One Baby Step at a Time

The fire burned steadily, the teapot was in its cozy, Alexa was playing Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue, and the novel Chloe had been wading her way through lay open on the table behind her.

She stood in front of the French doors leading out to the terrace and watched the rain – the steadily falling rain. It formed a grey curtain that muted everything else in sight. The droning sound the rain made was peaceful, except for interruptions when a big wind blew down from the hills with a fierceness that was, at the very least, unsettling. Twenty-four hours of relative peace, she thought, interspersed with moments of stark terror.

What on earth was she doing here, all alone? "I will be gone for a week," her sister-in-law Jeanne said. "Come and stay in my guest house. You'll have complete privacy– time to think, time to rest, time to grieve, time to plan. You need to get away from everything familiar even to consider what comes next."

It made sense. Chloe couldn't argue with a bit of it. Her husband Brad, who was also Jeanne's brother, had been killed a week before in a skiing accident. It was sudden, it was brutal, and it was heartbreaking for both women. Jeanne knew she needed to go home, to be with her parents to grieve and heal with them, and she didn't want to go without making sure she had done everything she could for Chloe. Brad would have wanted her to do that, for sure.

So she had her guest house thoroughly cleaned, filled the refrigerator and cupboards with food, gathered firewood, placed fresh flowers and clean linens where needed, put the key under the mat, and then boarded a plane for California.

Chloe arrived at Jeanne's guest house just a few hours after Jeanne departed, in the pouring rain. She was cold and soaked, just getting herself and her luggage from the car to the house, so she took a hot shower and sank into the soft bed, where she slept for 4 hours. It was the first sleep she had since she got the call telling her of Brad's accident.

Since then, she'd wandered, tried to settle, then wandered some more. The storm outside showed no sign of breaking, and neither did her internal storms.

She asked Alexa to switch to Abba. "I Have a Dream," popped on. But did she have a dream anymore? She and Brad had been full of dreams, but what was there to dream about now? She felt tears start to form behind her eyes again. "Alexa, stop," she said and let the sadness overtake her.

Sometimes her tears were hot and angry. Other times they were soft and deeply, deeply sad. Today they just flowed with no singular thought behind them. Still, she'd have to wait for them to stop of their own accord. Chloe had no control over them.

She had no control over anything. A week ago - God, had it only been a week – she had been sitting at her desk planning the contents for the fall catalog for the high-end dress shop where she worked. When the phone rang, she thought it would be her buyer confirming that she could safely include the line of plaid wool skirts that promised to be the hottest new trend this year.

Instead, it was a police officer from Stowe, Vermont, telling her that Brad had veered off course at high-speed skiing down the mountain and ran head-on into a tree. He was gone - just gone.

The investigations were ongoing, and the police were holding his body until they were through – but for Chloe, her marriage, her life as she had known it was already through. Very thorough.

Her thoughts and her tears were interrupted by the sound of high winds, building toward a crescendo. She knew what was coming next – it had happened twice in the short time she'd been there. She pulled the shutters closed over the French doors and moved to the middle of the room as the storm thundered around her. She could relate to that storm, its fierceness, its bangs and bams and cracks, and its fury. And to match it, she opened her mouth and let out the blood-curdling scream she'd been suppressing for days. She screamed, and screamed and screamed until she was exhausted, and then she closed her eyes – willing the wind to take her away with it when it moved on. When the rant ended, she went into her bedroom and fell asleep again in spite of the noisy storm– with the plea "just take it all away" repeating over and over again in her mind and heart.'

Nine hours later, she came abruptly awake. She saw the numbers on the clock, but the time had no particular meaning for her. She didn't seem to know or care if it was day or night.  If I could just think clearly, she thought, I'd know what to do next. If I could just wash this fog away . . ."

 She got out of bed very slowly, moving like an old woman. She literally shuffled into the living room and again stood by the French doors, looking out at the pouring rain. The heavy winds had subsided. The trees were quiet again, sodden with days of rain. Water splashed high on the patio bricks, almost like it was dancing. Without any apparent warning, she pushed the doors open and walked out into the downpour.

