I got here a while ago, but I wasn’t able to leave my truck until a few minutes ago. Just the thought of doing what I’m about to do has me paralyzed with fear that maybe I’m not really ready? Bottom line is, I’ll never be ready to move on. But I know it’s time. I have to be ready for my own sake.
I walk slowly across the grass, stopping at the end of her grave site. A concrete bench her parents put up after the funeral sits in front of me. I’ve never been here by myself. It feels exactly as terrifying as I’d always imagined it would.
Ambri and I used to sit here weekly the month after her death. When we’d visit we never spoke, we sat silently drowning in our own thoughts.
I’ll never understand why what happened happened. Why us? Why Rory? Was it something we did? Were we being punished? I think everyone asks that after a death when, really, we didn’t do anything to deserve it. There is truly no reason why it happens. Further proof that life is unfair.
The flowers her mom planted on either side of her headstone dance in the wind that blows around me. The rumbling of the dark skies overhead threatens to soak me at any moment. The graveyard is quiet, almost peaceful. My head isn’t.
I step over the bench, sitting down with a sigh, staring at her headstone, my elbows resting on my thighs, her face staring back at me. After the headstone went up I wondered whether the photo embedded in it was a bad idea. Did I really want to stare at her pretty face every time I was here? I took the picture at her twenty-seventh birthday party. She was so shocked that she cried for the first ten minutes. She’d been diagnosed a few weeks earlier with a rare and fast-moving form of leukemia. Even though we were all trying to be positive about the outcome, I think we all knew right from the start that her days were numbered. We somehow felt it in our souls.
‘Hey…’ My voice cracks as I say it. I clear my throat and try again. ‘Hey, Rory.’ I try not to say her name aloud normally. I don’t know why, it doesn’t feel right when she’s not here. I glance around as if she’s suddenly going to show up like she has in my head in the past. I’m a little relieved when I don’t see her. I’m not sure I could say all this if I felt as if she were here sitting next to me.
‘I’m sorry I haven’t been by in so long.’ I sit back, struggling for the words. Her face never changes as I stare at her photo. It never will. No matter how much time passes, she’ll always stay the same. I’ll age, but she never will. Even when I feel like she’s standing right in front of me, her face never changes no matter what I say. I’ve yelled, cried, pleaded, she never wavers in her emotion.
‘Holding myself together those last nine months you were with me was the hardest thing I’ve ever had to do. I never wanted you to see how scared I was, and I was scared, Rory, rightfully so. But I didn’t want you to be scared.’ Tears fill my eyes to where I can hardly see her headstone through them. ‘I hope I never let you down.’
I wipe my eyes and pull the letter from my back pocket. ‘I also wanted to tell you that I never read your letter. It’s the last thing I have left of you. Everything else I’ve given to people who loved you. I always felt like once I’d read it, you’d be gone for good. I was never ready for that.’ I stare down at her headstone. ‘Until now.’ I take a breath, hoping I can get through this like I hoped. ‘I need you to know that I will never forget you.’ I have to stop because I can’t speak through the emotion building in my chest.
‘But I gotta let you go, Rory. I’m sorry. At this point my own life depends on it.’ My voice shakes as I cry into my own hands. The wind blows hard around me, blowing the letter out of my hands and onto the grass in front of me.
A letter from the grave is one of those things that seems like a good idea for the person writing it but for the person receiving it, the one who has to live on without you, it’s a knife in the chest.
I grab the letter off the ground, fully intending to leave it here unopened or possibly in pieces, but something in me needs to see what it says so I don’t always wonder. I suddenly need to read it to leave her behind. I tear it open, pulling out the lined notebook paper.
Hi Henry,
How many years has it been? I knew you wouldn’t read this letter when I passed. You needed to be strong, but you kept it just in case. I know you’re reading it now for a reason and I hope I’m able to give you some closure if that’s what you’re looking for.
I’d like to say some things first though. Things I wanted to say when I was alive but couldn’t seem to find the words.
I made my peace with my fate. I was ready. I know you and Ambri hated it when I’d quote grief books, but they really helped me understand death and its aftermath. I also learned that this is a lot harder for you guys than it is for me. I mean, watching it happen from my side wasn’t easy either but, for me, it’s all got to end. Eventually, I’ll get relief and the promise of an afterlife, but you have to continue on every day while all this haunts you. It’s really not fair if you ask me.
You guys all mean so much to me and you’ve made every single day of my life better. Never doubt that. When I left, I left happy. That’s partially because of you, Henry. Thank you.
I do hope you’ll take this advice, somehow it feels like what you need to read right now.
I may be gone but I want you to live the best life. Because life is for the living, Henry, which you still are, so please, LIVE. Whatever answer you were looking for when you finally opened this letter, you already know it. Please stop worrying about what I might think because whatever you’re picturing me saying or feeling, I’m not. I just want you to be happy.
