It had been a good day. She was so beautiful, and attentive, and interested. His hope had been kindled on her laughter. He had not felt much of a man for such a long, long while. He had only known her for three months but it had been a whirlwind. He felt thirty again, no maybe forty, that was his prime. He laughed thinking that he had not awakened to that particular stiffness in a long while. His back, his neck, yes stiff every day, just from sleeping. But this was a familiar friend he thought long gone. He felt alive again.
They had traveled to the city on a whim. They could do that now, freed from the obligations of younger folk. And they had eaten the best food and seen the best sites and were alone together in the rich buzz of the city. He never thought that a smile would again ever cross face. Cause, she had died ten years ago suddenly, just as the kids were gone and they were just about to live the life they had talked about all those many years. Travel and freedom! They had saved and they had planned, sacrificing much along the way for the now grown babies they loved so dearly. And just as the new life was about to begin, there came the diagnosis, the disbelief, the panic, the treatment, the decline, the death. Almost overnight it seemed. His world shaken, foundations overturned, numb.
And numb was how he stayed for a long, long while. He went through the motions, pitying his children’s concern. “Why worry about a dead man,” he used to wonder. And to all accounts he was dead, at least the walking dead. Smiling face, dead eyes, keeping up social convention, but more and more reclusive, disconnected. He was lost somewhere between here and there, unable, unwilling to bridge the gap. He replayed the dreams they had shared with each other during the hard times and the good. Dreams of exotic people and places and sunsets and of growing old together. God he had loved her. It was a true and fierce love that had given her a place to rest and grow and nurture the ones they loved so much.
She had knitted each child a little blanket. A covering that saw them through their first six months or so. And each unique blanket had followed each child through Christmas, and Easter, and birthdays, year after year. Upon their leaving there was a special ceremony she designed for each baby that included a blessing and a passing of the blanket. But there was one blanket which had followed them all. It was still waiting with no place to rest. A little red blanket with a white T embroidered on it. She was the youngest, the brightest star whose light had been taken from them. He had discovered it one day going through “the chest” where she had kept all the things that belonged to the future. He wept that day for the first time. Long and deep he grieved, and in utter solitude. But that day was different. On that day he began to make a turn. It was that day he began to let go. He began to finally lift his head.
And it was not long after that day that she suddenly appeared in his life. Bright, full of life, no expectations other than he be fully himself. It was different than they had been. They had grown up together and had overcome and learned much together. The children born of them created a bond that could not be shared with another. He still missed her, and would at times wish for her company and conversation. But she was gone, and she is here and alive and interesting and maybe, just maybe there was some life left before it was over. Maybe just maybe, he could be alive before he died. So as they walked the streets that day, hand in hand, hope was their friend and their guide. They strolled in the park and came upon an elderly lady knitting. Knitting a small red something. A blanket, or a sweater, he did not know. All he knew was the white hot grief for his child who was not. All the hope and disappointment and the triumph of the life he had lived coalesced in that moment. The pain and the joy somehow coexisting. He remembered a line from a song “There are cracks in everything, that’s how the light gets in.” He thought he finally understood, or at least was beginning to. And as the tears ran down his face light broke from his eyes. He muttered “hallelujah” and “amen.” His friend, silent and watching, pulled him close, kissed him sweetly, and sighed in thankfulness for a man with a soul.
