Mourning Song

by Lurlene McDaniel

  “I wrote down what I want you to do for my funeral. It’s in my old school notebook, in the van.”

  Dani had tossed the notebook in with Cassie’s suitcase when she’d packed. At the time, she’d thought it would keep alive the illusion that Cassie could return to school after the trip.

  “I’ll do whatever you want.”

  “I picked some songs I’d like sung, and a poem I want read. I want to go back home, to the same cemetery where Daddy’s buried. Can I be buried near him?”

  “You’ll have the plot I’d reserved for myself right next to him.”

  “You’d do that for me? Give me your plot?”

  “I’d do anything for you.”

  “Let Austin’s dad do the service. That will be comforting.”

  “If that’s what you want.”

  “And I’d like you to bury me in my lace dress, the one with the puffy sleeves.”

  “You look so beautiful in that dress.” Their mother’s voice sounded soft, but full of tears.

  “Is the sun up yet?” Cassie asked.

  “Almost,” Dani replied, watching it edge through a bank of clouds. “Maybe you can see it?” Dani hoped that Cassie’s eyesight would magically return.

  “I can feel it.” Cassie turned her face heavenward. “It feels … warm.”

  A cry escaped from their mother’s lips. She took Cassie in her arms, held her, rocked her. “I love you, baby. I wish I could die for you. I love you.”

  “I love you too, Mama.”

  Dani pressed her hand against her mouth. Cas sie reached out for Dani and pulled her closer. “You’ll have to be good to each other. I’ll count on that so I won’t have to worry.” She paused, then said, “You can get Dr. Phillips now, Mom. I’m ready.”

  Nineteen

  CASSIE INSISTED ON staying with Dani by the water while their mother ran to wake the others. Alone with her sister, Dani wiped her eyes. She wanted to be brave, like Cassie. The tears stung her eyes. “I don’t want you to die,” she sobbed. “I’m sorry I’m crying. I just don’t know how you can face this.”

  “I don’t want to die. But nobody gave me a vote.” Cassie stretched out on the sand, balling her fists into its depths. “It feels so soft. Is the sun up all the way yet?”

  Dani glanced seaward. “Not quite … just a little more.”

  “I’m sorry I couldn’t see it one last time. But I’ll never forget these past few days. I’ll carry them here”—she touched her heart—“even if I’m locked up in some old hospital.”

  “Oh, Cassie.” Dani continued to weep in spite of her best efforts to control herself.

  “You have to be strong for Mom.”

  “But who’s going to be strong for me?”

  “Austin will be there for you. I like Austin, Dani. And he’s crazy about you.”

  Dr. Phillips couldn’t treat Cassie at the local hospital, but he arranged for her medical records to be sent from Ohio and acted in an advisory capacity to the doctor in charge.

  Cassie drifted in and out of consciousness. Her mother called grandparents, friends, and other people back home. When Austin’s parents returned from their mission work in Haiti, he explained the situation. Dani was glad they didn’t bawl him out for taking their van on an unauthorized trip to Florida. It saddened her to realize that the next time she saw them, it would be at her sister’s funeral.

  Dr. Phillips made certain that Cassie’s new doctor understood her wish that no extraordinary measures be used to keep her alive, so there was a minimum of equipment in her room. Dani, her mother, Austin and Dr. Phillips spent their days at the hospital staying with Cassie.

  When the waiting became unbearable for Dani, she’d go back to the hotel room and run on the beach. If she ran at night, Austin ran with her. She concentrated on the beating of her heart, the pounding of her bare feet on the wet sand, the regularity of her breathing, the pumping of her arms. She found the exercise soothing.

  “I’d rather play racquetball,” she admitted to Austin after an especially long run. “Remember the day I beat you? It seems like a million years ago.” They were walking back to the hotel, along a moonlit shoreline.

  “I could probably find us a court,” he told her, “if you really want to play.”

  She shook her head. “I don’t want to be anyplace but here or at the hospital.”

