Put in a Good Word

I remember the day I broke my heart by asking God for an exception. Just this once. I dared to ask the question of what he and I could be, if only we could ignore the creeping complications of our differences. Perhaps, I thought naively, we could be different. We could be the ones to show the world how to navigate the trails blazed by the hardened hearts of our forefathers. Perhaps, I dreamed, our love might be enough. 

“So… what’s going on between us?” I dared to ask, ready to paint a beautiful fantasy of peace and inclusion where we forged our own traditions and dared to rewrite the rulebook of our ancestors. My hope lingered in the tension of those beats of silence before it crashed against the words that spilled from his lips. 

“We can’t be together… I’m sorry, I just think that I need to marry a Muslim woman and you…”

“Need to marry a Catholic man. I get it.” 

“I’m so sorry, I really wanted it to be you” 

With weary eyes and a low, heavy voice, the words fell with an air of regret. I searched his face for an answer, but I knew in my heart there was no answer. No solution but this. My heart was incredibly still as a spider web of fractals made its way through it. How still that night was, despite the mess that was left in its wake. I told myself at that moment that there would be time to cry and grieve. Later, later, I whispered to my heart as it asked permission to fall apart. So I summoned the bits and pieces of my resolve and hardened the emotion I had left as I picked my words with care.

“Whatever this was… I had fun… so, thank you.” he breathed out and gave me a tired smile and I savored this fleeting moment of a shared connection. I knew we wouldn’t have this again. I wasn’t certain that we would see each other again, but I knew that this experience, whatever it was, would alter the course of our lives. It’s funny how you can be so close, and then all in a moment, everything you have dissolves into nothing. I guess at that point, you pretend it never even happened, but you walk away forever changed. 

We hug and I try to imprint the feeling in my mind because I know it will be our last. Our eyes meet and there’s a sadness in the what-ifs that we know will bubble up in the future. I try not to think about tomorrow. The tomorrow where we aren’t a part of each other’s lives. Where there is no update or knowledge of what the other is doing. But that can wait… for now I force myself to be in this moment. Where we are in each other’s lives for a moment more. 

As he walks away, I tell myself that there will come a day when we know we made the right choice. When he finds the woman of his dreams and I find the man of mine. When we have our families and we have our faiths and we know that life couldn’t have existed without the heartbreak we experienced before. The heartbreak I am experiencing now. So I remind myself that this will be worth it and I imagine a future where our paths cross again. A future where we’re both in love, but not with each other. When I have that, I’ll know I have him to thank. But what then until that day?

…

The following day, I woke up and for a moment, everything felt calm and peaceful, and normal. When your world changes, you don’t always remember at first. You wake up and everything feels normal… but then you remember and the feelings crash over you all over again. The details of that second day ended up fading into the whole experience, but the most important thing I remember from that day was the sinking feeling I got from being asked an impossible question. 

I walked into a church, alone with my thoughts, alone with my God, my faith, and everything I believed. It had been a while since I had attended mass alone. I always attached my faith to a community, but that day I had to face my faith alone. As I sat in the pew and ran my hand over the smooth wood. Tears rolled down my cheeks as I sat quietly and asked God what He wanted from me. I asked if I really was meant to give this up. I asked why there was no answer for a man like him and a woman like me to be together. I asked how on Earth I would find the man I was meant to be with. How I could find a Catholic man who I saw God in the way I found Him in that man. As I asked myself these questions, I tried to shift my focus to what the priest was saying and I got my answer. 

“God has sacrificed His son, Jesus Christ for us, but what are we willing to sacrifice as Catholics? What must we sacrifice to be Catholic?” at that moment, I knew I had to give up the dream of an interreligious relationship and an interreligious family. I had to scrub the dreams I had of a future with him. I had to start getting over him.

… 

Years pass, the hurt, as with all things, diminishes with time. We both go our separate ways and we both find our person. I marry that liberal Catholic man I always talked about and we have kids and Christmas and everything in between. He marries that Muslim woman he talked about and they have kids and Eid and everything in between. It’s funny how much life can fit between the beginning and the end of a story. We fall out of touch, but somehow we fail to notice. Perhaps there are still days when we think of each other. Perhaps it’s only me. The feeling passes in the little ways he changed me. The way I laugh at the jokes of a Muslim comedian or shuffle through the pages of my old research project on interfaith marriage. In the end, we both got what we wanted, even if it wasn’t with each other. 

