24
Lily Nichols’ step-cousin, Abbie Mirabelli, had always had a rough hand in life. When Abbie’s dad left, her Mamaw was there. When Abbie’s mother married a man that forced her out of mom’s life, her Mamaw was there. Abbie’s grandmother Mamaw was an anchor, a safe harbor, the only thing that tied her to sanity sometimes. At night, when all the madness was done, Abbie would visit her Mamaw and watch Jeopardy next to her and just hold her hand, soaking in the presence of someone who actually wanted her around. They’d always shared an affinity for daisies – it was their “thing.” And so when Mamaw slipped into dementia and finally burnt out one November afternoon, Abbie wiped her tears of terror, walked out to the parking lot to find some daisies, and placed them on the gurney as the morgue workers took her Mamaw’s body from the nursing home.
That was eight months ago. Today on Earth, Abbie is graduating from community college, having overcome every obstacle in front of her. But she is still terrified. The only reason she ever got anywhere was because of her Mamaw – what now? What was going to happen now that Mamaw was dead, now that her memory was fading and her lessons were falling away?
And as Abbie walks across the stage, she spots it: a single daisy on the floor. She looks around, and then up, and suddenly she doesn’t feel so alone anymore. But this cannot be happening, she thinks with wide eyes, because her Mamaw is dead. She can’t be sending daisies, can she? But then again, where else could it have come from? Who else could’ve known about the daisies that day?
Up here, Mamaw smiles from next to me. She threw it. I came across her because of our shared affinity for the Nichols family, and then she played me this scene, and the accompanying memories, to show me how proud she is of her Abbie for graduating, for continuing to fight without her. She wants her to know how truly sorry she is for letting the dementia take her, for letting the disease steal her away from her family. So she takes the rest of the daisies and tosses them down to Earth, where they evaporate into the dream they always were.
“Abster,” Mamaw breathes, a hand on her mouth, choked by elegant nostalgia, and then she is gone. But I do not mourn her departure. She is with Abbie every day, stubborn as a barnacle, and she will never leave. She misses her, but she will see her again, so she is content on dropping daisies…for now. A little child and their grandparents: never was there a purer love.
The months and years pass. I do what I need to do. Humans, as usual, fuck it all up in the most beautiful way possible, but I pick up the pieces behind them as best I can, tossing daisies where I see fit. My family’s lives are swirling on without me – the ones that still have lives, at least. I used to be so worried for my family: I would search for danger around every corner they approached, peer into every shadow they passed. But I am not so worried anymore. They are learning. And I don’t know if they will ultimately succeed, but I want to hope they will. Isn’t it better to believe?
My little brother becomes a father three times over, and a grandfather to one baby girl. Just to say that makes me ache with joy and crumble with sadness. His life continued. He didn’t give up. He carried on. And one of his daughters was named Summer Cooper Johnson. I would give anything to know them – I would give up my soul to hug them and tell them their Aunt Summer is here. But Chase is doing just fine for me, and above his fireplace hangs a painting of me. He didn’t forget his older sister. He was so unlike me, so optimistic, so simple, and it saved him. When life showed him nine negative things, he pointed to ten positive ones. He survived.
But as I watch Cooper meet Chase for a coffee one December morning, both of them growing slower than ever with age, something happens that has not happened in perhaps decades: Cooper talks about me.
I’ve watched many people grieve from up here, and not just the people who grieved me. And a strange thing about this process is how silent it is. Humans simply don’t talk about many painful things, and death is the most painful at all. They very rarely they open up the wound and let out some blood, but today Cooper would bleed for perhaps one of the first times ever.
As I watch, Cooper and Chase get their coffees and settle in the corner as a light rain falls outside, sliding down the floor-to-ceiling windows in silvery streams. They meet a few times a year, just to talk about the old days, but I have never really directly been mentioned. I get the sense that Chase doesn’t want to step on Lily’s toes. But today she is at the dermatologist’s office, and Cooper’s eyes are full of the past.
A lull comes after they talk about the latest skirmish in the middle of the east. Then Cooper leans back, glorious in the soft winter light. “Chase?” he asks quietly. “Do you ever miss…her?”
Chase’s heart breaks. I can see it, right there in the coffee shop.
“Ah, Coop. She was my sister. Of course I miss her. I know I was young when she died, but sometimes I can’t even look into a mirror without seeing her eyes staring back at me.” He clears his throat in an awkward way. “And what about you?”
