Surviving Savannah

by Patti Callahan Henry

“I don’t know how. Tragedy—it can come from anywhere at any time. How do we go through life knowing that? How did we ever not know it? And yet we pretend we’re safe. It’s absurd.” “I think that’s true. Very true. We can’t unknow the sudden thrust of misfortune that comes out of nowhere. Once it happens, it is an incontrovertible

truth.”

Who was I to understand death or life? They were a mystery.

Perhaps we weren’t so far apart after all, Mora and me. Death had taken her but it hadn’t taken who we were together, or our memories, or how she had shaped the woman I was right here under the waves, picking up remnants of a disaster hidden from sight for all those years. We were, all of us, hidden in different ways, under different waves. The broken parts, the remnants of our own explosions, kept secret from others.

Oliver took me by the shoulders. Our eyes locked and stayed. This was life. This was love. I placed my hands on his shoulders and nodded yes. Then I moved one hand and pointed up with my thumb, toward the surface, and toward life.

Not everyone who survives trauma becomes a better person. The idea that surviving brings everyone to a new and better place is a lie told by people who need the world to make sense.