Darkness blanketed the sky as it did the hearts of my parents. It took a long time to convince them this was their new reality. What felt like an eternity, was probably closer to a couple of hours. But they were some of the most challenging hours of my twenty-two years. There had been breakdowns, and several stages of acceptance. Shock, anger, denial, and bargaining. I knew that they would continue to play on repeat for quite some time, but I held on to the hope that eventually, they would cycle out of these stages and move through depression and finally, one day, acceptance. Possibly, they could find happiness there.
Mom was stuck in denial. She was racking her brain over all the possibilities. As if I hadn’t already considered all of it.
“Mom, stop! I’m exhausted! I’ve already accepted that I’m on the fast track. I’m not saying you must also, but you need to respect my decision during this time. I’m not a kid anymore! I’m the mature woman that you raised me to be, and this is my life. And I’ve chosen not to spend the rest of it in the hospital or hovering over the toilet, sick. I don’t want an experimental treatment! I don’t! There’s nothing they can do anyway. And I’m OK with it. I’m focusing on my quality of life now. And Easton’s been helping with that. We’ve been experiencing things I’ve always dreamed of. It’s been some of the best weeks of my life, and I mean that!”
Mom’s face melted into her hands, and she began to weep again. Pop helped to hold her as her knees buckled. It was hard to witness and even worse to know I was the cause of it.
“I’m sorry I didn’t tell you sooner. I wish I’d been stronger. I wasn’t. I was afraid of hurting you guys.”
Despite how much I cared for them, I just wanted it to be over. I willed them to see it from my perspective—to give me the green light that I needed to live my life as I saw fit. I pushed off the couch and walked to the fireplace. Had there been a fire going, my arm wouldn’t have been so cold pushed against the red brick. Easton was getting antsy too. He’d moved to the kitchen to get some water.
“Look, I don’t know what’s going to happen when I die, but if for some reason I’m still here on earth, following you two around, I’m going to be really pissed if you guys are sad all the time. I just want you to be happy when you think of me. I want to be celebrated. I want to feel the love, not the sorrow!” I ran my fingers through my hair as I felt the last remaining fight drain out of me. “Would it be too much to ask for that while I’m alive too?” I searched the eyes of my mom, then my dad. Both sets were red and swollen.
After a long moment of unspoken despair, my dad pulled me into his embrace. Everyone was out of things to say and had all but given up. I pressed my ear against his heart and took comfort in its beat and the smell of vanilla tobacco.
“There’s one more thing,” I said.
Pops groaned. He couldn’t bear any more news. I looked to Easton, and for the first time that day, I felt a shift in my mood. I buried my face into my dad’s chest and squinted my burning eyes tight for a moment before pulling away.
“We’re getting married . . .”
Easton’s face lit with pride as he thrust to his feet and re-entered the room, ready for hugs. My parents were a little slower to react.
My eyes flickered between the three pairs of eyes. Two uncertain, and one losing hope. Did I need to explain myself? Wasn’t it obvious? Had we not gone through this for the last two or three hours? “Pop! I love him! And I’m going to spend the rest of my life with him! Now, I would appreciate it if you celebrate our love and give me this last memory!” I said with a hand on my hip.
Like clockwork, my mom raised her arms to Easton, pulling him into an embrace and welcoming him to the family. It took a little coaxing, but it’s what I wanted to see. A genuine smile spread across my face and into my eyes. My dad cried.
Regardless of the pain, heartbreak, and sheer exhaustion, I walked out of that dark house feeling lighter than I had in a long time. I felt the gravitational pull that tethered me to earth, to my body . . . disconnect. My spirit was beginning to free. I was halfway packed for my departure, and I wondered if this was a mandatory step in me letting go. As Easton opened my car door for me and I caught his eye, I realized something else.
The second half to cutting my tether was saying goodbye to Easton.
Chapter 26
It was well after dinner by the time that Easton took me home. He stayed to feed Yeti and made a small batch of pasta for the dinner that we’d missed. I didn’t eat.