  Dani mopped her brow with her hand. Perspiration dripped between her shoulders, and the air felt muggy and heavy in her lungs. A line of hotels stretched down the beachfront for as far as Dani could see, their windows sparkling with artificial lights. “I’ll bet most people don’t know what it feels like to watch and wait for someone die.”

  “JWC knows,” Austin said. “Did you ever figure out who it is? Does your mother know?”

  Dani shook her head. “It’s a mystery to all of us. Cassie’s convinced it’s a girl, but I think it’s a recluse who likes to do good deeds.”

  “No matter,” Austin said. “Whoever it is understands about losing someone to death.”

  “Sometimes I wish it was all over for Cassie. I hate seeing her suffer. Then I feel guilty about wishing such a thing. Death is so final. Once Cassie’s gone, she’ll never come back.”

  “Maybe it would help to keep your perspective,” Austin said.

  “Perspective? What are you talking about? It’s easy for you to say—someone you love isn’t dying.”

  “Cassie’s life was a gift, Dani. Just like the One Last Wish money. She didn’t expect that money. She didn’t ask for it. One day, some stranger with the initials JWC gave it to her. Unexpectedly.”

  The waves splashed against the shore. “We’re grateful for the money. Without it, I’d have never had the courage to do this. We wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t for the money. Of course, Cassie didn’t expect it.”

  “That’s exactly the point,” Austin said. He rested his hands on her shoulders. “Life is a gift, too. We don’t get to choose if we’ll be born. Or when, or who our parents will be. We just get to be alive. That’s God’s gift to us. How we live our lives is our gift to others. When a newborn baby dies, do you think it hurts his family any less because he was only a few days or even hours old?”

  Dani shook her head. She understood completely what he was trying to say. “Grief doesn’t have a life span, is that it?”

  “That’s it.” He lifted her chin and looked deep into her eyes. “And neither does love. That’s what JWC’s letter was all about. Love is stronger than death, even though it can’t stop death from happening. But no matter how hard death tries, it can’t separate people from love. It can’t take away our memories either. In the end, life is stronger than death.”

  The night wind blew the scent of salt through the air. Austin pulled her into his arms and rested his chin atop her head. “That’s part of what faith is all about. We have to believe that every life has a purpose, no matter how long or how short it is. Your life has a purpose, too—to go on living, for those, like Cassie, who can’t.”

  “I’m going to miss Cassie so much.” Tears slid down Dani’s cheeks.

  “We’re all in this together, Dani. You, your Mom, Dr. Phillips, me. That’s the bonus. We don’t have to go through this process by ourselves. I’m here for you whenever you want.”

  She clung to him until the moon rose in the starry sky and dimmed the artificial light from the high rises and condos. Together, hand in hand, they walked to the hotel.

  * * *

  The next morning, Cassie slipped into a coma. For two days Dani waited with her mother, Austin, and Dr. Phillips beside Cassie’s bed. She measured time by the faces of the nurses changing shifts.

  Cassie looked impossibly frail as she clung to life. Dani stroked her sister’s new growth of downy soft hair. “I love you Cassie,” she whispered.

  At three o’clock on the third day, Cassie’s breathing became short and shallow. Dani clutched her mother’s hand as Cassie’s breathing grew ragged, then staggered. Her chest stopped mov
ing and slowly her body relaxed.

  In the stillness of the room, Dr. Phillips put his stethoscope against Cassie’s chest and listened. “She’s gone,” he said. Wordlessly, Dani wrapped herself in her mother’s arms and together they clung to one another.

  Twenty

  “ARE YOU SURE you want to do this?” Dani’s mother asked.

  “Yes. Cassie would want us to—I know it,” she said, trudging through the sand toward the place on the beach where a small crowd had gathered. Behind them, the sun was setting, and dusk was settling over the ocean.

  Dani had decided she had to see the release of the loggerhead turtles. Cassie was the one who cared for marine life. Cassie would have been waiting on the beach. Austin understood why Dani wanted to do this. Her mother didn’t, but still agreed to come.

  Mrs. Vanoy sighed. “I’m not up to fighting the crowds. You and Austin rush ahead. Nathan and I will catch up.”