“Always.”
I get a glimpse of Chase’s thoughts: he is wracked with pity. Sure, he had to go on after I died, but he didn’t have to fall in love with someone else all over again. He can’t even imagine what that must’ve been like.
But Cooper isn’t done yet. His voice speeds up, just as all voices do when the gates fall and people let out things they’ve been concealing. “And I just…sometimes I think about where we’d all be right now, what life would be like, if she were still here. If she had never left. Her death seems like it was a million years ago and yesterday, all at once. It breaks my heart that she’ll never meet my kids, never see the new movie theatre down the street, never see the world as I know it…”
Oh, Cooper, I think as I watch from only feet away. If only you knew.
“But anyway,” Cooper says, his voice unsteady, and I feel so guilty for causing all of his pain, I don’t know what to do with myself. “I know you’re not the person to talk about this with and everything, but I just…sometimes I imagine my life built around her instead of…you know, Lily, and…well, I guess my main problem is this: all I ever think is What If. And I don’t like it.”
Chase leans forward, and this time he is the one offering advice. “Cooper. Of course you can talk to me about her. This is normal. You loved someone, and she died. The strongest man in the world would be haunted by that.” The rain falls harder. He tilts his head and appraises Cooper. “You know what I would do if I were you?”
“Hmm?”
“Just try to be there for the people who are right in front of you, today. Because you never know what could happen tomorrow, and lead to a million more What Ifs.” He pauses, then lowers his voice. “But can I say something else, if we’re being honest?”
Cooper nods as Chase stares at the floor.
“I think about her every day. Every. Single. Day. And I would give anything for just one more hour with her, one more talk with her, one more rainy night with her, back in my mom’s kitchen.”
“I’ll bring the beer,” Cooper smiles, “even though she hated it.”
Chase’s cheeks lift. “Okay. And I’ll have my wife bake a Funfetti cake, even though she can’t make a microwave dinner without setting the house on fire.”
Cooper smiles in that way that warms his whole face, and I tumble into love with him again and again. “It’s a date, brother. It’s a date.”
And I soar out of there, unable to take any more of this. Still, I am swelling with pride that Cooper has raised such a strong man, he will even allow himself to break in front of him.
But soon I get to thinking: where is my mentor? Where is all my help? The truth is, I am still helping, but this is getting…predictable. I need to know this is going to pay off. Or at least I need to find some more meaning up here. And then I remember seeing myself as a child, dropping in the version of me from the past so many times, just to help. We can teach ourselves, too. This gives me an idea. I will become my own mentor. I want to visit myself. I want to go back and pass on what I didn’t know before. I want to hug me while I still have time.
“Sheila?” I call. “Oh, Sheila?”
I find her in the Dreamskipping room. She’s been visiting cheating husbands at night and appearing in their dreams as their mistresses just to scare them senseless.
“Yes?” she asks, as the dream version of her waits behind a closet door in a cheating man’s room with a rifle.
“I need help. Give me your memory.” I transform myself into memory form and jump into her soul, then sift through her memories, jumping from scene to scene, riding back months and then years and then decades. Every human leaves behind memories of other humans, and by accessing these, we can travel from person to person, from era to era. And I want to find my era, of when I was alive. So I start looking for a path to myself, through people who may have had contact with me. I jump from one memory to the next on these connections, and when I finally reach a memory containing my mother I insert myself inside the echo of her, rewind to the last time she saw me, make one more jump, and finally, here I am, in myself, staring out from behind my eyes one last time.
This is not real. I am simply watching my life as it happened, locked inside a memory, and I cannot change a thing. But I am so grateful. Because this is where it all began.
Here I am. Blondish hair. Freckles on my nose. Terrible posture. If I could only tell myself what I know now…
I am sitting in a cold hospital room with my mother and my doctor. (He had thirteen grandchildren and lived to the age of ninety-one. I kissed him in the Confluence after he passed on.) This is when I got the news that I was probably going to die – and then downloaded the app where I would meet Cooper.
This girl is so scared. She is so helpless. She doesn’t even have a clue. She is trying so hard, but she has made so many mistakes. So many things could’ve happened from this junction: she could’ve accepted defeat. She could’ve lived out her days cold and alone and on her own. But she chose to love, even if it ended in flames, even if it doomed her to an endless purgatory of watching Cooper love someone else. She chose the hard thing, and that made all the difference.
