Farewell, my Love

CW: mentions of death and cancer

apologies for any formatting issues, this was copy+pasted from my google docs

   “We’re running out of time,” she says, her curly grey hair spread over my lap like a rolling fog.

   “No, we’re not,” I reply, running my hand over her hair, cherishing each winding strand.

   She amends, “I’m running out of time.”

 I don’t correct her. I can’t. She had always preferred unalterable truths, brave against reality like a rock standing still and silent against waves that will eventually break it down. So I stopped trying to tell the rock to uproot itself from the sand and try to float instead of sink, because the rock insisted that even if it weren’t drowning, the water would still be there, the waves still wearing it away, the tumor still inoperable. 

Instead, I say: “We shouldn’t be spending it like this.” 

“What do you mean?” Anna looks at me now, her brown eyes catching the moonlight and juggling it around, patterns of light and shadow reflecting a lifetime and its imminent end.

“You deserve better,” I start. 

She laughs bitterly.

I shift uncomfortably and pause to assemble my words. “You remember our first date?”

“Yeah,” she smiles. Her brow wrinkles, slowly coming to a realization. “You want to take me to the beach?”

“If you want to.”

“Right now?”

“If you want to,” Despite everything, from our place underwater, I smirk. 

 She looks past me to the open sky as if just now noticing it’s nighttime. “But it’s cold,” she complains, adjusting her shawl and scooting a bit closer to my torso.

“It was back then, too,” I smile and she smiles back, both of us genuinely excited at the prospect of spontaneity. And, indeed, there is a chill in the air that whispers of autumn in a hushed, excited tone; it rattles softly through the leaves before shaking them from their canopy. It sneaks under your clothes and bites at your skin, urging you to do something before summer is spent like a friend rushing you along before you get caught breaking the rules. That sense of risk makes the blood in your veins fizzy and light.

“Let’s do it,” she sits up, drawing her shawl closer around her shoulders, sluggish and struggling but still smiling, laughter in her voice, light in her eyes.

“SHE SAID YES!” I bellow, jumping up from the bench. Real laughter bubbles up from her chest as I jump and dance around in the grass, drawing looks from the kids and their parents getting ready to leave the park. It’s easy to ignore them. Good God, it’s easy to ignore them. And I would never have this courage around anyone else, but her laugh, the same one I’ve heard every day for the past 38 years, 29 days, and counting since she first said yes, no one else in this world matters. I’m not sure what I’ll do, how harsh the world’ll seem when–

“Jerry,” she says between hiccup-laughs, standing up. “You’re disturbing the peace.” As soon as she’s up, my arm slides around her waist, pulling her closer, my lips hop up her arm, her neck, her cheek, and finally, her lips.

“Ready, captain?” I say as we part.

“Aye, aye,” She replies, giggling. She screams as I haul her off her feet and carry her to our car bridal style, both of us nearly falling apart from laughter.

___________

   “The beach?” 16-year-old Anna exclaims, arms crossed. “You’re taking me to the beach, at night, right at the beginning of fall?”

   16-year-old Jerry says, “I know how it sounds on paper,” his tone calm, relaxed, and even charming, but he had been so nervous the whole ride that the steering wheel gleamed with his palm sweat. “Just trust me. I’ve always gone to the beach during off-season, even winter, and–”

   “WINTER?” Anna exclaimed.

   “Yes, Anna, and it’s magical. Do you trust me?”

   Anna leans away from him, a smirk playing on her face. She said, “How do I know you’re not a murderer?”

   “I guess you don’t. But isn’t this a wonderful place to die?”

   Her smirk faltered.

   Shit, Jerry thought, shit, shit, shitshitshitshit

   “That’s a little…” she squirmed uncomfortably.

   “Sorry. I’m so sorry, it’s just… I’m nervous, because–”

   “Because what?” Anna said, suddenly forceful.

   “I’ve never… you know,” Jerry shrugged and dropped his gaze to his hands, weaving and unweaving them in a clumsy rhythm. “Felt like this before. It would’ve been too easy to take something from a movie or a book, and, well, a girl like you, you’ve probably experienced all that before. I wanted to impress you, is all, and I guess I wanted to show you something that, uh…”

   “That what?” Anna says, leaning toward him, the anger in her voice giving way to soft anticipation.

   After a long moment of building up his courage and cradling his wounded male ego, Jerry says, “I wanted to show you something as beautiful as you.”

   “Oh, Jerry,” Anna beamed. Her smile hit Jerry like a blow to the chest. “I had no idea you were so romantic!”

   “So do you trust me?” 

   Anna laughed and said, “I guess a murderer wouldn’t have such a wonderful way with words,”

   “Or would they?” Jerry said in a comically deep tone, then reached out and tickled Anna, earning loud, belly-deep laughter from her.

