On nights like this, when Henry consumed her thoughts, Amara wrote him letters. In a way it was like praying, if the purpose of the prayer was simply to feel connected. She never asked him for anything before, and didn’t expect any miracles. She just needed him to hear her. She needed to know he was still there.
Lying on her bed, Amara wrote to him now:
Henry,
I’m sorry for being so angry with you. I understand why you did it – you wanted a peaceful end, and I think you got it. But it doesn’t stop me from missing you every waking moment. People don’t understand. They think I’m crazy for feeling this way because it was so long ago, you and me. I don’t know why I can’t get over it. Maybe I am crazy, I don’t know. I hear your voice in my head and I can’t help but wonder if I’m going insane, if it’s even real. Is this real? Or is it simply an elaborate trick of my own mind? All I know is that I can’t go on like this anymore, trying to live while a part of me has died. Henry, if you’re real, I need help. What do I do?
The heaviness of her question forced her to pause. She could hardly see through her tears. Her shoulders shuddered with sadness. The molecules of air expanded and lodged in her windpipe. She couldn’t breathe. Desperately she sucked at the stifling air, but it wouldn’t release. She began to panic. Is this the answer? Is this the end? The thought frightened her. Suddenly, she felt a hand on her shoulder, pressing firmly down into her. She felt the bed making contact along her spine, felt the silky sheets against her skin.
Breathe, my love, she heard him say.
She inhaled the smell of coconut shampoo in her hair.
Just breathe. I’m here. You’re not alone.
She heard a pulsating tick from the clock on the wall.
Just keep breathing, keep living.
Her respiration stabilized. Goosebumps covered her body. Utterly exhausted and freezing, Amara crawled into bed, ready for sleep. She closed the journal and tucked it safely into the nightstand beside to her head. Rolling onto her side, she placed a pillow behind her back, pulled the comforter over her shoulder, and tucked it firmly under her ribs. She fell instantly asleep in the snug embrace.
Spring
*31*
One Year Later
One thing had become painfully clear to Amara after her traumatic experience with Larry's death: It was time for a change. The very next day, Amara submitted her resignation at the hospice house and applied for a nursing job in a hospital birthing center downtown. She had spent much of her past years surrounded by death and sorrow, hiding in the sadness of others to escape her own. But after her last conversation with Henry, a new craving for life emerged so vigorously that she could no longer ignore it.
The job was exactly what she needed, fresh and filled with excitement. The maternity ward was bustling with joyous parents, crooning over their miraculous little creations and showering each other with love. Her favorite moments were watching each father's face as his child breathed life for the first time. The expression was almost always the same, a mixture of startled awe, pride, and admiration, followed by stifled tears. She especially appreciated the men who, in their most intimate moments, surrendered to their emotions, abandoning all pretense of expectation as they succumbed to the delight of their newborn child.
Unfortunately, Amara was also reminded that even in birth there is death – a tragic process that not even the youthful could escape. In these cases, she couldn’t bring herself to look at the parents’ faces in the delivery room, no matter how hard she tried. Their grief permeated the room so strongly that she didn’t need to see their expressions to know their loss.
As before, Amara dutifully prepared these lifeless forms for rest, washing and swaddling their fragile, still bodies. These beautiful creatures were heartbreaking in their own unique way. She mourned the possibilities of life that they would never have and the love that they never knew, but she found solace in their peaceful, resting faces. There was nothing left to suffer, and for that she was grateful.
After a year in the bustling hospital, however, Amara found herself stalling yet again. Stagnation permeated her life in Seattle. The view from her balcony seemed smoggy and dull. Where she once regarded the snowy mountains in the east, she now saw only the sprawling urban landscape, brimming with immense buildings and industrial equipment. To make matters worse, Kianna and Charlie had moved out of the city last year, leaving Amara predictably lonely in her isolated apartment.
Her family was the only real connection she had left in the city, though her sister, Keya, had recently adventured across the country for a job on the east coast. As kids, the girls were nearly inseparable, always conducting half-baked experiments in the yard or reading their favorite stories to each other while hiding in a blanket fort draped from their bunkbeds.
As she grew older, Keya blossomed into a poised, intelligent, and successful graphic designer. Amara, on the other hand, faltered and spiraled in the revelry of her traumas – at least in the eyes of her family. Keya tried to be supportive, Amara knew, but her sympathies were often filled with an energetic optimism that Amara just couldn’t subscribe to, no matter how hard she tried.
Her parents also tried their best to guide their daughter through her trials, but none of them understood what Amara had done for Henry in his final days. In the years since, she’d never been able to tell them the truth, for she knew they wouldn’t agree with her actions. As a result, the defenses Amara had constructed were beyond what any of them could breach. By now she feared there was no one left waiting on the other side even if she could break through the walls.
Luckily, fate was not so quick to give up on Amara and continued to challenge her boundaries for any points of weakness. Her most recent test presented itself late one night a few weeks ago as she slumped down in front of the computer screen after work. She opened her email inbox to find a message from a former classmate in nursing school. The title line read: Your perfect job. Intrigued, she opened the email further. The body of the message consisted of only a hyperlink and a signature. She followed the link to a job-search site. The posting was brand new, posted less than a day ago, and detailed a nursing position at an intimate, community birthing center in Bellingham, Washington. The position even offered a generous pay raise and relocation assistance if needed.
