Letting Go

by Carrie Lange

  “All right then. Let’s talk about that other person you were when you were a kid. What’s the worst thing that happened to him?”

  Dan looked at his feet and thought for a moment. “Well, I remember I got beat up pretty good by a bully at school once. Got my front tooth knocked out, even. Man, they picked on me a lot when I was a kid.”

  “Okay, how about that other person you say you grew into. The man. Was he bullied? Was he ever beaten up? Ever get a tooth knocked out?”

  “No … what’s your point?”

  “My point is this. By your own admission, we have two different people here.” He held his left hand out, palm up. “A child who got the hell beat out of him.” He held his right hand out, palm up. “And a man who didn’t.” He raised his eyebrows. “Why did the little boy have to suffer, and the grown man did not? That’s not fair.”

  Dan made a swatting gesture with his hand. “That’s ridiculous. You can’t make that kind of comparison! The child was me.”

  “No, you said yourself that you are not the same person that you were as a child. You most certainly are not the same person you were as a baby, and I imagine you aren’t even the same person you were when you were twenty years old. And yet, all those different people are the same man. Not all of them experienced the same things, and yet … they did.”

  Dan shook his head, and kept on shaking it, unable to either refute or accept Tar’s logic. He wasn’t exactly sure where Tar was heading with this, but he was fairly certain he was not going to like it when he got there.

  Tar motioned toward the lake. “Do you see a lake? Or do you see billions of separate molecules of water? Or do you see billions and billions of individual atoms? What is the definition of that which you see? I will wager that you see a lake. And yet, you realize it is comprised of individual atoms. One and many.”

  “No, Tar. There’s a huge difference between a lake and people. You can’t compare them like that.”

  Tar nodded. “You’re right, Dan. People are not like lakes. But you’re not a person anymore. You’re a spirit. And spirits are more like lakes, than they are like people.” He shrugged. “At least in Heaven they are.”

  He knelt beside the water. “Take a closer look.”

  Dan knelt beside Tar and looked in the water, past his reflection. At first he saw only the silvery sheen, but then colors began swirling and pulsing in delicate patterns. Small shadows of life flitting just below the coalescing patterns. Were they fish?

  Dan squinted and tried to focus on one moving shape, but the shadows ran together and moved together. Perhaps it was a school of fish. “What is it, Tar?”

  When Tar didn’t answer, Dan reached out and gently touched the surface. His fingertips absorbed the warm water, and a bolt of electricity zapped through his body. His life flashed before his eyes again, much like when he was dying. Except this time, the images were not just from his life, but from the lives of countless others.

  Muscles stretched taut as they pulled a metal plough share, hooves sinking in thick mud.

  Roots spread through deep earth, and leaves swayed on branches in a gentle breeze high above.

  Chubby brown fingers poked at beetles scurrying in sand.

  A rolling orb of water tumbled through the air and splashed on a yellow daisy.

  A mother wept over the body of her small child.

  Rocks and wind and water moved through the earth.

  A man, hatred smoldering in his heart, took aim at his enemy and fired.

  A goose was kicked by a heavy boot, breaking bones and feathers.

  Millions of moments, from millions of lives flashed through Dan’s spirit.

  Suddenly, the images vanished, and he saw his arm stretched out before him, firmly in Tar’s grasp. He looked over at Tar who shrugged. “I promised you I would take you back. Do you still want to go?”

  Dan sat back heavily and lay on the ground. “I was a drop of rain, Tar. I was a tree, and I think that goose must have died. What the hell just happened?”

  Tar lay beside him and sighed. “You saw past the lake. You saw the individual molecules of water.”

  “Everything that dies comes here? To this lake? This is Heaven?”

  Tar chuckled. “No. This isn’t Heaven. This is an emulation, Dan. This is the edge of Heaven, but Eternity doesn’t look any more like a lake than I look like some famous movie star.” He sat up and pointed to the water. “This is a barrier that our spirits have constructed. It’s an illusion.” He dipped his hand in the water and withdrew it. A silver sheen coated his hand and drops of shining moisture fell and plinked softly on the glassy surface. “This surrounds us all the time. We are submerged in it. We are one with it. There is no separation.”

