Josie

Clothes. Books. Plates. That weird koala trinket Susie had gotten me. I have no idea how to make it all fit.

I’d gotten the biggest suitcase I could find. Erin had told me with a laugh that she didn’t think it would fit in the boot of the car. It was a ghostly blue, creased and worn at the edges. Margaret’s neighbour was getting rid of it and when news had gotten around at the library that I was retiring and moving, she’d salvaged it for me.

I stood holding a blanket, colander and rosary. There was too much. I slumped, defeated, onto the sofa. I couldn’t do it. Everything felt suddenly intrinsic to my sense of self. I’d wrapped a small, sickly Erin in this blanket right here on the sofa. The colander was the same, well-loved one we’d used when I taught her how to cook. We’d spent most of her latter teenage years practicing various pasta dishes together, with lots of trial and error, as she prepared to go to University across the country. Susie had picked the rosary up for me in Spain, on one of her many escapades.

I turned it over in my hand and let each bead slowly tangle through my fingers. It was simple and wooden, some beads lined with cracks and fractures, knotted together on a small bit of twine. My faith had a rocky stability to it throughout my life. I carried the hymns from childhood, engrained in my soul. The words lived in me as a constant companion, sung not only on a Sunday but also in the kitchen by my mother and by her mother. Around the table, from morning to night those words were sung. I’d had seasons of doubt, as my pastor had assured me every good Christian did. There were times I would look to the sky and see the face of God etched into the stars. Other times I stared into the void, completely lost and alone.

The rosary had been a gift in one such time. Susie had been a friend from school and, although her faith was in things other than God, there was a stillness when we spoke of it. The rosary had arrived in an envelope with a postcard.

Josie. Hold this, and hold God.

That was all that had been written on the postcard. She’d sent a polaroid too, of her and her tour guide stood in front of a barely standing chapel, its own rubble swamping its feet. She’d later told me I’d have loved it there, in that quiet corner of Spain. The trees rolled down into the valley in the deepest greens. The evening sun had graced the dusty white of the chapel with a golden halo. “And oh, Josie, the way the sun hit your face as you left the quietness of that place. It was like this warmth just spread and it was all I could do but stand there and smile the deepest smile I’ve ever had.” I could feel everything Susie ever described to me, and would sit back and let it wash over me, eyes shut feeling that place. It was as if I transcended space and time and was stood in that very spot myself, looking out from the chapel. I could live in the words she spoke for all eternity.

Susie and I never spoke about the rosary. But I did hold it. And I did hold God.

See, the rocky steadiness of my faith came like the seasons, always moving from one to the other. At times the hymns flowed through my veins like fire. At others, the prayers I spoke fell on even my own deaf ears. I had wept with insurmountable joy and raged like the wildest ocean. I’d believed every breath was a whisper of the glory of the holy names of God, and was also a testimony of the nothingness beyond. But just as spring always comes, so did I always come to find God.

I’d held the rosary in the middle of the night praying for my daughter to make it home safely. I’d sang through it with joy at another surgery gone well. I’d thrown it across Susie’s hospital room, cracking several of the beads as she slipped from the world in the quietest moment of her existence.

The truth was, I didn’t know how to do any of this. Not without Susie. She’d moved in not long after my divorce and helped me get a job with her friend Margaret at the library. Susie helped me with Erin, but more than that she filled the darkness I’d felt inside me with love and light. She’d made this house a home for all of us. Leaving it felt like leaving another part of her.

Erin had spoken to me a few months ago about a small retirement village. My health was beginning to fail and with Erin across the country and Susie now gone, she was concerned about me living so isolated. I’d reluctantly agreed and it slowly became clearer to me that I would be leaving almost everything behind. I deteriorated more rapidly than anticipated, and suddenly retired from the library, and it was then decided I would move into 24/7 cared accommodation. It became apparent that this was a hospital dressed as a home.

I’d resigned myself to my fate. The home allowed one suitcase per resident due to lack of room space, yet even my fading suitcase, with all its pockets and emptiness, was not big enough to fit my life into. I’d imagined sewing several cases together and wheeling it in to create the room I needed. How could it hold all my dreams, both realised and unrealised? How could it hold the infinite Susie I needed to take with me? The infinite Erin? The infinite me?

I let out a sigh, picking up a box near my feet. Opening it, I discovered my old paint set. I allowed my weathered hands to run over the bristles of the brushes and feel the weight of it again. My eyes traced the room, landing on my art that Susie had hung around. She’d always been my biggest fan. A lot of my paintings had been inspired by stories she’d told me about her travels. The paintings had changed with every season of life. Colours evolved into others, landscapes morphed into people she met and cities grew further from home. Maybe it was time for the season to change again.

Scripture talks about seasons, with a season for everything. A time for every activity under heaven it says. A time to embrace, and a time to turn away. Maybe it was time for me to embrace the new season and turn away from the old. A time to turn away from all this.

I gathered my paints in the old room where I’d painted a thousand times before. My old apron sat, waiting for my arrival. I pulled it on and began to spread colours across the page. Clothes. Books. Plates. That weird koala trinket Susie had gotten me.

When Erin arrived a week later to take me to my new home, she found a house untouched, stuck in time, and a suitcase filled with paintings full of life.