“Go on,” he said, both voice and eyes softer.
“So I have a proposal. Please keep an open mind to what I’m about to say.” It was the product of the epiphany I’d had at Angkor Wat. “So her birthday is next week, right?”
“She would have been thirty,” my mother whispered, her eyes finding my father’s.
“And you know how I asked you to bring her ashes?”
My father raised an eyebrow as if he knew what I was about to say and already disapproved.
“She always wanted to see the world. If she were alive, there would be no better gift to give her. So on her birthday, I want us to scatter her ashes in the ocean and let the currents carry her around the world.”
“Absolutely not,” Dad snapped.
“Wouldn’t you prefer to think she was happy somewhere, having fun adventures rather than having a constant reminder of our loss staring at us from the mantle?”
“It was her dream,” Mom mumbled, her eyes still fixated on my father.
I looked up at him too struggling in vain to keep the tears at bay. “Please just think about what I’ve said. I’m not trying to hurt you. I love you both so very, very much, and I want you to heal. And, yes, I want to heal, too.”
Dad stood rigid and unyielding as a statue for what seemed like an eternity. My mind cleared as I watched him, hoping that he would listen to me and try and understand what I was saying. Then he brought his hands to his eyes and crumpled like an origami figure in the rain onto the bed. Sitting at my mother’s feet, he reached out for us as he sobbed. And that afternoon, we cried until we fell asleep, napping together as a family like we did when Audrey and I were little girls.
***
April 8, 2010
Cairns, Australia
Five days later we chartered a boat from the tropical city of Cairns and headed east skimming over the flat calm turquoise water towards the horizon. With the sun as our guide, the clouds held vigil on the most beautiful day you could ever hope to see. And on the day she would have turned thirty, my parents and I held each other weeping for our loss and celebrating her short and beautiful life as we sent Audrey on her grand and eternal adventure around the world.
***
April 11, 2010
Cairns, Australia
When it was time to say goodbye to my parents, my father seemed to have one less grey hair and my mother, one less wrinkle.
“Harper,” my father said after he put his suitcase in the taxi. “With regards to your career, we do support you and we do hope you do win this competition. We just want the best for you, and I’m sorry if it comes off like we’re being hard on you. I don’t want you to struggle like we had to.”
I wrapped my arms around his neck, and this time we both had trouble letting go of each other. Deep down, I think I always knew my parents’ motivations. Most times our parents are hard on us for a reason; they’ve had their fair share of disappointments and failures, and they want to see their kids succeed in life. Sometimes they are simply unable to see their child’s dream, but you just have to follow your heart and listen that little voice inside that says, “Yes, I can.”
“Keep us updated on everything, honey,” my mother said with glassy eyes, holding her tears at bay. “Please be safe.”
“I will. I’m a big girl,” I said, wiping tears of my own.
God, I was going to miss them. And I was so grateful that they confronted their fears and flew halfway around the world to see me and see for themselves that the world isn’t such a scary place.
“You’ll always be our little girl.”
“No matter how old I get, I’ll never stop being your little girl.”
“And if you ever speak to Audrey again, tell her the same.”
I reached out and gently placing my hands over their hearts. “She already knows.”
After we smothered each other with hugs and kisses they slid into the taxi. I ran after the taxi down next to the Cairns Esplanade waving like a wild woman, as they waved back through the rear window. Finally I stopped and stood watching, gasping for air, until the taxi faded from sight.
Chapter 25
Date: April 17, 2010
Arlie Beach, Australia
Waves lapped against the single hull of the former racing yacht as we motored out of Arlie Beach and headed for the Whitsunday Islands. After my parents left, I boarded a dive boat bound for the Great Barrier Reef and stayed on the wonder of the world for three days, completing my PADI Open Water Certification, a very generous gift from my parents. As I descended into the deep on my first dive, my heart felt as if it would burst from my chest. The skin-tight wetsuit constricted my movements, my breathing was stunted, and reef sharks slunk past me. Halfway through the descent I gave my instructor the “something’s wrong” signal and indicated that I wanted to ascend. He pulled out a whiteboard and wrote, “What’s wrong?” After he scrubbed it out, he passed me the board, I wondered what to respond. I wanted to say, “Everything,” and then list it all: tight wetsuit, unnatural breathing, sharks, but instead I settled with the truth: “Scared.” He scrubbed out my writing, scribbled something down and turned it around: “It’s okay. I’m here.”
When I read those words in my head, I heard Audrey’s voice. I wasn’t alone. Audrey’s spirit was with me, watching, guiding, learning.
All is well.
I nodded, and he tucked the whiteboard back into his BCD. He then gave me the “OK” sign and gestured for me to take three longer breaths, and by slowing down, I adjusted to the breathing apparatus and felt more at ease. I gave him the “OK” sign back, and when he gave the thumbs down signal, the sign to descent, we continued the dive. And with each dive, I felt more and more at ease until I was convinced I was part mermaid.
During the certification, I received a bonus from my fellow divers, a crash course on underwater photography. The cost of the equipment needed is astronomical, but I added it to wish-list along with the Hasselblad.
