Love, Carry My Bags

by Everett, C. R.

  My heart ran calisthenics and sweat pooled under my arms while I waited for Glenn’s verdict on my novel, a novel which was not only about love, but also was a labor of love.

  “You’ll be a best seller . . . I like it,” he said, waxing with pride.

  CHAPTER 36

  “For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for me will find it.”

  Matthew 16:25 (NIV)

  Just as a salmon endures a long struggle upstream for a final hurrah, so did Glenn, leaving his legacy behind. He lived better ill than able-bodied, couch-potato lifestyle no longer appealing. He made much nicer company, sick. Gone was his rabidness, his ire. He was a wild pony, broken. Only the docile beast remained, the one I liked most and the one I would soon lose. Why couldn’t he have been this way when the girls were young and he was healthy?

  “I’m so lucky to have you three girls,” Glenn said, breaking the silence. “You’ve given me a new outlook on life.”

  I stared at him, as he lie in the bed, and wondered where that came from.

  “It’s been difficult, but still good,” he continued, half-lost in what he wasn’t saying. “You’ve been good for me.”

  “Well, two of the girls haven’t caused you many problems,” I said, trying to lighten his first comments, uncomfortable with the rest, not knowing how to respond. I had felt like a thorn in his side many times over the years rather than a good thing.

  “None of you have caused me any problems—at least none I haven’t caused for myself.”

  I was pleased he understood his role, yet wondered if Glenn’s abrasive disposition would have changed had he taken a good look in the mirror fifteen years ago. In all the years of self-proclaimed leaf turning, he rarely turned a new one. Instead, he flipped the same old ones over and over until they disintegrated into nothing, compost.

  “You’re the one who got me through all these years . . . you don’t even know.”

  “Don’t—” I said, trying to stop him, seeing tears form in his eyes, feeling them well in my own.

  “I have to.” With grave seriousness and heartfelt appreciation, he said, “I got through life without knowing how to read well because of—nothing short of a miracle—you.”

  Not bothering to dry his eyes, he said, “You’re a strong lady. If you lived with me for twenty years, I know you can live without me.” Sweat beaded on Glenn’s forehead. “Would you get me some water?” he asked. I reached for the institutional drinking glass, flex straw extended. Before Glenn could take a sip, a stabbing, drawn-out cough took him over. He winced. Helpless tears seeped from his eyes. The tumors reduced him to a shivering child whimpering in pain. His frightened visage, with down-turned, trembling mouth, spoke volumes of the angst inside.

  “Here, have a drink.” I held the straw for Glenn, but he could not even hold it between his lips. He grimaced and cried again, then said, “It hurts, please make it stop.” With angry desperation he went on, “Can’t the doctor get me something for the pain? Find the doctor!” The cough, the sweats, the violent shivers came again as Glenn hunched over and pulled another blanket around him. The pain racked him from the inside out. “Go!” he started shouting at me, but couldn’t complete the word and hoarsely trailed off into another hacking fit. Panic overcame me. I didn’t think I should leave him alone, yet he needed relief. They had already pumped him with morphine, but it wasn’t enough.

  “Nurse,” I called from the door of room one twelve. Glenn moaned behind me. “Nurse,” I called louder. One woman looked up from her bleeping monitors, unmoved. “He needs help in here. The pain’s too much.” Nurse Bergstrom rose and sauntered over, as if out for a stroll. Glenn was coughing again when we entered the room, wailed and coughed some more, this time bringing up blood and a bloody mass. He literally coughed up a lung—cancer. I ran next to him and took his hand. Grief streamed from my eyes. Glenn made a gurgling cough and blood pooled in his mouth, leaking out the side and over his ear. He couldn’t talk, but those same eyes that first captured me twenty-five years before said everything I needed to hear. I bent down near his forehead and placed a kiss. “I love you,” I whispered. I did. I loved him and appreciated him for making me a better person, and in his own way, saving my life too. Our life together rushed through my head—all of it. And then our life together passed on. Glenn’s body was a vacant shell.

