6
I watch Cooper, magnificent and lovely and broken, my beautiful hell. And I plot. I plan. I spin him towards goodness. I usually like to visit him in the morning, when he is in the best mood. I float silently in the corner of his messy bedroom and admire him as he rises from bed, sit with him in the kitchen and smile as he drinks his coffee, wish for the best as he gets dressed and starts his chores and goes about his life. That is all you can do when you are in love with someone you cannot be with – watch them, with tears in your heavenly eyes. We are not really supposed to watch from this closely, but sometimes we cannot help ourselves. It has been happening for millennia, after all, and has been recorded since time began. Mysterious cave paintings of visitors from the cosmos, legends of orbs in the sky, Egyptian hieroglyphs of ghostly ciphers – those were simply loved ones coming back to visit the ones they had left behind, for one more air-kiss. These are what humans call aliens, but we just call them accidental appearances. Naturally humans deny the most logical and beautiful solution to these sightings – that they are immortal, and their loved ones never leave them – and instead concoct stories of glowing spaceships and silvery saucers, little green men jumping around. It’s just us. Sometimes we can’t resist saying hello – and who could blame us?
I am still learning how to help, but that relies upon knowing what humans want – and that can sometimes prove impossible. Reading the mind of a human is sometimes no easier than when they were alive. When the feelings are strong and their souls swell in size, we can sometimes fuse, and I get a glimpse into their brains. But their souls are shut-down, this rarely happens. Humans are ghastly private creatures, folding themselves up and hiding the essences of their souls like they are not precious gifts to be shared, and it is difficult to surmise their thoughts. It is just like being on Earth – they do anything they can to conceal their thoughts, turning away and adopting serene facial expressions and pushing down their tears. And even when I can look within the human mind, it usually tries to hide its contents at all costs.
But I know Cooper. His current biggest problem is that he is stuck in the mud. And not just with writing. My death was a blow to much more than just his ambition. He’s been too nostalgic, and he’s been remembering too much, too frequently. Never was there something so comforting, and yet so painful, as a memory.
But he needs to keep walking. Humans in general are terrorized by what lies beyond the bend in the road up ahead. What they don’t realize is that now is the future. You will grow up, you just won’t notice it. One minute you’re in middle school, horrified of college. Then you’re a twenty something, dreading adulthood. But you will arrive in yourself. You will be lost and alone and struggling to get by and then suddenly you’ll be making friends. You’ll be moving into your very own apartment and you’ll be thinking about your family less and less and you’ll paying your own phone bill and suddenly, oh my God, you’ve grown up. What a blessing, to be on your own in this world. What a twisted, burnt-up curse.
Currently, Cooper is lost somewhere between boy and man, and he is tense and dark most of the time. He occasionally goes out to the bars with his few friends, and when he is drinking, he can loosen up and forget me long enough to have fun. (He needs to stop with the alcohol, but that is another story for another saga.) But most of the time he is locked within himself, wasting his twenties away. He can never relax and enjoy the world around him, and how is that living? Exactly: it is not. He is almost as bad as he was in the first weeks, when he spent his time wondering what he would leave behind if he died. Humans are so naïve in their quest to etch their names in stone. What remains? Palaces crumble to ruins and temples topple in earthquakes and even the pyramids are marooned piles of stone in the middle of the desert, battered and broken. Words. Words and ideas remain. No universe could ever spin magic as potent and as sparkling as human language.
Cooper’s mother tries to speak to him one rainy night, and I come to watch. She has not said anything, but she can feel her tremors getting worse and her body failing her, and she knows she has to start talking some sense into Cooper before her disease makes talking impossible. He’s been better lately, but she feels a sadness drifting in, and she wants to investigate.
“How are you?” she asks as she arrives in his room. I’ve been watching him for so long now that I don’t even feel like an eavesdropper anymore.
“I’m alright,” he says. “Better.”
She gives him a look.
“Okay, fine. It’s just so hard sometimes,” he says, letting the walls fall.
But it shouldn’t be hard, I think. I am not dead. I am everywhere.