__________

   “You were right,” Anna says now, grey hair dancing with the wind, the water caressing the soles of her feet. She pulls her shawl around her tight as a second skin and shivers against the night’s breeze. Her deep brown skin is bathed in moonlight, and with the wind revealing her face and neck, I don’t know whether to kiss her exposed skin or drop down to the sand and worship her.

   Instead, I do what the shawl couldn’t and pull her into me, warming her up. “I’ll need some clarification. I’m right about a lot of things,”

   She doesn’t respond normally. At first, she doesn’t respond at all. I was expecting a laugh, maybe a scoff and a playful slap to the cheek, but instead, finally, she says, “You were right when you said this was a wonderful place to die,”

   “Don’t say that.”

   “Why? Why not?” She twists to look up at me, the moonlight turning into cold fire in her eyes, fury sparking up in her. “It’s true. You’ve accepted it, you know it’s true, why won’t you ever say it? Why do you always avoid it? And why do you try and stop me from saying it when it’s me who’s dying, Jerry. I’m leaving you,” the anger in her voice melts into sadness, dissolving into sobs. “I’m leaving you,”

   Everything crashes into me at once. The world floats away from me and all I hear are her sobs racking through her chest, all I feel is her warm body against mine and the stabbing, throbbing pains in my heart, and nothing else. Nothing else matters, nothing else even exists when Anna, my Anna, has been reduced to hiccuping cries. 

I vaguely feel her turn around and bury her face into my chest. I have to pull myself together, I have to grit my teeth against the black, sinking, feeling that the entire world will end with her, that somehow this one person’s death will force even God to bow his head in grief, for anything or anyone living or otherwise to succumb to loss and end right with her; all colliding with the fact that no one else but our own family and friends will notice. Sunsets will be had without her to see it, history will be made, the world will change, and—

“Say something,” she says, knocking on my chest, her sobs dying down.

I give her what she wants. “You’re going to die.”

This makes her suck in a breath and look up at me. I do my best not to look back at her. I keep my attention on the water, steady myself in the waves, anything to keep me tethered in the moment, keep me strong enough for her. I drink in a breath through my teeth and say as strongly as I can manage at this moment: 

“But I do my best not to believe it. I can’t accept it. Sometimes it feels like my sanity depends on you being here, with me. So I don’t say anything. Like a little kid. I wish I could ignore it ‘til it goes away. But you wanna address it, face it head on and all that stuff. And if it’s what you want, I’ll do it. You’re dying, and there’s nothing I can do about it.

   “And I remember how you looked the first day I took you here. That cute white dress. Those box braids. When you first stepped out of your house, with your dad glaring at me from behind you, I fully thought you were an angel. I still do. And I remember how you hated the idea of being here. You complained how the new heels your mom got you would get ruined from the sand. But I remember most the look on your face when it all set in. When you registered the breeze on your skin, the sound of the waves, the fact that us being totally alone in that moment meant that the world was ours. I remember that look. I remember when you started looking at me that same way, too.

   “Moments like that make all the other moments worthwhile. I wouldn’t trade our memories together for anything. And it hurts knowing that this might be our last one. But I think that that could be alright. I think if it means you’ll be at peace, I can learn to live with just our memories. Or maybe the grief will kill me and I’ll go right along with you and God’ll fix us up a suite together. Or maybe none of this matters. I don’t know. My God, Anna, I don’t know. I’m trying my best to make you feel better but all I’m doing is making myself feel worse, and maybe even making you feel worse. And I’ve always had a way with words, they’ve always been my friend. But I’ve never felt grief like this, Anna. I have no idea how to navigate this. And I feel like the more I talk the worse it’ll feel for both of us but at even the tiniest chance of making you feel better, I don’t think I could shut my mouth even if I sewed it closed. I love you.

   “I love you, I love you, I love you. I need to say it now before I can’t anymore. I should’ve said it more beforehand anyway. It makes me almost feel guilty that I didn’t treat you as special before that… diagnosis. Anna?”

   “Yes?” Her voice was soft. I didn’t know I was crying until I feel her hands brushing tears off my cheeks.

   “Please shut me up. I don’t think I can do it on my own, and—”

   She does what I asked. She kisses me until we’re both out of breath and clinging to each other as if the other might float away if we don’t hold them down.

   “Thank you,” I say between pants. “I’m sorry.”

   “Don’t make me do it again,” she laughs breathily.

   “Oh, that would be terrible,” I smirk, and she laughs even harder. It might be my favorite song in the world.

   “Jerry?”

   “Anna?” The syllables taste bittersweet.

   “I hope you die of old age,” she says.

   I shake my head. “I hope I die with you instead.”