And I want to help her. It would be so powerful just to let her know that all her struggles will be worth it. That she will make it. That she will love someone. So I smile at her from the sunlight on the tile floors and soar away.
I am learning so much, and I want to pass it on. Time is running short – I can feel it. So I write a letter to myself – the younger version of me, the living version, the version in that hospital room – and slip it into the cosmos, hoping someone will come across it and find meaning in my words. I think of all I’ve learned from watching myself, from watching my family, from watching Cooper. My letter goes like this:
Hello, Summer. You know nothing and everything so I’m just going to tread lightly here. First of all: I love you so much. You are so beautiful. You are so precious. It makes me sad that you don’t see and feel these things yet, but you will one day. After all, I’m you. I would know.
I want you to know a few things, just so you can make your list of deathbed regrets as short as you possibly can. Start by slowing the hell down. Have some fun. Kiss someone on the cheek. Be whoever you want to be. Stop trying so hard to grow up and be there for everyone around you. Take a walk down the street and smile at some roses, buy some gas station candy, drink a Coke. Youth and health bring a freedom you will not even know you have until it is taken away from you. Use this freedom wisely. Give into happiness and let yourself feel all the good in the world. And stop searching for love – you already have all the love you need in yourself. Everything you do is a golden success, and you are doing so well. I promise.
Above all, I want you to know that you are so, so loved. And you are not alone. Don’t forget it. You have so many people by your side, both those you can see, and those you cannot see. Stand tall for us. Rise for us. We are watching and waiting. Do us proud.
Oh, and when someone does love you, when they really really love you, I want you to give all of yourself to them and never look back. You will never regret the love you give out down there on Earth – trust me on that one.
That’s all for now. I’m already watching you and I already know when you’ll get up here, and since you can’t see me and you don’t need to know any of that, I’ll just say this:
See you soon.
Love,
You
I kiss the letter, send it to the stars, and head for my destiny.
~
I sink into Cooper’s chilly garden like a cloud. The yard smells of roses and wood and freshly cut grass, and they are sitting on a bench, hand in hand. It is our bench, of course, but I try not to think about it. Because something is happening. I’ve been trying to ignore it, but I can’t anymore. Time is running out for them, and it is breaking my heart.
Now, humans aren’t afraid of death. They are afraid of a life unlived. They’re afraid of seeing the other side before they figure out what it means to be alive. And Cooper is no different. He is starting to think about death, and I have no idea what to make of it.
The world as he and Lily know it is changing. Their high school friends are falling away, dying of disease and old age, and they are rooted to the spot. Their life together is beautiful but quiet. In their advancing age, they are growing graceful and still. Money looks better than ever on them. They spend their time reading, going to museums, catching up with the family. They travel together, with me in tow sometimes, of course. I can’t help it. I miss him too much. And fine, I miss Lily a little, too. When they are home they read and garden and walk to the sea. He cannot surf anymore, and I can see that he is restless. He is an ocean unto himself: surging, sloshing, tides rising and falling, blue. All blue.
Cooper takes out his phone, and I gasp at the date. That’s why I was drawn here today: it would’ve been my birthday. I cry invisible tears as I imagine what today would look like for me, had I not been felled by the surgeon’s knife. I see a quiet birthday lunch with Cooper, I see phone calls from the children, I see us retiring to our bedroom to make soft love to each other…
Oh, God. Does Cooper even know the date? Does he care? I haven’t noticed anything out of the ordinary. Has the inevitable happened? Have I been thoroughly and finally forgotten? And how should I feel about it, if I indeed have been? Should I let him go?
I watch them and take stock. I want so badly to be there, to really be there. So I gather all the energy I can and then wish myself into the scene, and a pale pink rose blooms out of nowhere across the garden. Cooper is the only one to notice it. He feels the breeze I send. But he blinks and ignores both of these things. Even now, believing in what he knows is so much easier than putting all his hopes in what he doesn’t know for sure.
Lily stares over at Cooper, lost in love. Or is she just lost? For the strangest reason, I sense her thoughts. When is he going to let me in? For real? For good? Before it’s too late?
We are twins, I think as I watch this woman.
“Do you still love me?” she asks.
From up here, I despair. They had been doing quite well since my intervention, actually. Too well for me to watch. Their union was better, stronger. Two spouses growing in the same direction – never was there a sweeter sight. When love rises over the everyday troubles of adult life and lifts into the sky: this is success.
