Chapter 42
Grace
“Let’s stay here forever.”
That’s what Jamie had said to me, two years ago to the day, as we sat on this same ledge, gazing at a vista of gray, and green, and granite to a spot on the horizon that might be the end of the world or the beginning, a scene so majestic it felt like the threshold of heaven itself. For Jamie, it was.
“Let’s stay here forever,” he’d said as the sun, cut in crescent, flamed orange, red, and gold, halfway between the old day and the new, a day we knew nothing about, when our two paths, blessedly converged for so many years, would finally part as we journeyed toward the far horizon by two different roads, one direct but delayed, the other delayed but circuitous—at least so far.
I don’t know what tomorrow will bring. None of us does. That’s why we get up and go on because, until forever comes, you can’t stay where you are.
Jamie said, “Let’s.” I squeezed his hand and said, “Okay.” And then we got up anyway. Though we had no way of knowing the distance, we knew we weren’t there yet and so we had to get up and walk on, continue the journey.
Jamie said, “Let’s.” We both understood it was kind of a joke. But it was also a wish, the kind you murmur under your breath because if wishes were horses, beggars would ride and the beggarly, sensible side of your soul doesn’t really suppose that wishes come true.
I’d decided some weeks ago, ever since Jamie slipped over the horizon, that I wanted to come to this beautiful place, on this day, and grant the wish that neither of us realized was his last.
The longer I live, the less I am certain of what will happen and the more I understand what can happen. For so long that frightened me, left me living in an emotional crouch, worrying about problems I knew I could never see coming. The curse of living like that, bent low and bowed down, is that you can’t see anything else either.
On the first night of my pilgrimage to retrace my last happy days with Jamie before saying a final farewell, I couldn’t get the tent to stay up—one of the poles was bent. It was dark and hard to see and, after driving so far alone, I was tired. The third time the canvas collapsed, only minutes after I’d put it back up, having tripped, fallen down, and whacked my wrist on a rock in the process. I crawled out from underneath the canvas, dragged my sleeping bag to a flat spot, and slept in the open, under a canopy of stars as bright as diamonds scattered on velvet.
They were so beautiful. I’d never seen stars like that before. If I had stayed in the tent, curled up in a false wall of protection that kept falling in on me, I’d have missed them.
Lying there, looking up, allowing my vision to expand and my mind to travel the universe and memory, I became a cartographer of my own life, recording the events with a wider scope, standing back to see, not just the mile markers, elevations, and descents, but the entire map of my existence up until that moment, and discovered something I’d missed before. I discovered many somethings.
At every impassable peak, unfordable stream, and impossible canyon, in the moments when I had been most tempted to turn back or give up, there had always been a rope, a boat, a bridge, an ever-present help in times of trouble, a means of moving on.
Sometimes I got stuck, or traveled in circles, or lost my way. When I did, it was only because I distrusted the path, refused to grab hold or step out. But at every crossroad and crisis, the rescue always arrived, just in time, at the instant I needed it most, not a moment before.
When I thought I was nothing and no one, invisible and unlovable, Jamie stepped into my path, walked by my side, and exposed the lie. When I was going under for the third time and didn’t even know it, Nan and Monica pulled me into the boat. Losing the job I hated, I stumbled upon my purpose. Believing that love was behind me, Luke came along to prove I was wrong, that it really was possible to find the love of my life, twice in my life.
Nan was right—every love story turns sad eventually, but if you love, truly love, then it’s worth it. Looking back, looking forward, it’s all worth it. And when the hard road comes, help will, too, just in time. Sometimes I will need a bridge. Sometimes I will be a bridge. I see that now.
* * *
The time is short, the day is ending. Only a sliver of sunlight is visible above the horizon, just a small and succulent slice, a last brilliant blaze of orange and gold, a sunset I will never forget, a love I will always cherish.
“Let’s stay here forever.”
I came to grant his final wish. But as I climb to my feet, open the box, tip it forward, and watch as the wind carries away what remains, I realize that the part of Jamie that was Jamie, that soul and spark, doesn’t reside in this box, this ash.
We can’t stay here forever. Staying is not what we are created for.
I lower the arm holding the box, now empty of ash, and I catch a glimpse of my watch, Jamie’s final gift to me, strapped to the wrist that hit the rock in the dark of the night. Its hands are moving again, steadily ticking the passage of time. I lift my face skyward, to the orange, gold, red of the fading day.
Message received, babe.