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“Do you think a life has any value if one doesn’t leave some mark upon the world?” Remy’s expression sobers, and he must read the sadness in her voice, because he says, “I think there are many ways to matter.”
Pain can be beautiful. It can transform. It can create…
He’s heard grief has stages. He wonders if love does too.
The feeling and fear of being high
And despite it all, he falters. Because he believes her. Or at least, he believes that she believes herself, and that is worse, because it still doesn’t make it real.
Then again, he never felt at home at home, only a vague sense of dread, the eggshell-laden walk of someone constantly in danger of disappointing.
You want to be whatever they want.
“You can’t make people love you, Hen. If it’s not a choice, it isn’t real.”
And yet.
“And you think if I am real, then so is he. The light to my shadow, the day to my dark?
Fear that she’s messed up, thrown away the one thing she’s always wanted. Fear that it was that fragile, that it came apart so easily.
“The vexing thing about time,” he says, “is that it’s never enough. Perhaps a decade too short, perhaps a moment. But a life always ends too soon.”
New York City May 15, 2014
“Because happiness is brief, and history is lasting, and in the end,” he says, “everyone wants to be remembered.”
Grief, deep as a well, opens inside her. What is the point in planting seeds? Why tend them? Why help them grow? Everything crumbles in the end. Everything dies.
And she is all that’s left, a solitary ghost hosting a vigil for forgotten things.
They were so caught up in their grief, they mourned him before he was even dead. There’s no way to un-know the fact that someone is dying. It eats away all the normal, and leaves something wrong and rotten in its place.
Most fights, after all, are not the work of an instant. They build over days, or weeks, each side gathering their kindling, stoking their flames.
“This is need. And need is painful but patient.
And there in the dark, he asks if it was really worth it. Were the instants of joy worth the stretches of sorrow? Were the moments of beauty worth the years of pain? And she turns her head, and looks at him, and says, “Always.”
there isn’t enough time, and he knows of course that there will never be. That time always ends a second before you’re ready. That life is the minutes you want minus one.
“Do you know how you live three hundred years?” she says. And when he asks how, she smiles. “The same way you live one. A second at a time.”
No one is ever ready to die. Even when they think they want to.
Some decisions happen all at once. And others build up over time.
“And how was it, your human love? Was it everything you dreamed of?” “No,” she says, and it is the truth. It was messy. It was hard. It was wonderful, and strange, and frightening, and fragile—so fragile it hurt—and it was worth every single moment. She does not tell him any of that.
Henry runs his hand over the manuscript, relieved and sad that it is done. He wishes he could have lived with it a little longer, wishes he could have lived with her. But now, he is glad to have it. Because the truth is, he is already beginning to forget. It’s not that he’s fallen victim to her curse. She has not been erased in any way. The details are simply fading, as all things do, glossing over by degrees, the mind loosening its hold on the past to make way for the future. But he doesn’t want to let go. He is trying not to let go.
Belief is a bit like gravity. Enough people believe a thing, and it becomes as solid and real as the ground beneath your feet. But when you’re the only one holding on to an idea, a memory, a girl, it’s hard to keep it from floating away.
