Life and Other Near-Death Experiences

by Camille Pagán

  “I know,” I yelled. The wind was high and the ocean spray splattered against our faces, making it hard to hold a conversation. Not that this was of any consequence to Paul.

  “Soon!” he yelled. “Preferably in person.”

  “I know,” I said, not bothering to raise my voice this time.

  The boat slapped against a large wave, and I hugged my life preserver tight to my torso, dubious about its ability to do its eponymous duty. The boat hit the surf again, and I put my hand on a metal safety rail to steady myself, then yanked it back when I realized how silly I was being. Cancer or shark bite, what did it matter? Death was death.

  Of course, it wasn’t, I admitted to myself as I watched Shiloh chat animatedly with the boat’s captain. The whole idea behind this lark was to avoid a sudden and surprising end, to retain some semblance of control as the big hole in the sky closed in on me. But as diagnosis day slipped farther into the past, it seemed as if I were aiming less for a graceful exit and more for a lurching reentry.

  Paul was having reentry thoughts of his own. His questioning resumed as soon as we’d docked in the shallow water off one of Culebra’s beaches. “Have you started thinking about what you’ll do after treatment?” he asked as we trudged through the glittering sand behind Shiloh, who was searching for a shady spot where we could sit and have lunch.

  I squinted at him from behind my sunglasses. “What do you mean?”

  “You have a chance to start over. I’m not saying you have to come to New York, though I think it would be smart. But either way, you could do something different. Even without a recommendation from Jackie, you’ve got a great résumé and you’re brilliant, if I do say so myself. You choose an industry, I’ll make a call to a contact, and you’ll have a job the next day. You would make a great producer or event planner. Hell, become a feline behavior consultant if you’re so inclined. You can do anything you want. Anything! How exciting is that?”

  I supposed it was exciting in the abstract. As it pertained to my actual life, the idea of starting over made me want to go spear fishing for my own eyeballs. “Maybe,” I said.

  “Libby, will you give me a hand?” Shiloh asked as he attempted to spread a thin cotton blanket under a tree.

  I gave him a grateful look, then grabbed a corner of the blanket to pull it smooth. Paul took it from my hand. “Here, let me,” he said.

  “I’m not an invalid, you know,” I said, placing one of my sandals on the blanket’s edge to help secure it.

  He raised an eyebrow. “I didn’t say you were. I just want you to take it easy.”

  I sat down on the blanket and took out a bottle of sparkling water from the picnic basket Shiloh had packed. “I’m in the middle of the Caribbean with some of my favorite people, and there’s not a thing in the world that I have to do right now. If this isn’t taking it easy, then I don’t know what is.”

  Paul pressed on. “Naturally, everything depends on where you go for treatment. I did a little research last night.”

  “Of course you did.”

  He was sweating even more than I was, and he pulled off his polo, then carefully folded it and placed it in the canvas tote he had brought. “And if our roles were reversed, would you just sit there and do nothing?”

  “No.”

  “Ding ding ding! We have a neural connection!”

  I snatched a plastic knife from the picnic basket we’d packed. “Shall I use this on you?”

  He ignored me. “The Mayo Clinic is doing a second-phase clinical trial that sounds really promising. And there’s a doctor at Columbia who has written several papers on T-cell lymphomas.”

  “One thing at a time,” Shiloh said, putting an arm around me.

  Paul frowned at him, and I could see his wheels turning, taking in how this practical stranger was being protective of his sister.

  Paul must have decided Shiloh’s angle was a good one, because after a minute he said, “You’re right. One thing at a time.”

  After lunch we took a trio of kayaks out. The sea was still, and Shiloh and Paul easily paddled several hundred yards out, but I lingered near the shore. I had agreed to treatment, yet couldn’t envision it; when I tried to picture myself propped up in a pastel pleather recliner, the steady drip of an IV unloading into my veins, it was my mother’s face, not my own, that stared back at me.

