Saving Noah

by Lucinda Berry

He was like curling up on the couch with a blanket and stepping into my favorite book.

If you did everything right and it still turned out wrong, then what was the point?

Nobody told me time slowed down with tragedy and how each minute became excruciating when it was painful to merely exist. Just when I was gaining my footing, something would remind me of it and send me into an emotional tailspin. Most of the time it was the little things, like a college admission packet in the mail, an email about ordering hot lunches for the next month, or lyrics to a song he liked. The grief would pummel me, and I had no choice except to succumb to it until it passed.

I used to be afraid we’d reach this point—the place where we’d moved so far away from each other that we couldn’t come back together. But now that it had happened, it wasn’t nearly as awful as I imagined it’d be. The person I knew and loved was gone. I didn’t want to get close to the new Lucas who’d taken his place.

“How long do you wanna be loved? Is forever enough? Is forever enough?”

My biggest fear was that I’d forget parts of him, and he’d be taken from me piece by piece until I was left with nothing except an empty ache where he used to be. It terrified me to lose anything about him and not remember every detail. His smile. His eyes. The smell of his hair.

There had to be a God, because there had to be a heaven. A time when I got to see him again, and he was the one to walk me home.