Amara’s heart fluttered with excitement.
In spite of such fortuitous conditions, however, Amara wavered. Her eyes fixed on the location listed in the post. Not long ago, she would have flung herself at any chance to be nearer to Henry again. But now, she feared being sucked back into the gripping despair from which she had only recently begun to emerge.
Have faith, a quiet voice whispered in the back of her mind.
Faith, she realized, was not something she had cultivated much of in the past, and she was wary of how much she possessed at the moment.
But the voice did not relent. The whisper grew into a forceful swell, pulsing through her heart with such intensity that she nearly clutched her chest. Her fingers found the keyboard to form a reply.
A few weeks later, Amara found herself scrunched in the driver’s seat of her overcrowded green hatchback, speeding northward along the freeway with the totality of her belongings stuffed into the seats behind her. The road crested a hill and dropped slowly into the valley below. Grassy, flooded plains stretched out on both sides. Ahead of her, a backup of red taillights developed as traffic stalled. Two fire engines and an ambulance barged noisily through the far left lane while an advisory sign flashed a mile ahead, warning of severe delays.
Discouraged, Amara weaved her way onto the nearest exit, dipping under the freeway and circling through a wide roundabout that released her onto a road headed west. The rural highway was clear, a secret passage unknown to the ignorant commuters behind her. Winding through the fields, details of the landscape revealed themselves around her. Snowy white geese dotted the green meadows, waddling lazily through shallow puddles. In the distance, bright patches of yellow, re
d, and purple quilted the ground where rows of tightly packed tulips burst from the muddy soil. All around her, signs of spring promised new beginnings.
The highway eventually turned north as it neared the coast, ascending into the evergreen hillside. It was a familiar scene: the trees sprouted the same luscious foliage, the waves lapped against the same sturdy stones, and the wind gusted predictably from the north. Nothing in the landscape had changed, yet everything seemed different. It wasn’t until she crested the hill that she figured out exactly why.
Outside her window, Amara could see a narrow gravel easement wedged between the road and cliffside. This was the spot, the mouth of the trail that wound down to Henry’s tree and the cave. Coincidentally, someone had posted a small cross on the roadside near the turnout. The thought of someone else’s grief resting in the same place as hers was oddly consoling. Normally, Amara would have been compelled to stop and would have spent the rest of the precious daylight traversing down the narrow trail to the cave. The thought flashed into her mind. Actually, the thought had pestered her since she turned off the freeway thirty miles back, but now that she was here, she hesitated.
A soft beam of sunlight drifted through the canopy, spreading across her chest as it pierced through the windshield. To the left, she watched as the white cross passed her on the roadside. She followed the marker with her eyes until she lost sight of it in her rearview mirror. Amara released a heavy sigh as she allowed the car to carry her along down the road.
*32*
Frost lingered in the small patches of shade cast by the looming trees on the hillside. A thin sliver of sunlight filtered through the trunks onto the bench where Nathan and X sat, savoring their pastries. In front of them, the gravel lot dropped steeply into the water on the other side of a stone barricade. Both of them shivered against the crisp, spring air.
X burrowed into his sweatshirt, clumsily tucking his wide ears into the hood to protect them from the cold. He focused his attention on balancing the donut on his lap. After finishing his last bite, he turned his stare down the road to the left.
“Dad,” he asked, “do you think my mom is in heaven?”
Nathan chewed slowly before answering.
“I like to think so, that she is at peace somewhere, but I guess it depends on what you believe in. What do you think?”
“Well, Grandma says she’s in heaven, like a big white castle in the sky or something. But if that’s true, why do we come visit her at this cross? She isn’t here.” X pawed at a rock on the ground.
Since his conversation with Ms. Hayes, Nathan had started to take a more active role in his son’s mourning. For the last year, Nathan had been taking his son to visit a small, white cross along the shoulder of the highway. Cece’s body had been cremated and her remains packed among her parents’ things when they moved back to Oregon shortly after the accident. This left X without any physical connection to his mom. This cross, marking the crash site of that fatal night more than seven years ago, was the closest semblance of a memorial that Nathan could find.
For him, the highway would forever be a reminder of his mistakes, a scar carved into the side of the lush mountain. But, as Ms. Hayes had so candidly reminded him, X needed a chance to know and to mourn his mom, and Nathan would do anything for his son, even if that meant subjecting himself to revisiting these haunted woods. Nathan felt the ghosts of his past lurking among the greenery and peering between the leaves, ghosts that he tried to confine within the boundaries of his nightmares but that found themselves prowling in the shadow of these woods, nonetheless.
Nathan sucked in a slow breath, looking deeply into his son’s face. He had Cece’s bright eyes and Nathan’s straight hair, cropped short to hide its thinness. His mouth drooped downward into a pensive frown, drawing deep lines in the corners of his mouth. In the filtered light, X almost looked old. A cane resting against the bench next to his leg added to his sagely appearance.