  I shook my head, then looked down at the sea, trying to encourage my mind’s eye to envision some positive aspect of my post-Vieques existence, but the glassy green water held no inspiration. The fact that I could not visualize the alleged next phase of my life felt like further proof that Paul’s reasoning was wishful thinking.

  I wasn’t sure how long I had been floating there when Paul circled back around. “Have you spoken to Tom about your health?” he asked as the nose of his kayak gently bumped the side of my own.

  “No,” I said, watching a school of silvery minnows pass between us, then disappear into darker depths.

  “Do you plan to?”

  “No. But if you want to invite him to my funeral, I guess you can. I would prefer that you seat him at the back.”

  Paul grimaced. “I really wish you’d stop talking like that.”

  “Sorry.”

  His kayak began drifting backward, and he lifted his oar and latched it to the side of my boat, linking us together. “Do you miss him?”

  I shook my head. “Not at all.”

  I don’t, I told myself, but this was not even remotely true. I missed the way Tom pulled me into him at night, our bodies curved against each other like Russian nesting dolls. I missed how he would tuck a stray curl behind my ear while he was in the middle of talking to me. I missed the feeling of belonging to him, and believing that he, too, belonged to me.

  “You’ll love again,” said Paul.

  “Maybe,” I said, looking over my shoulder at Shiloh, who was paddling in the distance.

  “Is it weird?” Paul asked. “Being with someone else so soon? Not that I think it’s a bad thing, but . . . you two seem awfully cozy. I hope it doesn’t make things harder for you.”

  “It won’t.”

  He gave me a look.

  “What?”

  “Careful, Libs,” he said, looking again at Shiloh. “I like the guy, but he’s not worth your life.”

  “Trust me, he would be the first to agree with you. Despite his ‘one thing at a time’ shtick, he’s constantly on me about getting out of here and going to see a specialist.”

  “Huh,” said Paul, in a way that said he was unconvinced. “Anyway, enough about Shiloh. The only person we need to focus on right now, Libs, is you.”

  On the boat ride back, Shiloh put his arm gently around my waist, and I laid my head on his shoulder, which is how we remained until we arrived at the marina in Vieques. Maybe Shiloh is clouding my vision, I thought. Maybe I should never have gone to dinner with him; then I wouldn’t have fallen for him, and Paul couldn’t have contacted him to find me, and I would’ve had more time to plan my final days without interference. This was all possible, but as the boat bumped up against the dock, dislodging my torso from Shiloh’s, I felt oddly grateful that it hadn’t worked out any other way.

  TWENTY-SIX

  “Sing to me, Libby Lou.”

  “What song, Mama?”

  “Our song, Libby,” she said, attempting to smile as she recited her well-rehearsed line. There was only one option. But Paul and I always asked, and on that day, as ever, she responded, “You Are My Sunshine.’”

  She had about a week to live, but I didn’t know it at the time. She had been in and out of consciousness for days. When she was awake, she mostly warbled nonsense. But when she was lucid, I snatched up that fool’s gold like it would buy me forever, assuring myself that she was going to pull through. I put my hand over hers and sang as though time was a suggestion, and the end a choi
ce.

  You are my sunshine, Mama, I thought as I watched her eyes flutter beneath pale lavender lids. As long as I could remember, she’d sung the song to Paul and me before bed. After cancer robbed her of her strength, dictating that she could no longer live at home, let alone sing at our bedroom doors at night, Paul and I sang our version to her instead. “Please don’t take my sunshine away” became “More and more every day”; the verses about waking up and finding the love gone were omitted entirely. If my mother noticed our feeble attempts to lighten the tune, she didn’t mention it. She just asked us to sing it one more time.

  After she passed, I swore I would never sing that song again. It was a ruse: death and doom swaddled in a lullaby. As an adult, I once fled my cousin’s daughter’s nursery after coming upon a teddy bear playing the tune. Some toy maker had sewn the music box into the beady-eyed animal, undoubtedly aware that the child who received the bear would one day learn the song her toy played was about losing the best person you ever had.