“Thank you. I couldn’t have done it without you,” I said. A plaid throw blanket wrapped around my shoulders.
Easton ate his dinner, leaning against the refrigerator. “I was happy to be there for you. It’s never an easy conversation to have.”
“You act like you’ve had it before. And how did you know all that stuff? I didn’t even know all of it!” I said.
“I used to be a doctor. I glanced at your chart when you were resting at the hospital.”
A doctor?
Why did this surprise me? I pictured Easton back in my parent's living room, breaking the news to them. It seemed as if he’d done it a hundred times before. And if I stretched my imagination just a little further and pictured him with a white coat, holding a clipboard, it almost made sense. My eyes began to blur as visions of my blue-eyed boyfriend became a doctor, and I knew it was time for me to go to bed. My mind was cooked, my heart hurt, and my eyes were playing tricks on me.
Easton stayed with me as he had been doing more often. I slept better with him here. Sometimes in the middle of the night, I would slide my foot over until I found his warmth. It was enough to soothe my anxiety and put me back to sleep. Other times, I would go overboard and wake up smothering him. But tonight, I did neither. Tonight, I slept like I was already six feet deep.
When the morning came, so did my mom. Easton let her in while I was still dead to the world. I woke up to the chatter downstairs. I slipped on a robe and headed down the stairs to see her, only stopping halfway when I heard her soft-spoken voice.
“Then you can text me when you’re on your way. It’s going to be her brother and his wife, her friends, Lindsay, Lisa, Shannon—”
The stairs creaked under my weight. I made myself known.
“Mom? What are you doing here?”
“I, um, well I wanted to see you. I know that last night was difficult. I brought you coffee and flowers.”
Mom stood grasping a coffee from Fresh Grounds. The bags under her eyes were as dark as her eyebrows, and she was still dressed in the same clothes from yesterday.
I took the coffee from her and wrapped my arms around her. Only then did I see Easton was sitting at the kitchen island in his boxers. He took the moment of my embrace and scurried upstairs. Presumably to get dressed, but maybe to give us privacy as well.
“Mom, I’m worried about you.”
“No, you listen to me,” Mom said. She sat me down at the island where Easton and she had shared a secret conversation just moments before. “I know I look like trash, but that’s only because I stayed up all night . . .”
I raised my hand and slapped it down on my leg.
“I had a lot to think about. Now, I’m not saying I’m OK with this, but your dad and I talked, and we’ve come to the conclusion that you have enough on your plate. And the last thing you need is to be worried about us. We want your days filled with love and laughter. And, honey”—her eyes began to water, and her voice rose—“I promise you that I’m going to try my hardest to stay that way after too. And I hope that it can put your mind to ease.”
Her chin wobbled as large tears ran down her cheeks. She crumbled into my chest. I wrapped my arms around my mom and held her as she wept. Tears streamed down my face as I stared out my window with blurry vision. Yeti’s instincts took over and she nestled my mom, helping to break her episode.
“I know it’s hard, Mom, but that’s what I want. Thank you.”
We shared our coffee talking about the wedding. I told her how I envisioned
it. No minister, no music, no audience, just Easton and I professing our love for one another and committing to the short time I had left. I was tired as it was, and I didn’t want to have to entertain guests. In addition to that, I didn’t want to say goodbye to all of them. It was hard enough to tell my parents. Extending that conversation to aunts and uncles, friends and co-workers . . . no thank you.
A wedding was about devoting your love to someone, and that’s all I wanted from it. And maybe a ring. Nothing fancy. It could be made of twine or the stem of a daisy—just something to slip onto my finger.
It wasn’t easy to convince my mom that a wedding could be anything other than traditional, but after a squeeze of her hand and a flash of pleading in my eyes, she stopped to listen.
