel, offering an opinion only when asked. Her only friend is the old gardener at the orphanage, with whom she spends many hours on the bench under the old oak tree, very often in companionable silence, sharing with him a kinship and a deep but simple love that words could not begin to address.
She has lived, in equal measure, in the orphanage and in a variety of foster homes. The foster parents with whom she was homed were all a little unsure of her, some uneasy, none had felt able to truly connect with her. Many feeling that there is something other-worldly about her, an essential something within her that they could not understand, and only when truly grasped could they begin to form a connection. She never asked them for anything and never appeared to need anything, making it very difficult for them to know what to offer her.
When returned to the orphanage they all enthused about what a special young girl she is, a little unusual perhaps, but made it very clear that any shortcomings in her “fostering” were entirely theirs. The ideal family is out there somewhere, and they did not think it fair for them to stand in the way of her and that family one day meeting.
She bears them no malice, carrying within her a little piece of each family that she has lived with, of each home that she has lived in. She lives her life without bitterness or judgment, a maturity that most find remarkable in one so young.
Many ache to get close to her, to give her something, but are at a loss as to how or what. She radiates such fullness, possessing that rare humility that effortlessly conveys an ever-present and unselfish willingness to give, not take. Many believe that she has an old soul.
On her eighteenth birthday, wearing her prettiest dress, Chloe walked into the ocean and kept walking until she was lifted up and carried out to sea.
Chloe’s death brought with it the acute awareness that life has the innate capacity to deliver deep sorrow. All those that she had touched experienced a bewildering sense of loss, placing within them an ache that would never leave.
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