  But darn if it wasn’t the first thing that popped into my head the morning Paul was set to return to New York. I hummed a few bars before I realized what I was doing, then turned on the radio to drown my internal melody with the bright, clangy sounds of salsa.

  Pointless. The song still ringing in my ears, I drove to Paul’s hotel. He was standing in the lobby, phone in one hand, luggage in the other. He immediately dropped both to embrace me.

  He kept hugging me. And hugging me. “Are you already medicated?” I laughed.

  “Little bit. But mostly I just don’t want to leave you. Are you sure you won’t come with me now?”

  “You know I can’t,” I said, pulling back. “But we’ll be together soon.”

  “We haven’t made definite plans, though,” he said as we got into the Jeep.

  “Not definite, but what more is there beyond flying my butt to New York?”

  “You have, what, six days to buy a plane ticket? You might want to hop on that.”

  “Who says I haven’t already?”

  He raised an eyebrow, and I laughed. “Okay, okay. Maybe I haven’t exactly been forward-thinking about this whole thing, but I’ll buy a ticket later today. By tomorrow at the absolute latest.”

  “Be a peach and let me take care of it. My assistant can get it done in five minutes flat. And while we’re on the subject, why don’t you come to New York first, and figure the rest out once you get there?”

  “Yes, I’m just dying to arrive in New York in the dead of winter.”

  “Enough with the death puns already.”

  “Too much?”

  “Always.”

  I steered the Jeep into the ferry parking lot. “I’ll take care of the ticket. Don’t worry.”

  “You’d better.” He glanced at the ferry, which was just pulling into the dock, then turned to me. “As much as I’m itching to get back to Charlie and the boys, I wish I could stay here.”

  “I know,” I said, opening the car door. “But you don’t want to miss the boat. There isn’t another one for five hours.”

  Paul sighed. “Then let’s do this.”

  We said good-bye roughly eighty-two times, each tearier than the last. After Paul boarded the boat, he leaned over the rail. “Libby!” he called. “I love you the most!”

  I blew him a kiss, then waved until the ferry was a speck on the horizon. All the while, that stupid song floated through my head.

  Please don’t take my sunshine away.

  When I returned to the beach house, Shiloh was waiting for me on the steps. He had called the night before to see if he could stay with me for a few days, rather than at the company’s studio, and I’d happily agreed.

  I eyed the large suitcase that was next to him on the cement stairs. “I had no idea you owned that much clothing.”

  He winked. “I packed an extra pair of underwear.”

  “Aw, you shouldn’t have.”

  “Anything for you. And I brought my telescope.”

  “All that just to spy on the neighbors?”

  “You would catch a lot more action in San Juan. But the stargazing’s far better here, and the moon is beginning to wane again.”

  We dropped his bag off inside, then drove to the west side of the island to explore a small park he’d told me about. At the park, we came across a good dozen horses grazing: gangly things, all muscles and ribs, making their way from one cluster of long grass to another. After the horses broke through my panic attack on the beach, I could not help but regard them as a sign of something good—although what good this time, I couldn’t say. Afterward, we opted to have dinner at the beach house. As Shiloh grilled fish and onions for the tacos he was making, he told me about his childhood. His father had moved their family from Puerto Rico to the States again and again, always returning to the island within a year or two. It was the catalyst, he said, for his mother filing for divorce. Shiloh didn’t like constantly relocating, but he loved flying back and forth. He was hooked from his very first flight, he told me, and never considered being anything but a pilot. “Do you remember when we were in the plane, how you said you loved being away from the rest of the world?” he asked. I nodded. “When I’m in the air, I feel completely free. The average person hates takeoff. I live for those few minutes, when I hit the clouds and all my troubles are below me.”