It’s OK to let me go. It’s time. It’s what you need to do to live for you and that’s all I want for you. Do the thing, Henry, whatever that is, follow your heart.
xx, Rory
PS – I know death can change people but you and Ambri existed even before you and I. Please don’t let this come between you guys. And please, keep an eye on her for me, would you? She needs you.
My heart is beating in my chest like a jackhammer, so loud I can hear it. The tears flood out of me in a way they’ve never been able to before and continue for a lot longer than I ever expected them to.
I finally wipe the tears from my eyes and it’s like wiping away all the things I couldn’t see through the pain of losing her. If I had read this at any other time, it wouldn’t have done what it did right now. The wind blows even harder than before, blowing a small red plastic heart, the kind they put at the bottom of balloons so they won’t float away, into the grass at my feet. I know it’s her. I reach down to grab it when the wind blows again, whipping it away from me. I turn to look for it but all I see is a single ray of sun, shining through a spot in the clouds down onto a statue of an angel that sits in the center of the cemetery, the red heart lying in its outstretched hand as if placed there. The skies are nearly black and the wind is violent but that one spot is completely peaceful, and almost glowing. I drop back down onto the bench and what feels like a ton of weight lifts from my chest.
I’d been holding onto her for years while a tornado blew around me, never willing to let her go. Protecting my feelings for her and never allowing anyone else in the way I should have. This wind isn’t just wind, it’s visually showing me exactly how tight I’ve been holding onto something that is no longer mine. Until today.
When the downpour starts I fold the letter, shoving it in my coat pocket, and run across the graveyard to my truck parked a hundred feet away.
I turn the key, but nothing happens.
I turn it again, and again, but the truck stays silent, refusing to give a guy a break when he needs it the most.
‘Come on! Come on!’ I yell, slamming my hands against the steering wheel in frustration. ‘Damn it!’
I jump out in the pouring rain and open the hood, staring at an engine that looks perfectly fine to me. These are the moments where I wish I was more mechanically inclined. I jump back into my truck, pulling my phone out to call the only guy I know who carries tools with him at all times. Ben.
‘Henry, what’s up?’ he says into the phone.
‘I need your help. My truck won’t start, and I’m stuck at the cemetery.’
‘You did it?’
‘If I told you what happened you wouldn’t even believe me. Get out here and help me jump my truck and I’ll show you instead.’
I don’t believe in supernatural signs. Like the heart just now. Like all those times I’ve felt like I’ve actually seen her, asking me questions and never responding to my answers. I think that’s why I felt so beside myself whenever it was happening. I knew it wasn’t possible.
I know when some people go through the death of a loved one they hold onto that, constantly looking for little signs that their loved ones are OK. If it works for them, great, but for me, it’s made things so much worse.
At least I thought it did. Right now though, I feel like a new man. A new man that knows exactly what he wants and it’s finally not in this graveyard I’m stuck in.
‘On my way,’ Ben says, ending the call and leaving me alone in the silence of my truck. The rain beats down against the metal, echoing through the confusion in my head. I look back out to the statue; the rain pours onto it now.
I need to fix everything I’ve ruined both for myself and for Ambri.
*
Ben pulls up in front of me, ready to face the rain in hope that a jump will start my truck. He turns off his engine and gets out as I do, the rain letting up the tiniest bit. I hand the letter to him.
‘Cables are in the toolbox.’ He tosses me his keys.
I fish around the toolbox secured in the bed of his truck for the jumper cables as he reads the letter. I know he’ll be as shocked as I was.
‘Holy shit. Too bad you didn’t read this before you took off to LA, huh?’
‘It wasn’t the right time.’ I shake my head.
‘So, what I’m hearing is that you are finally ready to pull your head out of your ass?’
I laugh, nodding. ‘You could say that.’
‘Now what?’
‘Now you help me get this truck started so I can tell her.’
Ben laughs, not moving from where he’s standing.
‘Are you fucking nuts? She’s with Noah and you’re with Karmen. No one likes the guy who’s a cheater. You’re the one that fucked that girl over, so I think you have a bit more work to do than beg her to give you another chance. You gotta earn it. You gotta figure out if she even still wants you. You gotta remind her of what you two were. You gotta make a plan. A big plan.’
I sigh, leaning against my truck. ‘That’s a lot of “you gotta” s. But, you’re right. She deserves so much more than me begging her back. And…’ I sigh. I hate this part. ‘She’s taken. I might be too late.’ I lean against my truck facing Ben, my arms crossed over my chest. I can’t stand the thought of me being too late. But that is a possibility. ‘She’d have to choose me over Noah and, well… that might not happen.’
‘You’re right.’ Ben walks over to me. ‘It might not happen, but is it a risk you’re willing to take?’
I nod. ‘It’s a risk I have to take. I’ll never forgive myself if I don’t.’