  Nurse Bergstrom, still composed, but warmed, recorded the time of death and began the post-mortem routine. She suctioned the pooled blood and wiped the face and ear clean. Sydney’s four-year-old voice resonated in my mind. So when you die, you are done with your body? We had discussed this topic after my father’s passing years before. “Your body is just a place for your spirit to stay while you are on earth and then you go back to heaven,” I had said. Sydney had elaborated—“You go to heaven and you don’t need your costume anymore.” She had spoken words wiser than her years. You don’t need your costume anymore.

  * * *

  When I returned home to deliver the sad news in person, Elizabeth met me at the door, already distraught. “Mommy, come quick!” She led me to the spot where David usually slept in the sunshine. Sydney was weeping as she stroked David’s fur. “We thought David was sleeping, but when Sydney went to pet him, he wouldn’t wake up,” Elizabeth said through tumultuous, arresting sobs.

  Seeing their grief in addition to the somber news I had yet to deliver, caused me pain. I was about to add salt to an open wound. Sydney’s version of events made things worse.

  “I picked him up and shook him, but he didn’t”—her voice cracked—“move. He was just limp . . . and heavy.” When she wiped her eyes, David’s fur rubbed off her hands, sticking to her cheeks.

  I pet David’s head. He was no longer our housecat, but an uninhabited object. His lifeless little body lay there like a furry rock. Not knowing what to say next or how to say it, I whispered between sniffles, “He can keep Daddy company in heaven.”

  “No,” Sydney wailed. I nodded, the tears coming tenfold.

  We clung to each other, shouldering violent sobs.

  “We didn’t even get to say goodbye,” Elizabeth said, then broke ranks, grieving instead into the well-worn teddy bear Glenn had given her for her fifth birthday.

  * * *

  Dear Megan,

  Elizabeth says the cattails down by the pond are more impressive than normal since David’s grave is nearby. She decided that is where he’d want to be. I agree. Sometimes when the ducks take flight all at once for no apparent reason, I imagine it’s David getting his kicks, which makes me happy and sad all at once. Hard to believe we had him for nearly nineteen years. Sydney and Elizabeth always called him their older brother since we had David just over two years before Sydney was born.

  Then there are times when I hear the ticking sound the second hand on our clock makes and it reminds me of Glenn. I didn’t know our clock ticked that way. Just like I didn’t know what it sounded like when the fridge cycled—the coils hum, spool down, then drain. The wind just whispered through a crack in the door. I remember Glenn telling me about the time he and some fraternity brothers went to the main campus, hunting the scene of The Exorcist. He said when they got close, the haunting, steely cold air abruptly ended their expedition. Chills shivered down my spine then as they do now. I’m not used to the quiet. There’s no NASCAR racing, no Monster Garage, no snores emanating from the recliner where Glenn, more often than not, fell asleep during those things. No one next to me to wake at 2 a.m. because one of the smoke detectors chirped for a new battery.

  I miss eating breakfast out together; I don’t miss the side of urgency that went along with it. Things I had thought I’d happily throw in the trash, things like the stupid rock he took from Eleven Mile Canyon and the jar of black sand he stole from Hawaii have become badges of honor—even my wedding ring which I loved, then hated, then loved again. I haven’t taken it off.

  I feel guilty for, even in our worst moments, wishing him dead. Be care
ful what you wish for . . . .

  When I looked back over our college yearbooks, I realized that the something that caused Glenn to help restore the Parks P-1 and the something that caused Glenn to use too much toothpaste was the same something that drove his career and put food on our table. If it wasn’t for Glenn, I may not have strayed from iceberg lettuce.

  The last few years had been some of the best amongst some of the worst, with the illness and all. I got a letter just the other day from Colonel Kemp’s daughter—no, it was addressed to Glenn. Enclosed was a picture of her dad receiving accolades at the Black Engineer of the Year Awards Conference and another picture of the two of them together. She said, “Thanks for saving my daddy.” I cried for thirty minutes.