“I don’t even wanna get out of bed sometimes,” he says.
Frustrated, I chime in again. But out loud this time. The world up here is obviously not all sunrises and rainbows: we are very often furious with humans.
“But you’re alive,” I tell them, even though they will never hear me, tears running down the shimmering surface of my soul. They say nothing, and suddenly my temper explodes. “You’re alive! I know you’ve been dealt death and sickness and heartbreak, but you have blood in your veins and air in your lungs. Go walk down the sidewalk and marvel at the vines and the bees and the stupid streetlights. I can’t! Do it for me! You get one ride on this rock – don’t waste it!”
He does not hear me. And of course he doesn’t – so many humans stumble around, forgetting that they are the authors of their own lives. Why am I even trying?
“Just try to be happier,” Cooper’s mother says, rubbing his knee. “She wouldn’t want this. You were doing so well, and then-”
“I don’t know what she wants!” he suddenly blurts out, a fissure bursting somewhere, and she pulls her hand away. “She’s fucking gone! She doesn’t want anything!”
I do, I think helplessly as I watch. I do I do I do. And I inject it into the room: my presence. Both of them get goose bumps and look around. But I don’t stop there. When I was alive I liked a certain pop song by a singer called Saviour, and to make myself known, I access the TV in the living room and loudly play a commercial that features the song. Both of them notice. They are so touched that they are afraid. Humans are not meant to understand – not the whole story, at least. So both of them shake it off.
“I can’t make myself happy, no matter what I do,” Cooper says, settling back into the bed. All his mother can do is stare down at him, trying not to cry, trying to keep it together for her boy.
“I don’t know what to say,” she tells him. “I know how hard to is to love someone and watch them go…”
“Not like this,” he says.
“But you’re alive!” I scream at these two oblivious humans who will never hear me. “You can walk down the street and play volleyball and drink water and give your mom a hug! You’re alive! Stop complaining!”
I leave Earth and throw a celestial fit, shooting sparks from my hands that will probably show up as mysterious flares on Earth in several thousand years. Good – give them something to get confused over. Cooper is the stupidest person in the world. The world is a wreck, and I don’t care anymore. Let them go on with the mess they have gotten themselves into. I tried hard enough. I did my part.
So much for learning how to watch from this bizarre new perch I’ve landed upon. I am so foolish. You are never supposed to direct your affections to people who are in no wish to receive them – I knew that. Or I thought I did. Would you wire money to random people who don’t know you? Why, then, would you send love to someone who has closed themselves to you? What am I doing with myself, with my time?
Just what have I gotten myself into?
I end up pouting on the very edge of the universe, as far away from that living room in Florida as I can get. Isn’t that like a human, I huff to myself, talking about how to get happier. Not happy, but happier, like happiness was an infinite resource you could just dip into like honey. Oh, I loathe humans sometimes. Even the ones I love. So wasteful, so intent on squandering a gift they never even knew was a gift. When will they wake up from this fever-dream illusion they call life?
Know this: you will never learn to be happy in the future unless you learn to be happy in the now. I’ve learned that much already, just by watching. Yesterday, now was tomorrow, and you were promising yourself you’d become happy by today. How did that work out for you? Happiness is not an idle promise, a destination at which to arrive. Happiness is looking down at the sidewalk under you, right where you are, and choosing to notice the flowers instead of the cigarette butts. It is a state of being, present tense. It is a still, hot bath on a cold night. It is a bed of flowers on a Sunday afternoon. It is turning over on a Wednesday morning and seeing the sleeping form of the love of your life. It is potato chips and a soda when you know you should’ve gone for the banana. It is that prickly feeling of salt on your skin as you sit in the shade of a palm tree. It is choosing to ride above the clouds and soar, even as the storms of your life rage under you. It is love, in the moment. It is a choice you have to make. Now. Don’t wait. God knows I’ll never have the chance again, anyway.
Several hours pass on Earth. I cool off and come to my senses and take my own advice, for probably the first time ever. (Not that I have any senses to come to.) I feel myself being drawn back to the scene, and soon I float back down to Jacksonville Beach. I am a slave to love, unable to walk away, as devoted as a puppy. I want to make up with him, even if he will never know it. I have to get better at this.