  Dan sat up and looked behind him. Hundreds of puddles surrounded the grassy bank. “And those? Those are other spirits that won’t let go, aren’t they? Is this where you spend all your free time? Sitting around in a puddle? Is this your Heaven?”

  Tar frowned. “Not my Heaven. These sleep, and never wake up.”

  Dan got up and walked over to one. Leaning down, he started to reach toward it.

  “No!” Tar shouted. He got up and walked over to Dan, looking down at the puddle. “No, don’t touch them. Let them be. I made that mistake once. Trust me, you don’t want to experience the lives they’ve led…the suffering they’ve caused.” Tar rubbed his other arm and hand, as if trying to warm it, or relieve a deep ache. “When the world is gone, the spirit sees. And the pain they saw when they died was far greater than anything you could imagine.”

  Dan stood and pulled his hand back. “Is this what will become of you? If you stay here? Drown in your own grief and shame? You tell me to let go. Why won’t you?”

  Tar’s face darkened. “Why should I? You say you deserve to go to Hell for what you did? Your sin is nothing compared to mine. You say you never murdered anyone. Well, I did, Dan. I murdered a lot of people. And not just warriors who were trying to kill me. Women…children. We marched into their homeland and killed them all. Entire villages…In God’s name…I can still hear them screaming.”

  Tar looked at Dan with shimmering eyes.

  Dan shook his head slowly, unable to form words with his mouth.

  Tar looked down and one shining tear fell, and with a soft drop, sent gentle waves rolling through the puddle at his feet. “My brother…Angelica.”

  Dan shook his head viciously. “No, Tar. I saw. You didn’t murder Angelica.”

  Tar looked up, his eyes ablaze. “I might as well have! I am one of those who caused great suffering. I’m one of those you said should be punished. Me! Maybe I should become one of these puddles, because I don’t deserve Heaven!”

  Tar’s chin and lower lip trembled. He inhaled sharply and turned away from Dan, hanging his head in his hands.

  It all made sense now. It wasn’t about Rale, after all. Tar could not forgive himself.

  Dan reached out to touch his shoulder. “Tar, I’m s––”

  Tar brushed Dan’s hand away, and began walking away from the lake, back in the direction they had come. “I promised to take you back. Let’s go.”

  As Dan turned to follow Tar, his eye caught something in the trees beside the water.

  Rale stood in the shadows, watching them.

  Part 4

  Expectations.

  Tricky little bastards, aren’t they?

  When I first met Tar, I thought he was God. Isn’t that funny? He seemed so perfect and radiant. I expected him to save me.

  Even harder than letting go of the expectations I had set for myself, was letting go of the expectations I had set for others.

  They were quiet expectations, almost invisible - thin strands of perfection that I wove around them in a gossamer tapestry. They fumbled through the delicate lines, not even knowing they were there, destroying them one by one.

  Now I watch them, beautiful in their imperfection, weaving their own tapestries.

  Will they be able to let
go of those strands that keep their heads forever bowed to the task?

  Or will they rise up, and look into each other’s eyes?

  ~ Dan

  Chapter 53

  There are moments, most unexpectedly, when something inside me tries to assure me that I don’t really mind so much, not so very much, after all. Love is not the whole of a man’s life...People get over these things. Come, I shan’t do so badly. One is ashamed to listen to this voice but it seems for a little to be making out a good case. Then comes a sudden jab of red-hot memory and all this ‘commonsense’ vanishes like an ant in the mouth of a furnace.