  I’ve never been alone—ever. Of course there are the girls. I mean alone as in no significant other. What kind of life is being alone and scared of the deafening quiet? We’ll get by though. It’s odd how things seem to work out for me but never in the way I had envisioned. I always looked for the straightforward path, yet time and time again found myself on the circuitous route, still reaching my destination. Mother was right about God supplying my needs. He did it whether it was bashed into my head with a Bible or not.

  Wish you were here.

  Love,

  Camryn

  P.S. Glenn’s mother is going to move out here soon, to live with us.

  P.P.S. Remember Judy, the lady I met in New York who lives in Australia? She was just here for a visit. Haven’t seen her in decades, but we’ve kept in touch. She got along great with the girls and they adopted her as a third grandma.

  SECTION THREE

  CHAPTER 37

  “Look at the birds in the sky. They do not plant seeds. They do not gather grain. They do not put grain into a building to keep. Yet your Father in heaven feeds them! Are you not more important than the birds?”

  Matthew 6:26 (NIV)

  The phone rang. “Hello,” I answered.

  “Camryn, there’s been an accident.”

  * * *

  I sat, solemn, near the front of the chapel in a semi-conscious meditative state waiting for the service to begin. Hymnotic music ebbed from the organ. A cold draft chilled my feet; wind whipped sleeting snow against the stained glass. It was only the third funeral I had ever attended, Glenn’s the second, Father’s the first. I noticed some late arrivals from the corner of my eye, but noticed figures, not faces.

  “So sorry for your loss,” a woman whispered as she took her seat.

  Something about laying a parent to rest, despite the degree of kinship, is a partial death of yourself too. It hurts. Pastor Smythe murmured the motherhood and funeral pie for the occasion. Yes, she’s in a better place. Yes, she made her contribution to society.

  Elizabeth squeezed my hand. “Is she really in a better place?” she asked, softly. I nodded, only now realizing the mental torment Mother must have endured.

  Yes, she’ll be a missed member of the church.

  Mother always called Pastor Smythe, Pastor Jim, but I could never get a handle on the title/first-name combo. A few respectful formalities stuck with me as sacred.

  Yes, the family needs support. Yes, she loved her children. In her own way, I thought, my mind starting to drift.

  What was real love anyway? Total acceptance just the way you are? Or commitment and staying for the long haul regardless of compatibility? I’d had both, just not at the same time in the same package. Most people don’t. If they have the former, one party inevitably dies off early, securing the theory that most amorous stakeholders hold one-sided coins. Love had many spectrums.

  Drilled-in religious doctrine seeped to consciousness. He who finds his life loses it and he who loses his life finds it. There is but no greater love than this, he who lays down his life for another. There had been numerous sacrificial flies in our web of humanity who then resurrected. Some battered over and over again. And some just once.

  “Let me tell you what a fine friend and neighbor Evelyn Johnson was,” Pastor Smythe said, then proceeded to tell the tale.

  Mother had walked to the grocery store on Tuesday to pick up a few things for her homebound neighbor. She hadn’t had a drivers license since last spring when she failed the practical exam. She sold her car, as the writing was clear enough on the wall for even her to see. On the way home from the store, she slipped and fell, cracking her head on the jutting ice, curbside. The milk she had been carrying crashed down beside her headscarf and turned pink. Mother never rose again.

  After the final hymn, we filed out, forming a family reception line for the congregants to extend their condolences as they left the sanctuary. Sydney and Elizabeth stood stoically by my side. My mother’s children lined up before them, me at the end. Most people didn’t know what to say and only shook hands or hugged. Some hugged as much or more to receive solace than to give condolence. Some had great words of comfort that came from only the wiseness of years. Weepy-eyed people passed by, weeping as much for the sweet self-sacrificing circumstances as for her, or us. A few bursts of laughter broke up the heavy air. A few smiles broke through. People I didn’t know and elderly ladies resembling younger ladies I remembered from my early Sunday-school years passed by. A towering man in a dark blue suit, dark hair, and stunning blue eyes stood before me. He had the same semblance of thirty years ago, filled out with middle age.

