Since when does my heart beat loud enough to interrupt my thoughts? My face is flushed, my hands are sweaty, and it’s only 68 degrees. I couldn’t count on all my fingers the number of times my clothes changed this morning, and my mirror? It was frustrated with overuse before I had even eaten breakfast. Wow, I’ve never seen so many stairs. I feel so tall up here, but also so small; like I’m performing on a stage with an audience, but those watching so outnumber those being watched that you are acutely aware of your own insignificance. Just walk down the stairs, join the crowd. One step, two, three.. Damn! Ouch, that hurts so bad and my backpack has to weigh more then I do. It holds me here, at the bottom of twelve stairs, an anchor to humiliation. A boat, in all of its magnitude, cannot sail away with its anchor moored into the sand; a teenager cannot flee with her backpack glued with the weight of embarrassment to the concrete. What is that sound? Laughter- not mean. Kind, bubbly, coming from the direction of an extended hand. Could a hand lift me, my backpack, and my humiliation? Please, please be able to. Thank god. Thank you, Hand, for being attached to rippling laughter and a friendly face. Thank you for being the first to support my weight, and thank you most of all for not being the last to do so.

There are cheers exploding from the bleachers, feet stomping with enough passion to vibrate through the metal structure. Voices roar and sometimes crack with enthusiasm. My voice is one of them, audible but not distinctly, rising and falling with the tide of the masses. It gathers us all, taking no prisoners, turning cynics into fans of a game few of us truly understand. Raw hands, cheeks aching, we send our spirit out to meet our team. The players sense it, are set dancing to our rhythm until crowd and team are in sync. Those watching and those being watched- a harmony. Our connection made tangible by the electric adrenaline between us.

My phone vibrates inside my pocket and displays the text message I’ve been dreading. From Mom: “The results are back, she has cancer.” The room is hot and I am freezing, frozen, fixed to the desk beneath me. I don’t remember what excuse I gave my teacher as I ran from the classroom to make the call, to hear rather then read the news, as if somehow “cancer” was a typo for some variation of the common cold. Something, anything, other then what I heard and translated. Loss, death, tragedy. Each individually heavier then embarrassment and somehow able to be carried by a six letter disease. Moving through school is now a gradual dissipating, my presence once scattered and concentrated within various pockets fading and wearing thin. There are so many people in this school, thoughts per person per day. Individual insignificance. My family’s tragedy lost somewhere between the cravings for gum and desires to sleep, a similar prayer offered up to an unimpeachable universe. Who speaks that language, the one whose assonance receives answers and actions of actual satisfaction?

You, what? “I like it, it’s beautifully written.” The crisp paper in my hands takes on a lightness. Pride weighs less then embarrassment, and the paper nearly floats of my hands as I float above the floor to my seat. “Let’s discuss.” There are voices around me, and each one speaks separately and alone. That is, they sound off without competition, but the words they carry link themselves to the echoes of those spoken before. Only sometimes is it a link of seamless continuum. Our desks are formed in a circle with space in between, space that we fill with arguments and ponderings and insights. We lean on the inside edges of our desks and reach into the filling space as the clean break between distinct voices dissolves and we are all immersed in its contents: arguments and ponderings and insights. Bring it on.  

My mom mentioned to me the other day that my Grandfather had recently seen the doctor about a problem with his hearing. I hadn’t thought anything of the visit, he’s worn hearing aids and spoken in an outside voice as far back as I can remember him. They’re still not sure if it’s the device or his hears with the problem, but the visit ended in a conversation around his longevity. My mom told the doctors that if he were to experience any kind of medical emergency, they would not want care, not want him resuscitated. She said this and I heard “we wouldn’t want you to try to save him”. How could that statement possibly hold any truth? “We don’t want you to save the life of the man who brought us ours”. 

I tried to consider what had to be going through the minds of my mom and her five living siblings. They believe it more humanitarian to allow his life fire to fully extinguish when the flame of quality dwindles. They believe it’s what his aching heart would want, as comments of “You wouldn’t understand, I’m just so tired” and “I miss my Jacquie” become more frequent then his humorously characteristic complaints. While I don’t understand the validity of simply allowing a loved one’s life to end, I realize I have to acknowledge so much more then I have. Among this multitude are the fact that this is everything but “simple” and the hardship of living a life in agony of the heart, mind, and body.

My mom said he told her explicitly that this is what he’d want when she asked. My grandfather wants to be let go by us who love him here to return to the woman in heaven who loved him sixty- something years of his life. I understand that. In one of the singular most touching moments of my life I watched my grandparents look at each other- my grandmother weakened from cancer, my grandfather wrought with tender concern- and simply take each others hand. He raised hers to his lips and kissed it, their eyes locked in a silent exchange as the chaos of our family raged around them. She was the easy silence in his life, the driving continuance of his mental clarity and insight. Without this anchor, it was easy to see his happiness diminished. There was no other like her to meet him in this space. For this his heart aches, and without the full beat of this powerful organ his mind and body were exhausted in strength. His doctors told us that grief accelerates Alzheimer’s, but I had never previously experienced the exhaustion of a person who wakes up from a nap wanting more then anything to fall back into the peaceful oblivion; I had never before heard him ask who his child’s name was, if a grandchild was his.