  ~ C.S. Lewis, A Grief Observed

  ~~~~~

  Anne had been afraid to fly since the week she spent cleaning up after Flight 4184. As she boarded the red eye to Seattle, she found it ironic that her anxiety had vanished.

  Amazing how liberating a death wish can be, she thought, with a smile on her face.

  It’s not that she expected, or even that she wished the plane would crash. She wasn’t ready to die quite yet. It’s just that the possibility that the plane might crash, no longer frightened her.

  Reclining her seat, images of her body tearing to shreds as small bits of metal plane hull ripped through it, assailed her. Over and over the images, varying by degrees, played out in her mind.

  Sometimes, her body fell, tumbling through the air as other passengers around her screamed and bits of wreckage tore her skin. Until finally, the ground raced forward, a final black image of eternity.

  Sometimes an explosion rocked the plane and a raging fireball rolled in slow motion toward her down the aisle of the cabin. It engulfed the other passengers and sent shards of debris ahead of itself to impale into her body. Screams ended when flesh blackened. In those visions, eternity was orange.

  Sometimes, as was the case with Flight 4184, she stayed in the cabin as it screamed and spun through the air, along with the other passengers. Finally it smashed into the ground, breaking into jagged fragments which tore her body to pieces. Pieces which would lay on the ground until someone with a respirator came along and picked them up and put them in a plastic bag with a number on it.

  Still smiling, Anne sat up and looked around the dimly lit cabin. Most of the people around her dozed. A few read from books, yellow spot lights above them illuminating white pages and casting shadows over faces.

  Why did the deathly images keep replaying in her mind? And why was she smiling as they did? Perhaps she wished for more than release. Maybe there was more than just a longing to reunite with Dan.

  Searching her memory, she stumbled over thoughts that were disjointed and confusing.

  There! A shining memory, which had power and strength.

  When she asked Chris if he would kill her.

  She took this memory out and examined it, turning it this way and that, looking into the heart of it, into the heart of her desire. Yes, she saw it. There had been more to her desire than mere death. There had been a hunger for pain. For suffering. For punishment.

  Punishment for letting him die.

  Anne shivered as she looked out the window. All was blackness except for the glowing wisps of cloud that raced past the double paned glass occasionally, like ghosts in the night.

  Is that you, Dan? Are you out there, somewhere? It wasn’t my fault. I didn’t let you die.

  She turned away from the window and looked at the back of the seat in front of her. Closing her eyes, she pushed the images of pain and fire and destruction out of her mind.

  “It’s not my fault, you son of a bitch. You killed yourself.”

  “Pardon me?” the man next to her said.

  Turning to look at him, Anne shook her head and smiled weakly. “Oh, I’m sorry, it was nothing. I was just talking to myself.”

  The man smiled and leaned back again in his chair, closing his eyes.

  Anne turned back to the window, dreaming once more of fireballs and black eternity.

  Chapter 54

  Dan and Kim went with Anne and Chris to Mount Saint Helens and to the Pacific Ocean and to Mount Rainier. The sparse devastation around the volcano, the vastness of the grey ocean, and the greenness of the primeval, old growth forests had a mollifying effect on all four of them.

  They also went with them to the studio where Chris rehearsed with his band. Watching Chris introduce Anne to his band mates and friends, his hand resting lightly on the small of her back, had an agitating effect on Dan and Kim.

  They rode with them silently on the Monorail to the Space Needle in Seattle. Their bodies rocked gently side to side as they sat together, opposite Chris and Anne in the otherwise deserted tram.

  A slight scowl marred their radiant faces as they watched Chris lean close to Anne and point out the window. Occasionally, the furrows between their eyebrows deepened when Anne giggled or Chris put his arm around her shoulders.

  When Chris and Anne stood at the top of the Space Needle, and simultaneously reached out and grasped each other’s hands, Dan and Kim glared.

  Dan gestured toward the pair with both hands. “What the hell does he think he’s doing?”

  Anne leaned her head on Chris’s shoulder, and Kim grumbled. “Well, he’s not realizing how much this floozy girlfriend of yours is taking advantage of him.”

  “What? What the hell are you talking about? She’s no floozy!”

  “Oh right, tell me you haven’t seen the way she’s throwing herself at him. Pining away with those big blue eyes. Blink, blink, blink. She’s so obvious!”

  The irritation which had been building the last few days bubbled up within Dan and he set his site on the only viable target within range. “Oh yeah? Well, she wouldn’t even be here if it wasn’t for your wanna be rock star boyfriend wanting to show off for her in his studio with his band. Like everyone from Seattle isn’t a rock star wanna be.”

  “Wha-at? It wasn’t even his idea for her to come out here! She’s the one who didn’t want––” here, Kim made those quotation marks with her fingers, “––to die before seeing the Pacific Ocean!” Kim swatted her hands in a dismissive gesture and rolled her eyes.

  They glared at each other with impotent rage. Dan realized that he could do nothing but watch them as they either moved on together or died together.

  Kim looked at Dan with watery eyes, her chin quivering. “What is it that we want? Do you know? Do we want them to live or die?”

  Dan put his arms around her and she buried her face in his chest.

  The sun was setting over the waters of Puget Sound and a pink glow bathed the city below. He looked at Anne and Chris and sighed. “We want them to live.”