  Dani had begged to stay the extra two days for the release. “I want to go home,” her mother had insisted through tears of grief. “We have to arrange for the funeral.”

  Dr. Phillips had come to Dani’s rescue again. “Catherine, staying two more days won’t make a single bit of difference. This is obviously important to Dani because of Cassie’s wishes.”

  Her mother had agreed. Dani was grateful to Dr. Phillips, not only for taking up her cause about staying for the release, but for everything he’d done. He’d handled details about the death certificate and made arrangements with a local funeral home to fly Cassie’s body back to Ohio. Dani realized he was in love with her mother. Cassie had been right about that.

  “Come on,” Austin said, taking her hand. “I see an open spot in the front.”

  “I didn’t think so many people would come out for this,” Dani commented.

  “Who could have guessed dumping baby turtles on the seashore is such a big deal?” Austin led her around toward the ocean. Dani noticed several men and women in Florida park ranger uniforms, a couple of Jeeps, and a few policemen, who were telling the crowd to stand back and give the rangers room to work.

  The rangers hauled large white buckets from the Jeeps and set them in the sand. “These turtle eggs were laid on this beach about two months ago,” a ranger explained.

  “We dug them up and took them to a hatchery for their own protection. A few days ago, they showed signs of hatching, and now it’s time to release them back into the wild.”

  The crowd looked expectant. As the ranger continued his history of the turtles, Dani looked at the buckets. She could just see over the rim of one. It was packed with sand that kept wiggling.

  “… some of them weigh up to five hundred pounds and live to be a hundred years old,” she heard the ranger say. “First, though, they have to get to the sea. And even if they make it through the line of predators on land, they have many to face in the ocean.

  “But the biggest threat to these animals is man. Because we invade their habitat to build hotels and condos, the turtles have no place to nest. And when they do hatch, shoreline lights confuse them, and they turn toward parking lots instead of the sea, where they’re killed by cars.”

  Dani felt sorry for the creatures, but couldn’t help wondering how people could be so concerned about turtles when she’d just lost a sister. Not an animal, but a flesh-and-blood human being whom she had loved. Whom she still loved.

  “Here goes,” she heard Austin say.

  Dani watched as the ranger turned over one of the buckets and began to smooth out the damp sand. Suddenly, it seemed to come alive. A cluster of small, dark turtles squiggled from the sand, some still half stuck in leathery eggs the size of Ping-Pong balls. The people watching murmured, pointed, whispered in delight.

  The tiny turtles crawled over one another, sometimes turning each other over. The ones stuck on their backs flailed frantically at the air. Another bucket was overturned, and more baby turtles scrambled upward. “Watch out for those gulls!” a ranger called.

  Dani looked up and saw a flock of gulls circling overhead. One swooped down, seized a baby turtle and carried it away. Dani could see its small legs twitching in the sky. “No!” she cried. The bird had no right! It couldn’t just take away this little turtle that had been nurtured in the hatchery and brought back to its home just before it had a chance at life.

  She broke from the group of people and yelled at the overhead birds, throwing her arms upward, forcing the gulls to veer away from the turtles dashing to the sea. The crowd joined her, and soon the beach was a melee of waving arms and shouts to scare away the birds.

  Dani circled, all the time watching the swarm of newly hatched turtles tumble toward the water. Austin grabbed her shoulders. He was grinning. “Look what you started, you crazy girl!” he yelled.

  She grinned back. “I did it for Cassie,” she said. “Isn’t it wonderful? We’re saving them, Austin. We’re saving the turtles. Wouldn’t Cassie love it?”

  She stopped, her eyes focused on one tiny turtle that had somehow managed to get turned around and was starting off in the wrong direction. Her heart thudded. Didn’t it know that that way meant destruction?

  She wanted to pick it up and set it back down in the proper direction. Before she could move, Austin caught her arm. “Wait,” he told her.

  “I want to help. I don’t want it to get lost,” she cried.

  “Wait,” he repeated. “Let it find its own way.”

