Closure

It had been twenty-four years since she’d last seen it, but the place looked exactly the same. The blue shiplapped walls with the white trim and window frames were clean and bright as ever entering through the front door of Jane’s grandmother’s house. The kitchen was as old-fashioned as ever with the floral wall paper and gingam curtains, and still not a bit back in style. 

Everything about Grandma Alice’s house pulled Jane in with a comforting feeling. The smell of her grandmother was as palpable inside the house as if the old woman herself had pulled her into an embrace. The atmosphere brought memories that were so sweet and joyful but all with an aftertaste of melancholia for the fact that they were so long gone now. Inside that big, warm, southern, old style, blue and white house that once was the center of all socialization on their block, Jane could now realize that she had no idea how sweet those times were when she was in them.

But Jane didn’t linger very long in the entryway or the kitchen. She forwent a detour through the bedrooms in pursuit of the main attraction of the house instead: the attic. She didn’t know what she might find, because she wasn’t looking for anything in particular. But she knew that what was most worth finding in that house would be found in the attic. And with the same enthusiasm she had as a kid fighting for the last burger on the barbecue before it was snubbed by one of her siblings or cousins, she diligently searched the boxes in the attic for anything she might regret missing should it fall in the possession of one of her other family members. 

It was a brief search for it wasn’t long until Jane came across a familiar heirloom. It was a locket, and it intrigued her enough to open it. When she did, Jane couldn’t help but emit a little gasp. Once she saw the pictures inside she realized why the locket looked so familiar, though it had not belonged to Jane’s grandmother, nor even to Jane herself. 

The locket had a close up picture of Jane’s much younger face on one side, and a picture of Jane with the original owner of the locket on the other. Tony. Tony had carried this locket with him around his neck 15 years ago during the Vietnam war. The images of Jane and of him and Jane herself together snug inside the locket had once brought him solace camped out in Vietnam. Fighting for his life so far away from home, he kept the reminder of what awaited him on the other side of the war pressed against his chest.

When Jane descended from the attic with a bankers box of her most cherished items from her grandmother’s home and the locket weighing down her jacket pocket, she tried to conceal the shock she carried from the locket’s discovery. Though she was not necessarily successful in disguising her emotions, her children were none the wiser and her husband did not suspect that her vulnerability in that moment was the result of anything other than the effect of facing the sentimentality of her grandmother’s home and possessions. 

The family gathered back into the car and headed back to the hotel, with the book on tape they had started on the road trip back to Jane’s hometown filling the tender silence. Tomorrow would be the funeral and beyond Jane’s sensitivity there was an irritation - an irritation towards Tony. For she did not expect that over the weekend that she was meant to be mourning her grandmother she would have to be burdened with the memory of a lost and - until recently - successfully forgotten love.

What Jane first remembered about Tony after all of those years was the kindness behind his eyes. What made her fall in love with him back in high school was the child-like glint they gave off in the sea of anxious, overly macho pairs under dark, furrowed brows. His Boston accent was so thick it endeared her from the first moment they spoke, and as their relationship grew they would joke about their worries of what their future children might come out sounding like between his heavy Boston dialect and her sweet southern drawl.

That’s the way their relationship was, eyes set on each other from the beginning with no doubt of the future. The way Jane remembered Tony now was mostly as a spirit, as a presence in her life, as a feeling associated with her last days as a teen. But she remembered specific moments too. Like when he picked her up for the prom wearing a turtleneck under a blazer instead of a proper collared shirt and tie. How he managed to win over her skeptical father despite his lack of finesse with first impressions. She remembered the songs that played on the radio back then when she used to lay her head on Tony’s lap, parked in the back lot of the school looking over the baseball field as the sun set. She remembered the butterflies in her stomach when she first heard her sister say, someone named Tony is on the line for you, after answering the kitchen phone.