We lived these separate lives for a small lifetime. Blissful in the knowledge that our sacrifice was worth it. Savoring the realities we dreamed of and leaving the past behind. I had accepted that he must have been a small detour to push me towards the life I was meant to have. I figured he must have felt the same. How funny life can be when it actually goes to plan. How we take a hold of our own fate and twist the life in front of us into exactly what was expected of us. We both wrestled with happiness afterward, but in the end, we won. We built the lives we said we would and I thought we’d live and die with those lives. I never imagined that we might see each other again. I never imagined what happened next. 

… 

It was fifty years after that fateful weekend when our paths crossed again. We were back where it all started at our undergraduate college, receiving the special honor of being alumni for fifty years. Everyone who graduated with us was to receive this honor, but not everyone was there. In those last fifty years, many of our classmates had moved on, passed on, or simply disappeared without a word. There were a number of us left, but the pack was much more scarce than it had been on the day of our graduation. 

I lingered with the friends I had kept in touch with over this time. I scanned the crowd for old familiar faces and I basked in the memories of a life well-lived. I had almost forgotten the heartbreak of fifty years prior until I heard a familiar voice…

“Hey! Gosh, it’s been so long, how are you? How have you been??” I turned and my eyes met the warm, weathered face that was so foreign yet so familiar. His eyes still sparkled with the same kindness as they had fifty years ago. His smile crooked and his voice inviting. I returned his smile and hugged him tightly,

“It’s so good to see you again! I’ve been well, and yourself?” We chatted on as if no time had passed. Trading stories of our careers, our children, and all the years that we had missed. As it turns out, he found his Muslim woman and I found my Catholic man. We both raised those families we always talked about, he led that project, I published that paper. We both got the lives we had so desperately wanted, but there was a bittersweet lingering of what if that held the air between us. This knowledge that our sacrifice was right, but a faint, innocent, wish that we could have known what could have been. The feeling electrified the air around us and all it took was one spark to return back to where we had left off so many years before.

“Would you like to get dinner with me after this? Your husband is welcome to come of course…”

“I’d love to. But my husband died about twelve years ago now.”

“I’m so sorry-”

“It’s okay. What about your wife-”

“She died as well. Ten years back.”

“Oh..”

“Yeah…”

“Hey this might seem a bit forward… but what if this is our second chance?”

“Maybe it is…” We shared a smile and that night, we knew we had been given the remaining chapters of our unwritten story.

…

Those last few years flew in a whirlwind of love, memories, and lost time. We lived without regret, enjoyed all that the world had to offer, and loved in a way we had never been allowed to before. But as with every good story, with every good thing, there had to be an end. We weren’t the young star-crossed, duty-bound lovers that we used to be. Nor were we the zealous, hopeful new graduates who planned to change the world. We had learned that maybe love isn’t always enough, nor is passion or will, but there are just some things in this world that we may never know. Some problems that can’t be solved, some questions that don’t have answers, and sometimes that’s okay. The world hadn’t changed nearly as much as we had hoped in those years, but we had changed. And so, I started this story with my first heartbreak, but let me end it with my last one, ironically over the very same man, if for a different situation. 

We had everything we had ever dreamed of. We got that life together, we adventured together, and loved without worry for family or faith. In the end, as he was at the end of his life, I held his hand and we smiled, knowing that we got what we wanted in the end. I’ll never forget what he said to me, what those final words were that escaped his lips before he met his creator.. He said,

“Hey, if you were right about the whole God thing… Put in a good word for me” I squeezed his hand as a tear rolled down my cheek.

“I will, and if you’re right, about Allah… put in a good word for me too, yeah?” he nodded and the smile on his face glowed like a sunspot in the mid-afternoon. I guess I’ll have to wait to know who was right, but that’s just part of the mystery of faith, isn’t it?