Every Beautiful Mile

by Ashley Manley

I hate the sun for even existing on a day like this.

The weird thing about grief is that one minute, I feel fine, and the next it’s as though my heart is being scraped across a cheese grater. Peace. Pain. Peace. Pain.

Here’s the thing I’ve learned about being a parent to teenagers—half of the time, I love them so much it hurts while the other half I wonder if shoving knives under my fingernails would be more enjoyable.

“Some people say time heals all wounds, but I always thought laughter was the real salve for a wounded soul. You all need to go out there and find some.”

“Eitha way. Life, death, light, darkness… it’s all magic. Timing and perfect circumstances spontaneously comin’ togetha for a phenomenon of one type or anotha. Funny ting about it, dough, we forget it’s all temporary. It has a season. No jubilee lasts forever—hell, we lucky if it lasts til de day breaks. Dat’s why it’s fun,” he says with a small chuckle. “If we skipped everytin’ we wanted to cause we knew it was gonna come to an end, dat’d be a damn shame if ya ask me.”

“My wife always said that the Grand Canyon proved God is a glass half-full kind of guy.” “How so?” “My wife, Margie, she said that you wouldn’t go to the Grand Canyon and look for what’s not there. You’d look for what’s left. Said the Colorado River ran through here and took a lot, but what it left behind is the real treasure. She’d say, ‘Ned, canyons aren’t about the absence. They are about what remains. Artifacts of survival and patience and slow weathering. If people looked over that edge and only looked for the missing ground, they wouldn’t see the beauty. It’s God’s glass half-full.’ She was ever the optimist, right until the end.”

“You know about the people who come into our lives with their love and change us as much as the Colorado River changed this unforgiving landscape. The ones that cut right through you and carve you into who you are supposed to be. They move slow and steady, eroding what we were away. What they leave behind are the ruggedly beautiful remains that remind us forever of their existence.” “The rivers that run through us,” I say.

“Never quit on your worst day,” Marin says matter-of-factly. “Dad told me that once. He said your worst day wasn’t the time to make big decisions because you won’t look at things from every angle or how you can improve your situation.” She lifts a shoulder.