  The baby turtle wandered in a zigzag pattern. Then it stopped and raised its tiny head. It was honing in on the moonlight, which cast a silvery path across the ocean to the line of the horizon. The turtle turned again, this time seaward. Dani grabbed hold of Austin’s hand. “It knows,” she said. “It knows the way home.” Tears spilled down her cheeks.

  They watched as the turtle scrambled forward and touched the edge of the warm water. A wave washed over it, caught it, and pulled it into the open arms of the sea. “She made it, Austin. The turtle made it.”

  Dani looked out at the rolling surf as her mother and Dr. Phillips came alongside of her and Austin. As they stood together, Dani felt Cassie’s absence in one way, but her presence in another way.

  She knew she couldn’t have Cassie with her anymore, but she would always have her memories. She knew that just as the turtles were safe in the ocean, Cassie was safe in eternity. “We can leave now, Mom,” Dani said. “We can go home.”

  Dear Readers,

  For those of you who have been longtime readers, I hope you have enjoyed this One Last Wish volume. For those of you discovering One Last Wish for the first time, I hope you will want to read the other books that are listed in detail in the next few pages. From Lacey to Katie to Morgan and the rest, you’ll discover the lives of the characters I hope you’ve come to care about just as I have.

  Since the series began, I have received numerous letters from teens wishing to volunteer at Jenny House. That is not possible because Jenny House exists only in my imagination, but there are many fine organizations and camps for sick kids that would welcome volunteers. If you are interested in becoming such a volunteer, contact your local hospitals about their volunteer programs or try calling service organizations in your area to find out how you can help. Your own school might have a list of community service programs.

  Extending yourself is one of the best ways of expanding your world … and of enlarging your heart. Turning good intentions into actions is consistently one of the most rewarding experiences in life. My wish is that the ideals of Jenny House will be carried on by you, my reader. I hope that now that we share the Jenny House attitude, you will believe as I do that the end is often only the beginning.

  Thank You for caring

  YOU’LL WANT TO READ ALL THE ONE LAST WISH

  BOOKS BY BESTSELLING AUTHOR

  Let Him Live

  Someone Dies, Someone Lives

  Mother, Help Me Live

  A Time to Die

  Sixteen and Dying

  Mourning Song


  The Legacy: Making Wishes Come True

  Please Don’t Die

  She Died Too Young

  All the Days of Her Life

  A Season for Goodbye

  Reach for Tomorrow

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  MANY OF YOUR FAVORITE CHARACTERS FROM

  THE ONE LAST WISH BOOKS IN

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  Excerpt from Reach for Tomorrow by Lurlene McDaniel

  Copyright © 1999 by Lurlene McDaniel

  Publishedby Bantam DoubledayDell Booksfor YoungReaders

  a division of Random House. Inc.

  1540 Broadway, NewYork. New York10036

  All rights reserved

  Katie O’Roark is thrilled to learn that Jenny House is being rebuilt. After the fire last year, Katie thought she could never return to the camp, where she spent the summers with young men and women like her who faced medical odds that were stacked against them. But thanks to Richard Holloway’s efforts, Katie and her longtime friends Lacey and Chelsea will work as counselors once again. They’ll be joined by Megan Charnell, Morgan Lancaster, and Eric Lawrence, who are newcomers to Jenny House but who have experienced the generosity of the One Last Wish Foundation.

  It’s not until Katie arrives at camp that she discovers that Josh Martel, her former boyfriend, is also a counselor. Katie and Josh broke up a year ago, when Katie decided to go away to college. Being near Josh again brings back a flood of old emotions for Katie. And when Josh confronts unexpected adversity, Katie knows she has to work out her feelings for him. Through the heart transplant she underwent years ago, Katie miraculously received a gift of new life. Now she must discover how to make the most of that precious gift and choose her future.

  She stopped. By now tears had filled her eyes and her heart felt as if it might break. She truly believed that God had heard her prayer. What she did not know was whether or not he would grant her request. Against great odds, God had given her a new heart when she’d desperately needed one. And he had brought Josh into her life as well. She believed that with all her heart and soul. Now there was nothing more she could do except wait. And have faith.