My mom visited every day after that. Mostly, she would come mid-day as not to barge in before Easton had a chance to get dressed. Sometimes, my dad would accompany her. I would gush to her about Easton, and she would cry every time. But she was sleeping and changing her clothes, so things were looking up. Both of my parents were run down, but they tried their hardest to stay positive for me. Even though I could see through their charades, I appreciated the effort.
I was thankful that my parents did the heavy lifting when it came to Carter. They told him in private so that I wouldn’t have to do it myself. When he had time to collect himself, he came over to see me. Chloe stayed back, but she baked homemade cookies and sent them with Carter. I knew she wanted to give us privacy to talk, and I respected that. But Carter and I didn’t talk much. It wasn’t his language. It wasn’t that he didn’t care—just that he didn’t express himself with words. I still felt all of his emotion as we sat together in my living room. And I felt his body trembling when he hugged me goodbye. We all express ourselves in different ways, and a part of me took to the way Carter did it.
In the following days, I showed my mom where my letters were. We both cried over that one. And I told her all of the things Yeti liked and didn’t like. I told her I wanted to be cremated.
There were few possessions I held dear to my heart, but I made a list of things that I felt were essential and I wanted my parents to disperse to loved ones. The rest, I wanted them to donate. And soon too. I saw no purpose for them to store boxes of my things in their garage for years to come. It wouldn’t lessen the pain, and it wouldn’t bring me back. My “keep list” contained only three things.
The first thing I cherished most in this world was a pair of diamond earrings my grandmother had given me when I graduated high school. She’d gotten them as a Mother’s Day gift from her late son. The uncle I’d never met. Because she cherished them, I was nothing short of honored to have received them. I treated them as such too. I pulled them out of the top drawer of my dresser, where they’d been resting in a felt bag.
“Grandma gave me these.”
My mom knew very well what they were. Her mother wore them every day for two decades. That was, until she gifted them to me.
My mom sat quietly on my bed, reminiscing over the earrings and the very situation we found ourselves in.
“Actually, I’m going to wear these for the ceremony,” I said.
It was funny how I saved them for a special occasion only. I never thought there would be a shortage of time or special occasions for me to wear them. If I had, I would have worn them every day as my grandmother did. It was a foolish way of thinking. And If I had it to do all over again, I would enjoy the things I loved most. I would wear them out until they were unusable, and then I would love them some more.
Instead of placing the earrings back in the drawer, I slipped them into my ears. My mom jumped up to help me with the backings. When she pulled away, tears had formed in her eyes. It wasn’t often that I saw her without them.
The second tangible item I loved too much to see thrown out was my first stuffed animal. It was a tattered old frog that my mom got me when I was in utero. She thought I was a boy. It was a dream she had of two boys playing outside by a pond—fishing for crawdads. It could have been a premonition, in fairness to her, because my brother and I did go on to do that. And I could have passed as a boy with a baseball cap and a mud-painted face. Either way, I loved the frog. And I always imagined that I would give it to my firstborn.
“Can you give this to Carter’s baby? When he has one.” I shrugged. “Maybe you could tell him it’s from his Aunt Everly.”
Carter’s kids would be cuties. They would have his light complexion and Chloe’s great bone structure. They would be loud and outspoken until it came time to express their emotions. They would have my green eyes.
My mom took the frog and cradled it in her lap. She forced a smile and waited patiently for me to continue.
“And, last but not least, these.” I resurfaced from my closet, holding three diaries—one purple suede, one zebra print, and one, a more mature faux leather. Each resembled the maturity at which I started the journal.
I sat down on the bed next to my mom, and a picture fell out of the first book I opened. One of Lindsay and I in the sixth grade. Fake blood ran down our mouths and covered our hands. I remembered that day like yesterday.
“That was Halloween. She had the capsules of fake blood that you pop in your mouth,” I said. I could still remember the way they tasted—like cough syrup.
I flipped through the zebra print diary. Pictures were glued to the pages, and a colorful display of rainbow ink bled across the pages. I ran my fingers over the imprinted pen marks. The more emotion poured onto the page, the more the words felt like reversed brail.