“Is that what you believe?” Nathan asked finally.
“I’m not sure,” X replied slowly. “I guess it could be. But if someone is in heaven, can they still visit us here?”
“What do you mean?”
“Like, sometimes I see her when I’m sleeping, in a dream. Could she still do that from heaven?” X turned his green eyes intensely to him.
Nathan scratched his scruffy chin. “I don’t see why not. Maybe heaven is more like a state of being, instead of a place, like a place of peace.” Softly, he added, “I’m sure she is watching over you, kid.”
Pondering this new information, X sat quietly for a long while, his hands shoved deeply into his sweatshirt pockets. Eventually, he responded with a single nod, indicating his acceptance of this notion.
With nothing else to say, Nathan and X stood slowly from the bench and crossed to the far end of the gravel easement. They stood for a few solemn moments in front of the wooden cross before placing a fresh bouquet of pink carnations at the base. Neither said a word, and Nathan was thankful that his son didn’t ask him to. When they were ready, they retreated together back to the truck.
Turning the key in the ignition, Nathan glanced at the clock on the dash, which flashed ten minutes past eleven. There it was again at the beginning of the sequence, that repeating single number, reminding him of his never-ending isolation. He craned his neck around to back away from the wall, then straightened out in his seat as he flipped the gears into drive. His attention drifted back to the clock right as the minute turned: 11:11. Great, he thought to himself glumly, the ones are multiplying.
Their truck braked on the edge of the road, yielding to the oncoming traffic. X rigorously watched the world outside the windshield, noting every detail. A crow perched patiently on the branch above, waiting to descend upon any crumbs it might scavenge from their bench after they motored away. A sedan passed in front of them as they waited, crowned by two well-used mountain bikes strapped to the rack on top. A green hatchback passed in the other direction, the hatch packed tightly with belongings, blocking any glimpse the driver might need through the rearview window. Once clear, the truck pulled out behind the car, which X studied intently all the way back to town.
*33*
Amara strolled along the storefronts downtown, assessing the new businesses and reminiscing over familiar ones. After spending the entire morning hauling boxes into her fourth-floor studio apartment, the clean spring air of the afternoon practically pleaded for her to rest. For the moment, blue skies expanded above, but dark clouds were bubbling to the west, pressing gradually closer.
She ducked into her favorite coffee shop for a cup of tea, mostly to warm her hands. Seven years later, the shop was exactly the same, though its patrons seemed to be substantially younger than she recalled. Alas, she thought, she had merely grown older. Amara surveyed the clusters of students spaced throughout the café, poring over books and papers sprawled across the small tables. Nearly all of them wore earbuds to block out the world, absorbed in their own personal soundtracks.
Back outside, Amara paused to rest against the waist-high wall of a planter box. Purple crocuses blossomed from the moist bark inside. Across the street, slivers of glittering water in the bay twinkled between the ornate, brick buildings. What seemed like an endless stream of traffic poured through the intersection. She didn’t remember the town being this busy.
As she turned toward home, Amara felt a stiff breeze whipping at her hair, stealing any heat the sun tried to share. A raindrop landed lightly on her cheek, then another heavy droplet. A surge of heavy, cold rain rolled in swiftly from the coast, instantly saturating everything that was caught unprotected. The pattering of raindrops continued to swell, growing into an intense deluge. Amara was soaked. Helplessly, she threw her hands up and turned her face to the sky, surrendering to the cleansing rain. She laughed aloud heartily.
The raindrops hardened into frozen balls of ice, stinging her face where they fell. Pea-sized grains of hail pounded against the pavement, bouncing back into the air on
impact. Overwhelmed, Amara ducked into the nearest building to escape the relentless barrage, wiping sleet from her eyes and hair as she entered.
She scanned the room to find herself in the lobby of a large gallery space. Temporary dividing walls created an artificial hallway through the open room. Displayed on an easel at the entrance was a poster that read, “Children’s Spring Art Walk.” Intrigued – and trapped by the relentless hail outside – Amara ventured in to explore the gallery.
The first exhibit was a collection of black-and-white photographs that captured hilariously candid pictures of someone’s pets, their features arranged in various goofy configurations in anticipation of a tasty treat. Next, an assembly of small, painted handprints had been creatively arranged and decorated to create imaginative animals and objects.
The room was nearly empty, with the exception of her and few families who mingled in the corners, obviously the creators of the selected artwork. She smiled politely as she passed a little girl with braided pigtails who stood proudly in front of a crudely painted sunflower, which the description tag marketed as “abstract.”
Looping through the final exhibition, Amara stopped abruptly in her tracks. On the wall, among a collection of hand-drawn portraits, was a picture of a tan-skinned woman in her late twenties with soft, round features, her dark brown hair accented against a swirling blue background. A book rested casually in the woman’s lap. Amara stared in disbelief. The woman’s dark brown eyes stared unwaveringly in return.
This was, without a doubt, a picture of her.
“Wow, it’s you,” said a slow, unexpressive voice behind her. She turned, discovering the speaker to be a small boy with short auburn hair, propped against a cane.
Life After Death: A Story of Love, Loss, and Living Page 14