When I find him he is walking an elderly neighbor’s dog, and as he hits the sidewalk, I get a picture of his thoughts. And I rejoice, because it means I am learning how to access him. Anyway, he sees a pale pink rose in someone’s garden, and the sight of it just slams into him like a punch to the intestines, as those were always my favorite. And I feel it, too: grief swamps him. Grief fades, but it never really goes away for a human who has been left behind on Earth, and on this day he is overcome.
I miss her so fucking much, he thinks. I’m sick of running from it. What if I could see her one more time? What if I could drive her around town and show her all the things that are changing, bitch about the closing of our favorite fro-yo place, show her the construction of that new high school? Holy God, that’s all I want, and I’ll never be able to do it. She will never see those things. The only world she knows is the version of it that existed when she left.
Oh, Cooper, I think as I watch. You are so wrong. I know the whole world.
He starts crying after that. Then he grows angry at his perceived weakness and hides his tears from passing cars. Oh, I pity him so. If only he knew I was still here, that I am beside him right now, even as he thinks these things. He feels so alone, so left behind. And he has every right to feel this way. He has been through so much, my beautiful wrecked boy. But he is so strong. He is so resilient. He just doesn’t know it. He won’t let himself feel the pain, and you can’t heal from what you don’t acknowledge. Humans do not understand that pressing pause on pain will just enhance it when they actually do have to experience it. He is running from his own monsters, walking away from his grief, and the faster he flees, the harder it will chase him. And it will chase him on and off for the rest of his life, for as I said before, grief is a battle that humans never truly conquer, no matter how temporarily strong they may feel from time to time. He has been changed by my death, and he needs to stop acting like that isn’t the case, like he isn’t different now. So I reach down and open up his heart just a little. I think he feels it. He cries, and I nod to let him know that it is okay, even though he will never see me. Because tears are fine. Feeling a little pain along the road to okay never killed anybody.
So he goes away. He finds a quiet room, rocks back and forth as the memories slam into him and the grief leaks from his eyes. It is so necessary sometimes, letting your wounds open so you can see your own blood. Nothing was ever braver than being tender with yourself. It is what makes them human, after all. They bleed to know they can still feel. He has had the worst of the world thrown at him, and he is still standing – there is no greater triumph than this. Getting out of bed when the world wants you to stay in it: this is victory. Neither Roman Caesars waving from petal-strewn pedestals nor Mongolian warlords screaming through the hills on the backs of beasts could have ever touched the strength of someone who saw their loved ones fall around them and then stood back up. Cooper is trying. Cooper is getting there, bit by bit. Cooper will win. A human life is a series of a billion small victories, a million triumphs in a hundred breaths. He is still sailing even though the seas are stormy: he has already won.
This world is a wide and blistering place, and there will be days when you will stumble. You will make the wrong choice and you will fuck it all up. But you will get back on your feet, you will tell yourself that you are not your mistakes, and you will keep walking. Because you are a winner, and you were born for success. Never forget that you are the person you hope you are when you are at your best, not the person you fear you are when you are at your worst. I promise. Because mistakes do not make a person. Cooper is proving that. Missteps do not ruin a soul. You are not the last person you dated or the last floor you fell onto or the last bad decision you made. You are not the last insult that was aimed at you by some irrelevant stranger. You are you, perfectly. After all, Mona Lisa didn’t endure throughout the ages because she was sparkling and beautiful and perfect. She was small, dark, cloudy, bizarre – her eyes held ten thousand secrets that could only have been learned by making ten thousand mistakes. So savor the mystery in your eyes. Cherish the life behind you. Every day you are breathing on this Earth is a new chance to either fuck it all up or start all over again – meet that chance with wide-open arms.
And on this day, Cooper finds his eyes open up just a little bit more – even if I had to force them.
~
I fly past Jupiter, love on my mind. I want to convince my family and friends of my existence, sure, but that is not the only thing on my otherworldly agenda. I have another step for Cooper. I have tried everything, and nothing works. It is time to bring out the big guns. I want to try something new.