  He kept talking long after he put his spatula down, and throughout dinner I found myself staring at him, interjecting little more than the occasional question as I listened. How quickly I’d written him off at the airport; how easily I’d convinced myself that I was in it for nothing more than pure pleasure. But here before me was a good man. It struck me that I had yet to hear him say a negative word about another person. Even if he was describing a terrible action, like his father’s inability to care for his family in the way that they needed, he spoke in terms of the event, rather than blaming the person. I loved people like this, and encountered so very few.

  As the sun began to set, we went outside to set up the telescope. While Shiloh positioned the tripod in the garden, he asked me about my mother. I didn’t usually like discussing her. There was the pity factor: Poor Libby, motherless at just ten years old. The larger issue was that there are no words to adequately describe what it is to lose the person who matters most to you. Though I’d had decades to ponder it, it still did not make sense. How can a person be with you one moment, and then one terrible moment later, just be—gone? Forever? Tom’s answer was always the same: “Your mother’s not gone, Libby. You’ll see her again one day.” I clung to this belief, even as I cursed its complete and utter inability to offer real comfort. I did not want to hear it, even from my own husband. Nor did I want to hear about God having a plan, or all things happening for a reason, or any other number of Hallmark sentiments that pinged against my heart like pebbles on a thin windowpane.

  I told Shiloh all of this. It had been years since I last said more than a few words about her to anyone other than Paul or my father, and I spoke haltingly, unsure of how to explain my loneliness. “I’m sure this sounds all kinds of stupid,” I said when I had finished.

  He kissed me lightly. “It doesn’t, not to me. Johnny, a kid I grew up with in San Juan, died when we were in our late teens. It was a freak thing—he had an undetected heart problem and collapsed in the middle of a soccer game. Believe me, I know it’s not the same as losing a parent. But even now, I have a hard time wrapping my mind around the fact that I’ll never have another conversation with him. We came up together and stayed friends even after my family kept moving back and forth. He’ll never get to see the person I am as an adult. I’ll never get to find out who he would have become.”

  I nodded. It’s permanence that distinguishes grief from other emotional pain. The unfixable nature of never—that’s what makes it so terrible to bear. Was Paul right? Did I owe it to him to try to delay never as long as I co
uld, at any cost?

  Shiloh adjusted the telescope dial, then motioned for me to look through the viewfinder.

  “Can you see?”

  Slowly, the cloudy clusters above us revealed themselves as countless individual beacons of light. “Wow. Yes.”

  “Excellent.”

  “You sound like such a dude sometimes,” I teased.

  “I am a dude, cutie. You can’t grow up on a beach without getting sand in the cracks of your brain. So, do you recognize any constellations?”

  I squinted. “Does the little dipper count?”

  “Sure. But you can do better.” He took the telescope from me and redirected it. “Now look through it. Stare right in the middle, and you should be able to see Cassiopeia. Any other time of the year and you’d struggle to see her, but she burns bright all through November. Look for two Ls, connected on the diagonal. Around her are some of the youngest stars in the galaxy. Pretty amazing, right?”

  “Aha!” I said. But as soon as I spotted the constellation, a reddish twinkling light to the far left caught my attention. “Are the red-looking ones planets or something?”

  “No, they’re stars, too. You probably spotted a red giant. They’re older and closer to the end of their lives, so they don’t burn as hot, which changes their color.”

  “So the closer a star is to death, the more beautiful it becomes.”

  He laughed. “If you like red. I guess you could argue that time makes a lot of things more attractive.”

  “Not Tom.”

  “Maybe it doesn’t look good yet. But look at how well you’re doing. Give yourself time, Libby.”

  Time was a luxury I didn’t have, I thought as I stuck my head under the telescope, watching a star flicker. It could have been combusting that very moment, or maybe it had blown up centuries before and the evidence had not yet reached the Earth. Eye still to the lens, I asked Shiloh if he thought there was an afterlife.