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But the thing people don’t realize is that the past is a living, breathing entity that exists apart from our wishes or best intentions. It’s not gone, and it’s certainly not invisible. Its fingerprints are smeared all over every moment of the present, its weight drags on every second of the future, its consequences echo down every hallway of our lives. We can no more rid ourselves of the past than we could stop the earth from spinning.
The laws of time and physics are disfigured by grief, warping around it so a single moment can be lived over and over, forever.
Gazing at me intently, he says, “I’d love to draw you.” Don’t you just hate it when a man opens his mouth and ruins everything?
“Haunted.” My invisible shields slam down and envelop me, protecting my heart from the anguish welling up inside my chest. I’ve spent a long time developing my shields, and until I look up again they’ve never failed me. But when our gazes meet this time, I’m unprepared for the force of it.
In the silence that follows, the sounds of the café seem unbearably loud. Silverware clatters against plates. Chattering voices become nerve-scraping shrieks. The flush on my cheeks spreads down my neck, and my pulse goes haywire. I’ve never been looked at like this by a man, with such raw, unapologetic intensity. I feel naked. I feel seen.
In a hushed voice, Edmond says, “The collection is titled Perspectives of Grief.” Like a key fitting into a lock, I understand why James is drawn to me. And why he would be moved to create these particular drawings of these particular people, their anguish so raw I can almost reach out and touch it.
Birds of a feather flock together, as my mother used to say. Water seeks its own level, and like attracts like. Death has touched him, too.
I know we’ll be lovers the same way I knew as a young girl that someday I’d put pen to paper and write stories for others to read. The same way I knew my marriage would collapse under the weight of guilt, shame, and sorrow. The same way I knew, sitting on the cold front pew in St. Monica’s church gazing at my daughter’s small white casket, that I would never be whole again.
Our bones have a wisdom that our hearts will always follow, regardless of the roads down which our rational minds think we should head. “Edmond.” “Oui?” “Please tell James I’d love to sit for a portrait.”
“It’s just nerves. You’ve been through worse.” The way he says it—and the similarity to what Kelly said earlier on the phone—startles me. It’s as if he already knows me, as if he knows everything there is to know about me, where all my deepest scars and wounds are hidden, where every black hole of anguish lies.
“Whatever bad thing happened to you, it hasn’t made you less beautiful. There’s beauty in darkness, too. It just takes a different kind of vision to see it.”
“It’s like you said, Olivia. Life’s too short to mince words. Our existence is measured in minutes. Seconds. Heartbeats. Time is the most valuable commodity we have, because it can never be replenished. Once it’s gone…it’s gone forever. And so are we.”
Maybe God doesn’t hate me so much after all, because if he, she, or it did, I’d never have been given something as incredible as this.
“And I love to look at you, beautiful Olivia,” he whispers back, his voice hoarse. “It’s a privilege I don’t deserve, but one I’m so grateful for.”
“The mystery of human existence lies not in just staying alive, but in finding something to live for.”
It wasn’t how long we had that mattered. It was the strength of love we shared as a family. It was all the joy and indescribable pleasure that being a mother brought to my life. A joy that hasn’t been diminished by the agony that came after.
“There exists a field, beyond all notions of right and wrong. I will meet you there.”
For people in my position, death is a friend we wait for. The merciful friend whose face we long to see. I’ve been waiting for quite some time now. I don’t remember if it was after my throat muscles stopped working and the feeding tube was inserted into my stomach or after my lungs stopped working and the breathing tube went into my neck. Either way, I’m waiting for death to come and set me free from this wasted body and release me into the sweet relief of nothingness.
The money never mattered to me. Having other people meet James did. I wanted them to love James, too, so he could live on in their memories the way he lives on so vividly in mine. That’s the only way we can ever achieve immortality. Love is what binds us together eternally, the only thing that survives after death…or the end of a psychotic episode.
And if you laugh that I think my love for James is as real as your love for your spouse or partner, just remember where love truly exists—in the mind.
I’ve remembered those words so many times. Remembered the tender look in James’s eyes when he spoke them, remembered the sound of his voice, so rich and full of love. But until this moment, I’ve never thought of the words as a clue. “There exists a field, beyond all notions of right and wrong. I will meet you there.” I will meet you there. I will meet you…there. In the lavender fields of Provence.
“Too bad these things don’t happen in real life.” I wish I had a voice, because I’d tell her Oh, but they do, Maria. They absolutely do. Out in the yard in the glimmering rain, beneath the spreading branches of the mulberry tree, James stands waiting. He’s smiling. Even through the gentle evening mist, I see how brightly his eyes burn for me. That beautiful, blazing true blue.
“I love you.” James whispers back, “I love you, too. Until the end of time.” It’s a vow, a solemn promise, and the fulfillment of every dream I dared to dream. Hand in hand, we turn our backs on the melancholy rain and walk into the waiting warmth of the lavender fields.