Too afraid to spend the night alone, once back on land, I took a night bus down the coast to meet Lana in Arlie Beach, which is a bit of a misnomer, as it doesn’t have an actual beach but has man-made lagoon instead. I stayed the night in a crowded party hostel on the warm and sunny seaside tourist town, and Lana arrived on the dock just in time to board the sailing vessel. We greeted each other with squeals and hugs and caught up on our missed time as we were shown our cabin.
The yacht ran eighty feet in length, and the hull was constructed in cool white fiberglass, with panels of wood that ran the length of the deck, weathered by age, sun and salt. The captain, first and second mate and sixteen passengers, including Lana and I, were scheduled to spend the night together. The first mate rewarded Lana’s flirtation by assigning us the big double bed in the cabin at the bow. Aside from one other double bed in another cabin behind the galley, all the beds were indented in the hull and were as narrow as a coffin — and looked just as comfy.
As we settled in, I noticed that her wound from Koh Phangan was scabbed over and healing quickly. After brushing her teeth, she told me tales of exploring beige-sand beaches, jungle trails, and tanned surfer boys in Byron Bay with her two cousins Alexis and Odessa. I was happy to hear that she had time to reset and think about her career options for the near future. She wasn’t in denial about the realities of re-entering the real world, but I still was.
After unpacking, we headed back up to the deck for the safety briefing with the others and took a seat with five girls in our age bracket. Introductions were made, names were forgotten and we simply became the Canadian girls and the Chilean girls. As with most days on the tropical coast, the sky was cobalt, the sea was turquoise and the temperature was perfect for tank tops and tanning. Once the captain cut the engine the first mate invited five passengers up to assist with setting the sail. The boat leaned as the salty ocean breeze filled the sail, and we rode the forested coast until we entered a channel between the mainland and archipelago of the Whitsunday Islands.
&
nbsp; Clouds set in when we berthed at a dock on one of the islands. Everyone disembarked and trailed behind the first mate along a dirt path in the forest to a lookout point above the famed Whitehaven Beach. Hues of sapphire, sky blue, and turquoise sea mixed with the pure white sand swirled in the currents through the meandering waterway, between untouched emerald-coloured islands into the horizon. It was perhaps the one must-see tourist attraction I could capture without a single body spoiling the landscape.
After my mother’s revelations on Miles, I had been dying to talk to Lana about it, but I had to be patient and bide my time until we had a chance to separate from our new friends. Through the afternoon, Lana and I socialized with the other passengers, swam, and learned about sailing and our sacred Aboriginal surroundings. I took photos of our friends, loving being able to capture these moments of complete and utter joy. We were having the time of our lives. Even though many of these friendships may not last long, they’ll always exist in my images. After eating dinner cross-legged on deck, everyone broke out the goon wine. It was prohibited to bring glass aboard, so instead we bought boxed wine, leaving the box on land and packing just the foil bag. As the Chilean girls drank and forgot that neither Lana nor I spoke Spanish, I motioned to Lana to scoot to an empty spot near the bow to continue our catch up.
“Have you heard from Miles?”
I shook my head.
“What an asshole.”
“You don’t know the half of it,” I scoffed and proceeded to repeat what my mother had told me about his cheating and his lies. As she sucked from the plastic spout on the foil bag, she shook her head, gasped, and her mouth hung open at all of the appropriate times.
“Oh, honey,” she said, reaching across to put her hand on my knee. “I know you’re angry, but you really dodged a bullet.”
“Ugh, the worst thing is I ate up everything he had said about fate and all that crap.”
“You wanted to believe it. We all want to believe those things.”
“Lana, after he told me that, he stole my camera I could actually rationalize the gesture as romantic, not sociopathic.” I was so angry with him, but more so with myself. “He used me, and I let him.”
She started waving her fists around in front of her body.
“What are you doing?”
“See these red flags? They’re not me cheering you on.”
“Shut up,” I said, laughing. I dipped my hand into my pocket, my fingers closed around a matchbook, and I threw it at Lana.
“Well, you’ll know next time to spot these things better.” She picked up the black pack of matches from the deck and tossed it back at me. “And if a guy breaks your heart once, he’s likely to do it again.”
As I held the slick black card in my hand a realization struck me. Given what the word “matches” meant to us, Miles had literally handed me a red flag that day in Laos. And after that, all the other signs were flashing like neon lights in my face. I just interpreted them through smudged rose-coloured glasses.
With the goon wine taking effect, feelings I had been trying to suppress bubbled to the surface. I told her how angry I was at Mira for what she did and how a coal of irritation burned for my father’s lack of support. But most of all how I couldn’t shake the anger at myself for all of the mistakes I made with Miles and Adam. And how guilty I still felt for hurting Adam.
“Everything happens for a reason,” she said, rubbing my shoulder.
I know she was trying to help but that saying felt like nails on a chalkboard. After Audrey died, it seemed some people had the right words, and others had the wrong ones despite their good intentions. Telling me that my sister’s life was cut so short, and my family was hurting in a way I wouldn’t wish upon my worst enemy, happened for a reason made me want to punch them in the throat. But I was a lady, and I would only imagine doing it instead.
“For what reason did this happen?”