The decision is defined by complexity, I should never have allowed my mind’s anger to dub accepting the death of my grandfather “simple”. My mom and her siblings would be whirled with emotion, trying to brave the impact for the grandkids by celebrating his life, rather then mourning his absence. I miss his vivacity every visit, miss the spark with which he used to tell me that the larged- sized spoon I brought him for his ice cream- always rocky road- was not a “man’s spoon”, miss the stories he no longer remembers exist. It is in the growing list of things I miss that I realize he misses these too. I notice his frustration, and it aches to see him understand that absence of his understanding.

I have and will always love him, his impact and stories and qualities will be inextricably woven into the lives of us who survive him. We will celebrate his life at every opportunity, as well as his reunion to his heavenly wife.

I worry about you, all the time. I try to imagine the effects of my actions, not always with success. I’m scared of extinguishing your flame, fanning out the fire that burns so brilliantly instead of stoking the embers. How long can I delude myself into believing that this is enough to keep you honestly happy? I’ve lived like that: convinced myself that that biting ache, that unsilenceable question is just something I need to endure. But there could never be a reason to endure that when there are bountiful cures and answers running amok through the world, calling to our consciousness with offers so tempting.

There were stars that night, millions of them. Endless, countless glittering lights to illuminate the beach where we lay. We saw pictures take shape between them, and some fell from the sky to their reflections in the waves. So was the beauty of the night: surrounding and encompassing, rather then distant. While the stars typically burn with an untouchable brilliance, on this night we were graced by their tangible presence. We were lucky to exist among them, to lay gritty on the sand between the sky and dazzled ocean waves. There was even a certain exhilaration in the sensation of icy water rushing over our feet and under our backs,seeping into the beach beneath us. When the chill began to climb from the sand and into my skin I rolled over onto you, burying my face in the hollow beneath your neck as your arms found their natural place around my waist. I remember feeling amazement that your fingers tapped the small of my back to the allegro rhythm of heart beats I heard through your chest, the same tempo I imagined my own heart set to.

“I want this forever,” you murmured, not realizing that your gentle tremor of breath sent my world spinning on an entirely dizzying axis. As the statement reverberated through my mind, you flipped my body gently over and held your own a whisper above it. No separation of breeze blew between us as your lips brushed my forehead, my cheeks, my lips. “I’m home here,” spoken into my heart as your lips grazed my chest. I felt singularly alive, intoxicated with the radiance of the sky and the magnitude of the sea, with our intensity of passion and its extension into the beauty of this place. Your electric touch, and closing provocative words: “There’s something about this that won’t let me go, some piece of my heart and soul so embedded in you I don’t think I’ll ever get it back. Marry me, so I can spend every moment of the rest of my life not wanting it mine, but ours.”

I climbed from my blue Honda into yours, ignoring your call as I could already see you through the window. You had said you would put your glasses on to better find me in the parking lot, but I knew better- you know how much I like you with them on. So I sat down and gazed at you, amazed by the shaking of my hands. I forced myself to remember: its just you. Not “just” you meaning that the very fact of your presence isn’t enough to make the impossible a distinct reality, but “just” describing the depth of which I know you. My hands shouldn’t shake and my heart shouldn’t dance to an allegro tempo because I have come to be able to anticipate, and walk with you through your beautiful mind. And yet they do, because of the unspoken “I love you” that accompanies every response I give aloud.

We talked, we laughed. There was a considerable amount of teasing and arguing, an electric joy flowing between us on our words. Its been striking me as funny that the more of these moments we share in person, the more we seem to loose ourselves to the feeling of it. I couldn’t tell you every detail of what was said last night, but I could convey the emotion. If I could do it justice, I would speak of what was felt between us, if not exactly what was said. I love this about us- that our connection has been able to exist on a multitude of levels. Our words have connected our hearts as we listened to the particular phrasing the other chose, used this to more deeply understand their story. Now that we have come to this place of understanding- a place I do not mean to describe as finished or static, but rather dynamically furthering- the words have become a starting point for every conversation woven in to the one spoken aloud.

When it came time to say goodbye you walked around to my side of the car. One arm instantly around me, we momentarily searched the sky for the moon, feeling the anticipation that leads to moments such as ours. “Find it”, I told you. Instead you kissed me, and I swear to you I still feel it on my lips. I thought I could feel your body relax into mine, and I was so happy to think that you were lost in the moment as I was. Unlike the last time, when I pulled away you said, “Not yet”, with a rushed voice as your hands tightened around my back. When we did pull away your arms stayed wrapped around me, no ounce of tantalizing summer breeze blew between us.

We talked, delving into a challenge of the conflicted heart. You asked me if you felt you had forced anything, and I could feel in your words the desire to apologize for this and secure my feelings before you had even begun to contend with yours. It is for this and so many other things that I believe you a martyr- the purest of sincerity in your happiness coming from that of those around you. I kissed your cheek, almost hopping up to reach it, wanting you to feel the “I love you” I didn’t want to interrupt to say. Your response touched me, I could feel you soften even more. I love that you spoke with your lips against my forehead, and the dueling atmospheres of urgency and timelessness playing on our interaction. That is how it will always be for us, is is not? Suspended between the rush to get “there” and the beauty of existing boundless from the demand of time.

it is a humbling experience to be met with the magnitude of your love. my mind is set dancing with the tantalizing possibility of forever, and the music ? an interwoven melody of us.. wearing out the words “i love you”

“I am no one special. Just a common girl with common thoughts. There are no monuments dedicated to me and my name will soon be forgotten. But in one respect I have succeeded as gloriously as anyone who ever lived. I’ve loved another with all my heart and soul and for me that has always been enough”