The Book of Two Ways

by Jodi Picoult

“Erin go bragh,”

HERE’S THE INSANE thing about resuming your old life when it’s nearly ended: it is business as usual. Your heart may be broken, your nerves may be shattered, but the trash needs to be taken out. Groceries must be bought. You have to fill your car with gas. People still depend on you.

Imagine all the times you’ve told yourself, Oh, it’s nothing. Well, nothing can be pretty goddamned big.” I

I remember what it felt like to have her settled under the umbrella of my rib cage, to have a double beat of a heart. I still do. It’s just harder to hear, sometimes.

“If we assume that cancer, and heart attacks, and Alzheimer’s, and anything else that might kill you is the compilation of a ton of cellular—and therefore subatomic—events, that spinning electron may or may not launch a gene that causes a reaction that will lead to your death. Die-hard quantum immortality buffs will say that we are all, in some universe, the oldest living person on the planet—having dodged all these genetic and literal bullets.

Hermit crabs, she used to say, are too soft to survive on their own. To protect themselves, they find a shell that fits. They’ll tuck themselves inside, for protection. They’ll carry it with them, wherever they go.

In every fairy tale, the only way out is to keep running forward. To never look back.

One moment, the world was a place where I had a parent, and the next, it wasn’t. I remember feeling like something elemental was wrong, like I’d woken up and found the sky green and the grass blue, and was expected to pretend this was normal.

“Relationships aren’t about photo ops. They’re about scaling mountains and crossing deserts,

“Are you guys … arm wrestling?” she asks. “No,” Brian replies, as if this is ridiculous. “We’re holding hands.” Which is equally ridiculous. All three of us start laughing, and even though I am still bleeding and my thumb is throbbing, I can’t remember the last time I have felt this good.

The thing about death is that we’re all terrified of it happening, and we’re devastated when it does, and we go out of our way to pretend that neither of these things is true.

“The way to have a good death is to have a good life.”

“Art isn’t what you see. It’s what you remember.”

WHEN I GET home, Brian is pacing in the kitchen. “You’re here. Thank Albert.” He doesn’t believe in God, but he does believe in Einstein.

There are concentric circles of grief: the patient is at the center, the next layer is the caregiver, then their kids, then close friends, and so on. Figure out what circle you’re in. If you are looking into the concentric circles, you give comfort. If you’re looking out, you receive it.

When you look at someone whose life has just ended, you don’t see horror or pain or fear. You see peace. Not just because the muscles relax and the breath has left—but because there’s a deep satisfaction, a conclusion.

know how something in you changes when a parent dies. You go about the rest of your days just like you have before, pretending you are fine, knowing it is all a lie. It isn’t until you lose a parent that you become an actor in the play of your own life.

I was thinking of how odd it was that the things our parents do for us when we are young are what we do for them when they are old.

To think of him faltering is to imagine the earth veering from orbit, the seasons reversing.

“No. I think that you can love more than one person in a lifetime. There’s the one who teaches you what love is, even if it doesn’t last.” Wyatt. “And then there’s the one who makes you a better human than you were, even as you do the same for him.” Brian.

Your last soul mate might be your spouse, or it might be your child. It could be a best friend, or maybe even a death doula. It’s who is holding your hand when you finally have to let go.

Before my mother died, even when she was unresponsive, I found myself touching her, like I was the one tethering her to existence. I would hold her hand. I would rub her arm. I would curl up next to her. I was doing it because I knew that once she died, once the funeral home came and carted her off, I was never going to be able to touch her again.

I noticed things I never had before: the way he never backed out of a parking spot unless my seatbelt was fastened; the way he asked before he kissed me, as if what I had to give was not his to take; how, when I got appendicitis, he was more worried about me than I was about myself. How he would order food that he knew I wanted, instead of his favorite meal. How he charged my phone daily, when I forgot to plug it in. How, when he held my hand, I didn’t just feel things. I felt everything. He wasn’t staid and slow. He was steady. When I stopped careening between the highs and lows of emotion, I didn’t feel bored. I felt safe.

I believe that there are five things we need to say to people we love before they die, and I give this advice to caregivers: I forgive you. Please forgive me. Thank you. I love you. Goodbye. I tell them that they can interpret those prompts any way they like, and nothing will have been left unsaid.

When you have a child, you will do anything for her. You may not do it well, but you will kill yourself trying. You will trip over obstacles as you clear them out of her path. You will give her the choices you didn’t have.

don’t know why, when it comes to death, we say we lost someone. They’re not missing or misplaced. They’re whisked away from the tightest embrace.