Rose

Rose was a devout believer in the afterlife. James was not. At least not until that moment when she used her last breath to tell him the words that he now most longed to hear.

“I love you, my dearest,” she whispered as her eyelids fell and her soul left her body.

Their fingers were intertwined and as he felt her grasp loosen he was acutely aware that he would never be holding this hand again. The realization made him grip with a strength he never knew he had, because as long as he did not let go, he could still be holding on. Holding on for her dear life.

With her passing, James had lost his love, his home, his reason for living. All that remained of her was put in a wooden box several feet under the dirt in a cemetery several miles from where he now stood. Looking down into the waves crashing into the cliffs, he could only think about what he was missing.

“It’s not fair,” he said to himself, in a voice inaudible to any other living being.

He gazed down towards his destination, clutching at his chest, where the emptiness resided and where it became more painful each moment that he kept breathing.

“It’s not fair,” he repeated. A cormorant flew by, carrying nesting material in its beaks and his gaze lifted momentarily to follow it along its flight. As he watched, his mind floated back to the memory at the doctor’s office.

Rose had been at peace with her diagnosis from the start. It was James who had been in denial, questioning the doctor for an hour after he had told them where the cancer had metastasized. He stayed up all night to look for medical trials and novel treatments, anything he could find that would give them a glimmer of hope. When he started rattling off everything he had found in their bedroom the next morning, she just listened with a smile until he was finished, then reached for his cheek and cupped her hand on them and looked him deep into his eyes.

“Life isn’t fair, love, but I’m not mad. I’m not sad. Do you know why?”

James remembered looking at her in shock for a moment. He shook his head slowly after processing what she had just asked.

She laughed a little at seeing how dumbfounded he looked, then said, “because, James, my dear, I got to spend ten wonderful years with you. And we didn’t waste a single second of that life. We lived life and we loved each other and we made sure to be the best version of ourselves that we could be. We treated each other, our families, and everyone else we had the fortune of having our lives touched by with love and respect. And I truly believe, with every single drop of blood in my body, every ounce of faith that I have within me, that we will see each other again in Heaven.”

He remembered crying and holding her in his arms that night. How could he tell her that he wasn’t sure? That even if such a place existed, he wasn’t sure if he would be allowed in, not having believed in its existence for his entire life. He wished desperately to be able to share her belief. But even now, especially now, that she was gone he could not find himself believing. And after spending two months living a shell of the life he had lived with her, he found himself at the edge of this cliff, looking down once again at the crashing waves.

He took a shuffle forward, and closed his eyes. He took a deep breath, smelling the salty sea breeze flowing up from beneath his feet. He couldn’t think of what else to do. All he could feel was the coldness of her side of the bed. The emptiness created by all the things she left behind. She was nowhere to be found. He opened his eyes again.

“I’m sorry, love, it’s just not fair.”

Just as he uttered the words which were supposed to be his final ones, he saw another cormorant fly by, but this time, it was something red in its beaks that caught his eye.

It was carrying a rose.

James furrowed his brows at first in confusion. Was this a sign? Or was he seeing things? Roses don’t grow naturally along cliffs like this. He stopped focusing his gaze on the sea and lifted his head. He surveyed the area around him for the first time.

That was when he noticed it. Off to the right was a light blue house with a white picket fence. Within the fence was what appeared to be a rose garden, and in it stood a figure. The figure was waving and shouting, or so it seemed.

James took a step back, realizing that he may have been seen. What he was about to do wasn’t exactly something he wanted a witness for. He panicked momentarily, wondering if he could somehow play it off. In a sequence of decisions that he could not logically follow himself, he decided to jog towards the house. Perhaps he could convince the figure that he was just a random tourist interested in the view.

The house was about a half a mile away along the road which connected the path he had just taken to the parking lot at the other end of the trail. As he jogged along it, it dawned on him what a beautiful day it was. The sky was cloudless. Pink, yellow, and magenta wildflowers swayed in unison producing music to the eyes like an orchestra conducted by the light ocean breeze.

When he reached the house, he went straight behind it to the garden. He saw the figure from before and was about to call out to it, when he noticed that something was different. He stepped closer, and saw to his disbelief that it was not a living person. It was a scarecrow, with a red plaid shirt on and the sleeves were flopping around in the wind.

For a moment he stood there. No feelings. No words. Then, as he pieced together what had just happened, he started laughing. The kind of laughter that he used to laugh all the time with Rose by his side. She would be cracking up with him, and the two would be in a fit of laughter, in tears at times, a chain reaction caused by the smallest little joke. As he laughed, it was almost as if he felt her presence around him. In the moment, in the craziness of what just transpired.

He thought about Rose. Her beautiful mind, the one he spent many late nights conversing with. Her sophisticated beauty, one that signaled intelligence and compassion in every feature, from her deep, dark eyes to her smooth, strong shoulders. Her wonderful spirit, and how brave and joyful it had been, and how much it kept him at ease. With all these thoughts, he knew what she would have wanted for him to do. To keep living and loving, so that he could meet her where she undoubtedly was now.

“It’s not fair,” he said, in a voice inaudible, to any living being, “but I love you too, my dearest.”