Surviving Savannah

by Patti Callahan Henry

There is a kind of story, God, that glides along under everything else that is happening, and this kind of story only jumps out into the light like a silver fish when it wants to see where it lives in relation to everything else. INDIVISIBLE, FANNY HOWE

Mom loved the stories as much as we did; I could feel it in her gaze, but she was tired of feeling things, even the goodness of a story.

“If one wants to move beyond the past, one must not delve into the past,” some out-of-date advice book once told me. But no one, even if they believe they have, moves past the past. It follows; it shadows; it breathes quietly in the dark corners. Ask me, I know.

Who was I then that I was so desperate for a man who didn’t love me in return?

Grief was as hot as lava, cold as ice, thick as mortar and thin as vellum; it was everything and nothing.

I felt as if I were free-floating, hollow. The confession I’d made to Maddox had weighed more than I’d calculated.

anyone who is engaged in life at all is brave.

If not for . . . if not for . . . if not for . . . but there is no use in lamenting what might have been, for we are here and there is a life after horror. There is tragedy behind, and it trails us and walks alongside us, but still there is the great mystery of life after.’”

His voice broke, and I felt as if for the first time our shared sadness didn’t add up to more, but an easing, a lessening of a load.