  “I saw the obituary in the paper.” He smiled softly. His eyes danced in spite of the somber occasion. “I thought you could use some help with your mom’s place.”

  “Oh, my god.” It was all I could get out. We hadn’t been together over the years to notice each other’s first wrinkle or first gray hair and we didn’t notice right then either. All I saw was the same soul I fell in love with at sixteen. I hugged him tight—the kind of embrace that lasts a normal duration, but then no one lets go. Shock and happiness, sadness and overwhelming elation took over. I sobbed into his chest. Reese stroked my hair, held me close. It was familiar again, and I calmed.

  “I told you I’d be there if you needed me,” he said.

  “How did you know I needed you?” Reese took my hand and stood next to me in line, smearing away the wet drops from my face with his free hand.

  “I just knew.” His gentle words came with ease. Sydney and Elizabeth stared at us, perplexed. Other mourners passed over us, seeing we were having a moment.

  “Who’s that?” Elizabeth whispered next to me.

  More fun than humans are allowed.

  “Sydney, Elizabeth, meet Reese. We go way back.”

  “Nice to meet you,” the girls said.

  “You have the best mother in the world,” Reese told them. They still had no clue who, exactly, was talking to them. They replied with an apprehensive thank you. I blushed, humbled. Contentment set in on Reese’s face. He clasped my hand assuringly, and stayed until the last person was gone.

  * * *

  “Thank you for all your help,” I said while locking the back door behind us. We had caught up on each other’s lives, reconnecting for ten days while dispositioning Mother’s belongings and cleaning her house. Having to part again made looking at Reese without feeling the urge to cry difficult. I looked at the For Sale sign in front of Mother’s place, then stared at the brimming dumpster we ordered for cleanup. The crisp air pinched my cheeks while sunshine warmed the snow to a slow melt. “I’ve missed you so much. I always knew it over the years, but seeing you now . . .” I said, slowly shaking my head, pensive. “I know now that I missed you much more than I ever thought I knew. You never left me, but you’ve been gone. I don’t want you to be gone anymore.” Reese listened intently while I went on. “I have a little place back in Washington, on an island, actually.” Reese raised his eyebrows at me and smiled, semi-astonished at the new information. “It’s a long story. Come and visit me and I’ll fill you in. You’ll love it out there.”

  “I’d love it anywhere as long as you’re there too.” Reese hugged me again. It felt safe. “Cons
ider it a date.”

  “You’ll come?” I asked with the specter of giddy teen.

  “Of course. I have missed you every second of the last thirty years.” Reese spoke deliberately, looking straight into my eyes. “I’m so sorry I let you go. I could tell you a hundred times and you would still never know how sorry I am. It won’t happen again.” I knew he spoke the truth. And I knew grace was in action. Reese whispered, “God bless your mother for getting milk.” Tears came to my eyes. I, too, had contemplated the twist of fate. This latest cloud was not lined with silver, but gold.

  CHAPTER 38

  Amazing Grace, how sweet the sound,

  That saved a wretch like me . . . .

  I once was lost but now am found,

  Was blind, but now, I see.

  —John Newton

  “How long did you say you lived here?” Reese asked as he took in my rustic-looking, yet modern cabin.

  “About five years,” I said, holding the red and yellow roses Reese gave me at the airport when he arrived. “The yellow ones are for the girls,” he had said.

  “How long has Glenn’s mother been living with you?”

  “Five years. When Nicole came out for Glenn’s funeral, she said she’d had such a good time with us that she didn’t want to go back, and I said, ‘Then stay.’ She moved in two months later.”

  “She seems nice,” Reese said.

  “She is.”

  “I thought you said you had a little place,” Reese said, staring at the matching detached four-car garage aside 5700 square feet of cabin, almost half of which was walkout basement and barely used.

  “I didn’t want to seem pretentious. It’s way more than I need. It feels empty sometimes.” I paused, looking at my evergreen forest surrounds. “Deer come right up to the deck and eat corn the birds and squirrels drop from the feeders. Little is my synonym for cozy.”