  ~~~~~

  Back at the apartment that night Chris and Anne took Ecstasy and Melt. Chris sat on the floor in front of a large mirror. Dan sat behind him on the sofa thinking about rain drops and lakes and broken geese.

  Kim sat at the other end of the sofa. She picked up a bottle of rum from the coffee table and took a long swig. Setting it back on the table, she smiled. “I always knew rum had a lot of spirit.”

  Leaning in closer to the mirror, Chris rubbed it with his hand as though polishing it. He leaned back and blinked several times and then back in again, squinting at the mirror.

  Kim watched Chris and she slapped Dan on the knee. When he looked up at her, she pointed toward Chris.

  Chris’s head was cocked to the side now, his nose almost touching the glass. He turned and looked back toward Dan, and then back in the mirror again, his eyebrows deeply furrowed.

  “Does he see me?” Dan asked in a wispy voice, his own eyebrows now colliding. He got on the floor and crawled over to Chris. For a moment, they looked at each other in the mirror. Chris swiveled his entire body around in a fluid motion and came almost nose to nose with Dan, and looked in his eyes.

  Chris reached out and placed his hand over Dan’s face. Dan’s first impulse was to push it away, but he restrained himself as his heart pounded against his chest and an invisible band tightened aro
und his lungs.

  Chris could see him, feel him.

  A million and one thoughts zipped through Dan’s mind. There was so much he needed to tell Chris, things he needed Chris to tell Anne for him. The thoughts spun in fractured, disjointed syllables in his head.

  I love you. I’m sorry. I’m okay. You’re okay. We’ll be together again someday. Take care of Alexandra. Tell my parents I love them––

  Chris withdrew his hand. He tilted his head and gave a slight nod. He appeared to carry the weight of the world in his eyes. “What am I supposed to do?” he whispered.

  The buzzing of jumbled thoughts in Dan’s mind ceased.

  He looked at Anne, who kneeled in front of the coffee table scrawling line after incomprehensible line of gibberish over yet another quickly discarded piece of paper.

  He glanced at Kim, an unspoken question hanging between them.

  Kim nodded.

  He turned back to Chris and smiled. “Take care of her.”

  Chapter 55

  The journey of a thousand miles begins with the first step.

  ~ Chinese Proverb

  ~~~~~

  Anne glanced up from the most recent line of scrawl and saw Chris watching her. “What?”

  He stood, walked over to her, and held his hand out.

  “What?” she said again, a little crinkle forming between her eyebrows.

  Chris still held his hand out. “Come up here for a minute. I want to talk to you.”

  Anne tilted her head to the side and narrowed her eyes, but took his hand and let him pull her to her feet.

  “Anne…I need to tell you something…something important.”

  Anne swayed slightly from side to side and rubbed her forehead with her other hand. “Chris, what is it? I’m really high. Can’t this wait?”

  “No, I don’t think so.”

  He led her over to the couch and sat, pulling her down onto his lap. She started to push off of him, but he grabbed her face and looked in her eyes. “Wait.”

  For a moment, they looked at each other.

  Anne blinked her eyes several times, trying to focus on him, and nodded. “Okay. What is it?”