The heavy raindrops pelted her skin, soaked her clothes, and turned her curls into long soggy ropes, but she just stood there. It feels like I think going through a car wash might feel; Chloe closed her eyes and just let the rain wash over her for quite a long time.

And then, when she opened her eyes, there they were. She closed her eyes again, thinking she was imagining things, but when she opened them again, they still stood there, shrouded in sheets of rain, smiling at her.

There was a man and a woman, tall, and thin, and literally translucent.  They had watery bodies and indistinct features. Maybe I'm still asleep, she thought, but her wet hair hung heavy, and her chilled skin felt very real.

"Are you real?" she asked. The male figure answered. "More real than you know, but we are . . . different. I’m called Kindness, my friend here is Compassion. Brad sent us."

"Brad sent you?"

"Yes, he very much wants you to know that he's sorry he died. He didn't want to die but, things happen.

"That’s exactly what he used to say, all the time,” she admitted to herself. “’Things happen” was Brad’s explanation for a lot of things. 

“Did he ask you to tell me anything else?”

“He did,” Compassion spoke. “He asked me to tell you that you will be just fine, in fact better than fine and much sooner than you think. But to get back to being happy again, you will need to take baby steps, one-step-at-a-time.”

Chloe recognized those words, too. Brad was a ski instructor, and he told his students that skiing looked from a distance like the skiers were sailing on a long, smooth trek down the mountain. Instead, he said, there were many obstacles on that trek, and learning to navigate them could only be achieved by taking baby steps, one-step-at-time.

Even as she digested their message, the two watery figures faded away. There were no images in the rain, just more rain and more rain and more rain and more rain.

Chloe stripped her wet clothes off and left them on the patio. Then she headed for another hot shower, shampooed her hair, and wrapped herself in a warm, terry robe.

And she was starving. For the first time in a week, she wanted food, and she didn’t intend to take the time to cook it. Opening the refrigerator, she drew out what looked like a custard pie. She reached in the silverware drawer for a knife, changed her mind, and chose a fork instead. She was sitting at the counter in seconds, eating the pie right out of the pie plate.

She tidied up a bit, brought her wet clothes in from outside and put them in the dryer and then turning on the TV, she settled into binge-watch “The Crown” on Netflix. She needed to put the image of Kindness and Compassion’s visit entirely out of her mind - because, of course, it never happened.

By the end of the third season of the crown (about 30 weekly episodes), she had fallen back to sleep on the couch. She was restless during the rest of the night, but she didn’t have the ambition to move. When she finally did come awake, dawn had broken, and the rain had stopped.

Baby steps – one step at a time. She wanted to take one baby step at a time. How about that? She actually wanted to do something.

She moved slowly. She made coffee and filled a thermos to go. She stripped the bed and put the sheets and all the towels she had used in the washer. She packed. She switched the clothes to the dryer.

On her laptop, she sent an e-mail to Jeanne, telling her she was leaving on Saturday instead of Monday, and thanked her for her three-day stay. She e-mailed her boss to tell him she would be back to work on Monday.

Brad’s boss had offered her the use of Brad’s office and his secretary Geri to deal with the funeral details, canceling charge cards, ordering death certificates and all those nasty little chores relating to dying. She e-mailed Geri and asked her to check with the police department investigating Brad’s death to see if they yet knew when his body would be released.

For the first time, she realized how kind people had been to her. Jeanne, of course, Brad’s boss, and his two best friends who had been on the ski trip with him. They told her they would come when she was ready and deal with Brad’s personal things – clothes, sports equipment, etc, making sure they were all distributed responsibly and kindly.

Enough baby steps for today, Chloe. Just put your suitcases in the car, lock up the house and go.

The sun was shining on the walkway that led from the front door to the car. Jeanne was a tiny little lady, so she had designed the pattern of the flagstones so that they offered easy steps – no wide leg stretches – and each stone was infused with a metallic aggregate that made it sparkle in the bright sunlight.

Taking the first step onto the path, Chloe thought, I can do this. I will do this, one baby step at a time, and then with firm intention, she walked briskly away in the direction of her new life.