The Keeper of Happy Endings

by Barbara Davis

I turn away from her, stung by her harshness. Ours has always been an awkward relationship, filled with chilly truces and prickly silence, her disapproval always there, like a current running between us, because I’m a reminder of past mistakes.

Pain has a way of hardening us, each new heartbreak laying down a fresh layer of protection, like the nacre of a pearl, until we think ourselves impenetrable, immune to both our present and our past. What fools we are to believe it.

I press her back against her pillows, hushing her like a child in the throes of a nightmare. I tell her to close her eyes and I stroke her hair, trying to recall a time when the roles were reversed and she was the one to comfort me. I can’t. She’s never been that kind of mother. Still, I can’t deny her that small bit of tenderness. Not when her heart is breaking.

“This chance I spoke of . . . it will test your heart. It might even break it. But the most precious gifts always come at the highest price. I learned this too late . . . which is why I’m telling you now.

There is a grief worse than death. It is the grief of a life half-lived. Not because you don’t know what could have been—but because you do. You realize too late that it was there for the taking—right there in your hands—and you let it slip away. Because you let something—or someone—keep you apart.