Yet laying next to her own husband in bed, all Jane could think about their times together now was how Dave always got upset when he couldn’t find parking and never took the responsibility upon himself to leave a few minutes early to avoid this stress. Dave’s eyes weren’t dark, but they were glint-less, and hidden under two bushy eyebrows that knitted together so frequently the center of his forehead was permanently marked by two parallel lines. Not to mention the deep crease across the bridge of his nose from when he frequently scrunched up his face with irritation. Dave was always too tired to do what Jane wanted and always in need of Jane to do something for him. And Jane couldn’t help but wonder as she and Dave read quietly on their opposite sides of the bed, what her children might sound like if they did have a tinge of a Boston accent.

The service was beautiful and cathartic because it truly reflected the light Grandma Alice brought into this world through the impressions she made on everyone in her life. The speeches did a fantastic job of celebrating her life, and to be in the presence of so many people suffering the same loss with full permission to release their pain openly did the family well. But though Jane could recognize the beauty of the service it did not provide her with the same amount of closure it did to some of her other family members.

“Dave?” Jane had been looking for a way to ask this question to her husband throughout the entire silent drive from the church back to Grandma Alice’s house where there was to be a small reception.

“Yes hun?” Dave prompted. 

“Do you think the events of someone’s life can really change a person? Or if they go through something that seems to change them, do you think they still ultimately will go back to who they were? Like they have a true self they can never betray for too long?”

The question, which otherwise would be quite off-putting to Dave, was excused due to the existential tone of the day. Nevertheless, Dave didn’t like questions he did not have sure answers to, and with as much patience as he could muster in this delicate time, he delivered his response.

“I don’t know hun, I guess all you can do is ask yourself if you think you have a true self you can’t betray.”

“I’ve never really been through anything too traumatic.”

“Well I don’t know.”

Jane didn’t expect him to, but she sure did wish she could know somehow.

When Tony came back from the war the glint didn’t leave his eyes altogether, but there were days Jane could barely recognize him. That car of his had once been a haven for sweet memories of young love, parked out behind the baseball field with the radio playing. But when he came back those memories became taken over by incident after incident of Tony pulling over with Jane in the passengers seat, getting out of the car just to scream. Or else moments of Tony breaking down, shaking and in tears until the windows fogged up while Jane tried her best to console him while they were parked on the side of the road.

Months went by and even as Tony got further away from the events of the war, it still didn’t feel like he had made it back home. Jane didn’t hear him tell her he loved her anymore, and sadly that meant that Tony didn’t get to hear it from her anymore either. It was after a long hard year of this that Jane came to decide that if she wanted to keep a special place in her heart for Tony at all, she couldn’t let the bad times outweigh the good times. She gave him back the mix tapes and his old T-shirts he had given her, and he returned the locket. It wasn’t long after that that Jane met Dave; and now Jane couldn’t say where exactly Tony had ended up.

“How are you feeling?” Dave asked Jane once the car had been packed back up and they were ready to head back home.

“Guilty,” Jane admitted, though she was sure that the answer would confuse Dave.

“I know what you mean,” was Dave’s surprising response. “Even though it was her time to go it’s inevitable that you would play over and over in your head everything you might have done wrong or could have done better now that you don’t have anymore time with her. It’s only natural.”

“Exactly,” Jane affirmed, though she couldn’t divulge exactly what else was was adding to her guilt.

“It was her time,” Dave assured her. “And I know you Jane, you did your best. You taught me first hand how much love isn’t just a feeling, but an action too. You loved Grandma Alice as actively as the kids fight over their toy tiara.”

Jane was taken aback by Dave’s thoughtfulness and insight, and she found this comfort almost nurtured her back to herself again. Because he was right, and that’s just how she had always loved Dave too - purposefully, and with all her heart. When you’re young you think love is just a given, and when you lose the feeling you’ll do anything not to have the next one taken away. Jane had been too young to know that kind of love when she knew Tony. But without Tony she could’ve never learned to love Dave. She decided right then, with the locket in her pocket, her husband in the driver’s seat and her two grumpy children in the back, that love lost was love had, and love had was loved learned. She had loved Tony in the time that she had to love him, she had loved Grandma Alice in the time she had to love her. And that was all that mattered.