Lana gaped and lifted her hands, searching for words to rationalize an explanation.
“The reason, doll, is that sometimes you made bad choices,” an unfamiliar female voice called out from the stern.
“Excuse me? This is none of your business.”
An older woman closer to my mother’s age pushed herself to her feet and padded down the deck towards us. “Talk that loudly, and it becomes everyone’s business.” The silver-haired Aussie took a seat a few feet away and held up her foil goon back to cheers. “The name’s Avalon.” I held up my goon and eyed her suspiciously. “Look, doll, shit happens to us. All of us. And, yes, for a reason.”
“Please, by all means, tell me the reason that my sister was murdered.”
“The same reason my son and husband were hit and killed by a drunk driver.” With those words, guilt rippled through me. It was so easy to forget that everyone was fighting a battle of their own. She took the spout to her lips and then looked out to the darkness. “Life can be cruel and unfair.”
“How is that a reason?”
“How is it not? When people say, ‘Everything happens for a reason,’ they assume that it means it happened for a good reason. No one says you have to like the reason, or even ever find out the reason. What I felt after the day I lost my son and husband, and every day since, has been a struggle. There is the crushing grief, and burning anger, but you truly realize that life is chaos, and there’s nothing you can do about it, and you feel so out of control of our own existence. That, for me, is the worst part.”
She was right. That’s why my grief counselor encouraged us to set goals for ourselves, to regain the perception of control. But, even then, chaos rears its ugly head and derails your plans and goals.
“The key, I find,” she continued, “is to give it a reason. You can’t go back in time, you can’t change what happened, but you have the power to reframe it and let that shape your future. If you want it to have a good reason for happening, give it one.”
“What do you mean, give it one?” I asked zipping my hoodie up tighter as the cool night air licked over the deck.
“After a year of wallowing in my own depression, I woke up one day and read the paper. A drunk driver killed two innocent motorists in my town, just like what happened to my Jake and Charles. The drunk driver was eighteen. He was a child himself and would have to life with it for the rest of his life. The worst part was that it was preventable — he left a party and drove home thinking he was fine to drive. When I read this, it was like a light bulb switched on. I started a non-profit along with others who had lost loved ones to drunk driving accidents, and my daughter and I set up an education campaign in my town and set up ride-shares. Eventually secured sponsorship of a large corporate brand to acquire a bus and driver as a late-night shuttle service so no one had to drive drunk or get in a car with a drunk driver. We’ve done great work, and if that saves even one life, my son and husband did not die for nothing.”
I bit my lip wondering what I could do. I had never thought of setting up a charity.
As if reading my mind, she continued, “You don’t have to set up a charity, that is simply what spoke to me. I know people who have regained their sense of control by channeling their grief into personal projects like painting and writing. One widow in my charity took up sculpting after her husband died and now makes a living by selling her work.”
I dropped my eyes to my polished toes and let her story and words wash over me. No matter what happened with the Awesome Adventures competition, I had to continue my photography. I never really realized that it was more than a love, more than a passion, more than a goal. I felt a sense of control when looking through the viewfinder. I felt a sense of purpose by capturing the stories I saw in the world, and my sharing them with people who were unable to see places for themselves.
“Thanks,” I mumbled and looked up at her, “for the perspective.”
“No prob, doll. Oh, and may I offer some advice in regard to that pompous boy you keep moaning about?”
I smiled and nodded. “Why not?”
“You set your expectations too high. Never forget that God gave boys two heads and only enough blood to run one at a time.”
Lana and I laughed. I did get carried away with my daydreams.
“So forgive him, and forgive yourself,” Avalon said.
“Forgive him?” Was she crazy? “And let him off the hook?”
“Forgiveness isn’t for them. It’s for you. Your anger will eat you alive. Trust me, I know. I wanted to hunt down the man who destroyed my family through his poor choice to get behind the wheel after a night of too many beers, but after fighting my therapist, I finally gave in. I realized I’d be a slave to my past and would never move on. I looked him in the eye the day he was sentenced to jail and told him that I forgave him. It was hard, one of the hardest things I’ve had to endure, but I felt as if I dropped a backpack full of bricks I didn’t realize I had been carrying around each and every day.”
I took another swig of goon wine and thought about what she said. After Audrey had died my mother joined a church. She was looking for something to believe in, and I could never understand until that moment why she could forgive Audrey’s murderers. I thought she had been brainwashed, and a year ago, on what would have been Audrey’s twenty-ninth birthday, she made me say out loud that I forgave them. Though I only did it to make her happy, I did feel lighter, and every day hurt a little less. My father didn’t understand my mom’s choice, either, I know he will never forgive them in the way my mother could.
As Avalon’s story rolled in my mind, I realized that we weren’t that dissimilar, she was just further along in her journey through grief than me. She was someone who endured unimaginable pain, and while you’re never the same again, she seemed to have come out on the other side. I couldn’t move on with my future if I was stuck in the past. I convinced my parents of this in Sydney, but now I needed to listen to my own advice.
“Well,” Avalon said, pushing to her feet with a groan.” It’s time for this old bag to hit the hay. Sleep tight, girls.”
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