The Memory of Us

by Camille Di Maio

And there was only one McCarthy who had meant anything. Who had meant everything.

“I’m Julianne Westcott. Charles is my brother.” The words were foreign to my tongue. Lucille was the only friend who knew I had a sibling, a revelation that I had shared through tears after discovering the documents in Mother’s dressing room just two years ago.

I quickened my pace at the whack of a knife beheading some unfortunate parsnips.

He was a Catholic, a profound restriction in the eyes of my father, and a laborer, quite unsuitable in the eyes of my mother.

It is no wonder that some people are afraid of the dark, fearing what might be hiding in the shadows. My own monsters were self-concocted fits of overthinking.

There is so much sadness in the world. But pain and sadness have a way of drawing us closer to God if we let them.”

I thought for sure that you were mine, The way you made me feel so new. But you’ve chosen another love. And I don’t know how I’ll ever live without you. That bloody radio was playing like a movie soundtrack to my life.

she listened with the heart of a friend who adopts your feelings as her own.

On one side, then, an urgent reminder of what Kyle could never be. And on the other, an equally stark reminder of what Kyle was destined to become: a gentle and kind priest.

I was thankful that the ride was brief, because jostling between the two was suffocating for me.

But I discovered that even painful experiences could help fill the shell. I had been a girl last year, and now I was a woman. That didn’t come without some bruises.

Now, married to me, he suffered through odd jobs and had to put his life on the line. Why was I worth it? I couldn’t see it, and if I knew nothing else before he left, I had to know this.

My sentence was to journey through this world alone, perpetually atoning for my sin, patient by patient.

It’s not every day that you read your own memorial. It only made sense that they would have done something like that, but to see what was essentially my own tombstone felt rather macabre.

its windows concealing the unseen eyes of the sick and dying. I had once been among them but was spared, a fact that I’d spent two decades resenting.

I added some boughs around it and stepped back to look at my handiwork. It occurred to me that it was a perfect metaphor for my life—a majority of repentance, with scant punctuations of joy.

Jane. She said her mother had been here recently. My pulse raced. I had worked so hard to keep my whereabouts unknown, fearing her anger, or worse, facing her untarnished saintliness in comparison to my great sins.

I had first ignored, then resented God for most of my life, and I was here to amend that.

“Oh, Helen. You are far too hard on yourself. Whatever you have done, you surely had your reasons. And you have certainly atoned.” She slid her hand over mine. “I hope you can believe that yourself and find the peace that I have always wanted for you.”

now. It was I who did not want to feel like the lesser part of the marriage.

It was I who chose to break every tie, even with my precious daughter. I was too wrapped up in my vanity and my desperation to consider the other people involved.

Suddenly Kyle’s faith made sense to me. It was not for the perfect; it was for the repentant. A faith for those seeking healing and salvation.

One of the greatest joys of this time together was the rediscovery of the kind and loving God that Kyle had never doubted. His faith stayed true through such sufferings. Mine had not, but I saw now that it was I who deserted God. Not the other way around.

She is inspired by the concept of “sucking the marrow out of life”