You, with a View

by Jessica Joyce

It’s fucking rude that he’s so good-looking. It offends me.

I have no idea where people go when they die, but sometimes I swear I can feel her. Right now, I do.

What would it be like to follow in footsteps she never actually took? Would I be chasing a ghost? Or would she feel closer than ever?

I didn’t keep most of those cards. After she died, we found every one we ever gave her stashed in a series of storage bins. I sped back to my apartment in the city, tore through my room, my roommate hovering in my doorway while I tried to find any cards she’d given me over the years. I finally found a few, and they’re tucked into my nightstand now. But I regret every one I ever discarded thinking I had an infinite supply of them.

This may end in disaster. My family may hate you. But I don’t. I’ve never done a thing I thought they wouldn’t like. You’re the first thing I’ve been brave enough to go after just for myself, simply because I want it so much. It’s okay if this scares you. It scares me, too. But I’ll do it anyway.

How is it possible to want something as equally as you fear it?

Maybe it doesn’t have to be my best to still be enough.

“There’s something about it. It’s quiet, but not a heavy kind of quiet. Just peaceful. Feels like you can breathe here.”

I try to imagine how lonely that must be, to not have a reliable parent for comfort or support. It’s not something I’ve ever had to deal with, and it leaves me scrambling for a response.

Like maybe I’m not the sum of my mistakes, my failures, my fears. Like maybe it’s not too late to fight for what I want, if I can admit it to myself. That it’s okay to have hope, to try, even if it doesn’t turn out the way I expect.

How lucky that this is the moment I landed in. How temporary everything feels when surrounded by a landscape that was here long before us and will be here long after we’re gone.

I’m not so high on myself that I presume to know everything about how the world works. It’s true that I don’t know what after death looks like, but I do feel Gram sometimes, in the stars above me at night. Right now in this room. What if Flor can feel that, too? What if she feels all of the things that had to happen to get us here?

Your grandma’s death cracked your world down the middle. It put you in the shadows that were lurking around the corner anyway. A soulmate doesn’t have to be romantic and can serve a very specific need in your life. You can have one your whole life or many.”

“Healing always does,” Paul says. “Remember, nothing lasts forever. You have to hold on to the good things, knowing you may be on borrowed time with them. And with the bad, recognize that eventually it will pass.”

That grief never goes away, but it can grow into something that you can handle, or even grow from.