In an Instant

by Suzanne Redfearn

“You know, Finn, an apology is only worth something if a person means it.”

“That Mo, she’s a pirate at heart.”

She’s a love-them-and-leave-them-devastated-and-dizzy kind of girl.

Like soldiers who fought beside each other, once the war is over, they return to their separate lives, their only bond a tragic shared memory all would rather forget.

I realize we are not meant to see ourselves so plainly, without the guise of ego and ignorance, not meant to have our true characters revealed.

I realize how awful people are to each other, how a pervasive cynicism exists in most of us that stops us from seeing the best parts of one another.

My dad, the eternal optimist, who has climbed mountains and conquered oceans, diminished to a bitter, defeated man.

Don’t just try to be happy when you think of me—be happy. Look at the ocean and smile. Inhale the scent and celebrate. Remember me. Remember that I was never sad for more than a day, rarely for more than an hour.

Carry me inside you as a light that brightens your world and makes everything better. I don’t want to be a void, a hole, a shadow. REMEMBER ME!

“The ocean is going to miss her.” And I smile and cry a little because she’s so right.

both my parents older and smaller than I remember them.

Until that day, she was good, and discovering she isn’t is very sad.

Are we born with our strength? If so, then should we condemn those who don’t have it?

there are moments, inevitable lapses and gaps in time, when the past floods into the present with such fury it sucks the wind from your lungs and knocks you off your feet.

Like everyone else, she is stumbling forward, one foot in front of the other, not always in the right direction but staggering on just the same.

Being dead sucks, but watching them destroy the life I had is worse.

I lived, and I do not want to only be recognized for my premature death. That was only the end. Before that was sixteen years of life—good, bad, funny, fun. Finn.

The way I view alcohol is that it makes you more of whatever you already are.

I wonder about this, about whether our humanity is determined more by circumstance than conscience, and if any of us if backed into a corner can change.

“You’re still here,” he goes on. “So there’s not really a choice. An inch, a foot, not necessarily in the right direction, but onward nonetheless.”

“Until eventually,” he says, “the present becomes the past, and you are somewhere else altogether, hopefully in a better place than you are today.”

You only live once, and no one has any idea how long that once is going to be, so grab on tight and hold on for the ride and don’t worry about it and don’t look back.

Rest in peace is not merely an epitaph for a tombstone; it is the best we can hope for in death.

and though I am gone, carry me with you, but only as lightness and never as weight . . .

a T-shirt that says MY KARMA RAN OVER MY DOGMA.

“A little thought and a little kindness are often worth more than a great deal of money.”

conscience a terrible thing to discover when you’re sixteen and have lived all those years never having recognized it.

Life goes on.