I want him to love someone.
At first, even visiting the thought made me want to disappear. I loved that boy once and I will love him forever. But the only thing I want more than Cooper is for Cooper to be happy. And he needs the ultimate form of human happiness: he needs love. Because love was the only thing that made me ever feel alive, and I’m crazy enough to want the same for him. God knows he needs it. Grief is the ultimate pressure cooker, and it escalated his flaws into fissures. I don’t know how much time he has left before another meltdown, so I do my best to let go of my anger and my fear and start looking for her. He’s probably going to start dating again, anyway, so why not shepherd him to a good soul before he falls to a bad one? And, most importantly of all: he is a twenty-five-year old man, and he really needs to get laid. I do not need to read his mind to know he is tenser than a former Nazi’s soul hitting the Confluence and preparing to face their sins, and he needs a release. Even if it does not come from me.
The usual suspects descended on him after my death, the ones he called “Grief Groupies,” girls who tried to slide in under the pretext of offering him comfort and then pounce on him like a lion on the proverbial gazelle. Because he was a gazelle, beautiful and pure and hopelessly broken. I could sense their motivations – I could see the look in their eyes as they patted him on the shoulder and slowly took him in like a cold iced tea on a July day. They wanted this sad boy, and they wanted him in every position, in every room of the house. But they were not good enough for him. Not by a galaxy.
After the third casserole visit by a concerned stranger segued into Cooper being asked for his phone number “just in case he wanted to ever talk or text or meet up for coffee or something,” he realized what was going on, and stopped answering his phone. Soon he withdraws into himself again, and it worries me to no end. So I start looking for the next girl to love Cooper Nichols, because I will not let him fall to a groupie before he has the chance to land a diamond.
I search far and wide for her. After all, I am still his Guardian, his gatekeeper. And I am hard to please. Some girls I found were too blonde. Some were too busty. But there is one, and she is just right. Her name is Lily. I intercepted her dreams from a mansion in Atlantic Beach, Florida. She has dark hair, crystalline blue eyes, snow-white skin, and prominent cheekbones covered in tiny freckles. She started looking for love, as many do, on a dating app. But the boys were too forward and their messages were too eager and they wanted to share nights with her, not their mornings. She was about to give up when she first spotted Cooper. She saw him walking his neighbor’s dog, and she was instantly smitten from afar. I like her, too. She is quiet and kind and she has a filthy mouth when she thinks nobody can hear. And she likes him – I don’t have to read minds to know that. When she spots him, her skin changes color and her voice raises an octave and she frequently forgets she is alive. Cooper, of course, is clueless. But I’d like to change that. Even if it kills me again.
Naturally, when she first started seeing him, she went straight to social media. She saw that he was sane and normal and did not upload selfies. Pleased, she arranged an “accidental” meeting. They “bumped into each other” by a stop sign, and he had a book in his hand. She was even more astounded by this than she was by his selfie-less profiles. A hot boy who reads books: never has there been a better surprise.
She waited for him to hit on her, but he walked away, looking withdrawn, maybe even haunted. “Note to self,” she whispered as he passed, oblivious to her. “Stop sending love to invalid recipients.”
But obviously she could not end the infatuation. It had already taken hold of her. So I think I am going to arrange a meeting, a real meeting. A date. I can do that much. The rest is up to him. I am horrified by the prospect of him liking her, but I am even more horrified at the prospect of him staying miserable for eternity.
I float over him one cloudy night and take stock of where he is. He is sad, but he is resilient. He is broken, but he is strong in the broken places. And it is time to find him love. More love. So I open his heart a little more and make him reach for his phone. And as he messages Lily on Facebook, I close my eyes and fly away, crying.
But still, no matter what happens, I won’t stop loving him from up here. I will not let go of that. Sometimes it is the only thing that sustains me. If loving that boy is a mistake, I would happily be in the wrong for the rest of my hollow existence.
But the biggest question of my second life still lingers: will Cooper’s love for me remain after I push him towards Lily?