“What’s that?” Mom pointed to a receipt I had taped into the journal.
“Huh. That was a receipt for a movie.”
I glanced over the entry and read a quick blurb about how the love of my life sat behind me and threw popcorn at me during the movie. I was sure that he was the one. But I was eleven, and he was nothing more than a cute stranger.
I closed the journal, embarrassed by what was inside.
“On second thought, maybe we burn them?”
Mom laughed. She took the journals from my lap and added them to her collection of strange things that I deemed essential.
“I would never do that! I can’t wait to read them. I’m allowed to read them, right?” she asked.
Should I let her read them? All I knew was that I cherished them. My memories and personal thoughts captured in three books. I wasn’t sure that they should be read. What if it hurt her feelings? The last thing I wanted was to leave her with lasting anger from when I hit puberty!
My face contorted in regret. “No, seriously . . . let's burn them!”
“What! No! We can’t do that!”
“Mom, I can’t have you read all the times I was mad at you and took it out on my diary! That’s cruel and unusual punishment!”
Mom’s face twisted with the realization that there were in fact, negative things hidden deep within the pages.
“I won't read them, then. I’ll wrap a bow around them and place them on my nightstand. I’ll keep them close, but I won’t read them.”
I searched my mom’s eyes. She was unwilling to let them go up in flames and smoke. Something so important to me couldn’t be lost in such a way. I gave in.
“Tie it tight,” I said.
Chapter 27
Music filled the air, and my mom twirled with a glass of wine in her hand. It was mid-day, and I happen to know she skipped breakfast. I only cared that she was happy, and it appeared that she was. She set her glass down, humming to the music, and separated a lock of my hair to be curled.
I watched myself in the mirror. I wasn’t sure if my bathroom lights were washing my already pale complexion out, or if I was losing what little color I had, but my face was lackluster and sallow. It wasn’t the familiar face of a glowing bride.
“Now, do you want it up, or maybe like this? Oh! This is romantic . . .” She held a single strand from the front and pinned it back behind my ear.
“Yeah, I like that.”
“It’s going to be cold, you know. A storm is coming in. You're going to need to wear a jacket. Even if it doesn’t match your dress!” Mom said.
“I know.”
I couldn’t help but wonder what the girl in the mirror would look like a couple of years older and healthier. Mom finished my hair, placing a crystal pin in my trestle. She was right; it was romantic.
I stepped into my dress, holding on to my mom’s arm for balance. While the dress was white, it was anything but traditional. More of a sundress than anything else. Woven eyelet flowers and lace. The straps were thin and crossed in the back. The length hit just above the knee but it had a generous and even sexy slit up one leg. It wouldn’t show unless I took a step. Or perhaps twirled.
“You look gorgeous!” Mom clapped her hands to her mouth.
“Mom, stop! I look like I’m going to a backyard barbecue!” I tried to downplay the moment. But the truth was, I felt pretty special, and I was fighting back the tears myself.
“Can you put a little makeup on me?” I asked.
Though I never wore very much makeup myself, it wasn’t because I didn’t like it. I just preferred the natural look. Today, though, the natural look was unsettling. It had been growing worse as time slipped by. My mom dusted a muted mauve over my cheeks, bringing them back to life. A light highlight almost made me look lit from within. If I didn’t know any better, I would say I looked almost thriving in a youthful, healthy way.
“Thank you, Mom,” I said.
“Oh, honey. Thank you for letting me be a part of your special day. I wish I was there to see you.”
“There’s nothing to see. We’re just spending time together. It’s . . . I don’t know . . . personal. It’s only fitting to keep it private.”
Our wedding was going to be as unique as our situation. One dying girl, and one undying boy. A love that would last forever. It wasn’t for prying eyes. Only for the two of us to share with one another.
The Tethered Soul of Easton Green: The Tethered Soul Series Book 1 Page 17