I could feel that hormones were spurring her to ask this, by the way. Our beings were fusing, two forces nipping at each other’s edges, and I could feel the middle-age chemicals rearing their ugly metallic anger through her soul. That’s right: menopause has hit with a vengeance, and it is the first time I have ever been thankful for being dead. As I watch I say a silent prayer of thanks that I will never have to undergo the messy little details of being human. At least one positive has arisen from my death: never will I have to deal with hot flashes.
“Lily,” he sighs. “This again?”
She decides to go about it from a different direction. “Do you love Summer?”
He jumps a little. “What?”
“Do you love your daughter, Summer?”
His face breaks. I knew it meant something so different to him. “Of course. I would believe in her if the world was on fire.”
“Prove it.”
“What?”
“Prove your love for her. If you love her, prove it.”
And again he thought about humans: so desperate on getting proof, so intent on ignoring it just as quickly.
“I don’t have to prove it,” he says. “I tell her every day.”
And it’s true: he does. Even though she’s just moved in with Scott, a red-haired boy she’s been dating for two years, she is Cooper’s world. Just thinking about walking her down an aisle one day soon makes Cooper want to die.
“Exactly,” Lily says, and I notice how hoarse her voice has gotten. “But you never tell me. You’ve gone cold to me again. Since when does our daughter deserve more of you than I do?”
He frowns and thinks, for some reason, of me. Then he mouths the senseless words “fight the sharks,” and it puzzles me. What does this mean?
I sense her thoughts again. She tilts her head and appraises him, and he is so gorgeous in the light. Maybe she will never get him all to herself, not really. Maybe he’d always be one step removed. Maybe she married what she thought was a knight on the white horse, and she what got was a little closer to reality. But right then, she was sitting in front of a good man who loved her, even if it wasn’t on the terms she preferred. But being in his orbit, feeling his gentle love, was so much better than leaving the scene and never again laying eyes on him. And so there, on that bench, she accepts her marriage for nothing other than what it is. For me, the moment feels gorgeous but too late, like a delicious dessert that took too long to arrive.
I zero in on Cooper. Soon he is reminded of a lesson I left him with: always search for beauty. And so he looks over at her, too. And for a moment, I get a glimpse into the warm matter of his brain: he loves her. She is so beautiful, even as she is aging. The wrinkles frame her blue eyes beautifully, and the grey in her hair just makes those eyes pop even more. She has become even more regal. Even as a young person she had the quiet but obvious dignity that came from being born into money, from growing up on country club tennis courts, from being raised at restaurants that used real crystal and employed white-jacketed waiters. Something about her was becoming very Grace Kelly, and it made my middle-class soul positively hunter green with envy. But Cooper is enamored with her, and the thought zaps me like when you touch a doorknob on a cold, static-y morning. Sure, he may be dealing with a whole mess in his mind, but he still loves her, and he still needs to honor that love.
As I pull back to stop feeling his love for her, an idea seems to cross his mind. “I’ve gone cold, have I?” he asks, placing a hand on her leg, making her breath pause in her chest. “You are so beautiful,” he says, kissing her on her leathery cheek. And she does something she hasn’t done in years: she blushes.
As they sit under the soft filtered sunlight a few minutes later, Lily coughs, and the deepness and the wetness of the sound scares Cooper. Their time together is melting away, and he is starting to feel it all around him. She smokes heavily in private where nobody can smell the stench, and she cannot stop. Cooper notices sometimes, though, and it leads to occasional fights. I feel the black mist of Death in the vicinity, a silent thief in the still of the night, and I know it is probably heading for her. When, exactly, it will arrive, I do not know. Life seemed so limitless to Cooper before, but now it is dwindling. He’d been shocked by how quickly being in his late twenties had turned into him being forty, and then how forty-two had slipped into sixty. And though he’d sparked love in many hearts, he knew he wasn’t done yet. There was something he had to do, something he hadn’t finished yet, but he couldn’t figure out what it was…
This makes me smile. The Muse is getting closer.
Before I leave, though, Cooper clears his throat. “Hey, how do you feel about making a cake tonight? For, you know…after dinner?”
I clutch my chest and melt for him. Even after all these years, he is still my dreamboat from that summer. Now that his face is thinning he is starting to look just like his mother, and it makes me love him even more.
“Sure,” Lily says. “But why?”
“Don’t know, I’m just in the mood. And…Lily?”
“Yes?”
“Could you make it a Funfetti?”
I kiss my precious Cooper on the head and fly someplace only the angels know.