Reminders of Him

by Colleen Hoover

“Sometimes I wonder what Scotty would think if he could see us. It makes me hope that an afterlife doesn’t exist, because if it does, Scotty is probably the only sad person in heaven.”

“I would have fallen for you even if you didn’t love Diem.” His expression shifts, and then he kisses the inside of my palm. “I fell for you because of how much you do.”

She panicked and made the wrong choice, but she paid for that choice. At what point can we stop blaming her?”

“I am going to be the best person I can be for your daughter. I promise. I’m going to give her the best life, and when she asks about her mother, I’m going to tell her what a wonderful person you are. I’ll make sure she grows up knowing how much you love her.”

“Don’t hate them. Okay? They’re giving my little girl a good life. Please don’t hate them.”

“I chose Diem. Let’s go back to how things were before.”

the printer and make sure all of it printed. “Wish me luck, Scotty,” I whisper.

“We are keeping a mother from her child. That’s not okay. Scotty would be so mad at us.”

“It’ll be hard to read. But I’m not asking you to read it because I’m in love with Kenna. I’m asking you to read it because your son was in love with her.”

You owe Diem the opportunity to have another person in her life who will love her as much as Scotty would have loved her.”

Despite the devastation I’ve left in my wake, I am not a bad person. I am not a bad person.

Today was the first morning I didn’t wake up angry at you.”

I know they’re good people. Scotty loved them. They’re just also hurt people, so I respect the time they needed to come to this decision.

I see so much of Scotty in her right now. In that laugh. I have to look away from her face because the tears start to fall.

Then she squeezes both of my hands reassuringly. “We go forward,” she says. “That’s it. It’s that simple. I forgive you and you forgive me, and we go forward together and give that little girl the best life we can give her. Okay?” I nod, because I can do that. I forgive them. I’ve always forgiven them. It’s myself I’ve been hard on. But I think I’ve reached the point that forgiving myself finally feels okay. So I do. You’re forgiven, Kenna.

It proves that time, distance, and devastation allow people enough opportunity to craft villains out of people they don’t even know. But Kenna was never a villain. She was a victim. We all were.

But he doesn’t cry. It’s the first time a reminder of Scotty doesn’t make him cry, and I feel like this is huge. Not only because the chances of this random pigeon landing in this backyard at this very moment are probably one in a billion, but because Patrick and I have never had a serious conversation related to Scotty that didn’t end in me sneaking away so he could cry alone. But he laughs, and that’s all he does, and for the first time since Scotty died I feel a sense of hope for him. For all of us.

It could have just been a coincidence, but it also could have been a sign. A message from wherever he is. Maybe it doesn’t matter whether something is a coincidence or a sign. Maybe the best way to cope with the loss of the people we love is to find them in as many places and things as we possibly can. And in the off chance that the people we lose are still somehow able to hear us, maybe we should never stop talking to them. “I’m going to be so good to your girls, Scotty. I promise.”

thought memorials were silly. But your nana doesn’t, and sometimes we do things for people we love, even though we wouldn’t choose to do those things for ourselves.”

Music still makes me think of Scotty, but thinking of Scotty no longer makes me sad. Now that I’ve forgiven myself, the reminders of him only make me smile.

The last name I handed out two weeks ago was by far one of the more important ones, yet somehow the easiest name to come up with.