CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN

Funny, but you never know until the end how easy it is to pass. It’s just the lightest thing, my fingertips kissing your palms good-bye as I go.

I leave the dark behind, the passage ahead glows with twinkling, sparkling light, and I remember all of it.

The stars that shone that blue-black night above the gardens in Rome.

The cave of rain and sunlight in Guam where we couldn’t stop laughing.

The prisoner’s holy cell, the rolling Thames, the wavering canals in Venice, the snowy snows of dark Siberia, your faces. The rustic teeming groves of France, the endless red Algerian sands, the baking sun of hotel parking lots, old Roman stones, your faces. Narrow Paris streets blossoming at night. The tangled jungle deeps. The thousand friends.

Your faces.

Good-bye, Mom. Good-bye, Dad. My Maggie, oh! Oh, Lily. My laughing Darrell. Oh, Wade, oh, Wade. It’s hard to pass.

But all I never saw, I see in all your faces now.