Ever

A story of Love lost, grief, and promise.

The house had been empty for quite a while after his wife died. Frederick Miles didn’t know how to deal with such a tragedy, so close to home. They had been married for almost thirty years, him being sixty two, and her being fifty nine, they had known each other so well it was almost as if they were a single person, which is how marriage is supposed to be. The death was an expected one, but no such thing is ever truly expected, the mind might know, but the heart will never be able to understand.

Once the time came, everyone knew, her family, brothers and sisters, his family and their children all downstairs, abnormally quiet. Fred sat in the old rocking chair next to their bed where his wife, Janice, slept. Her breathing had become faint as she slept, every once in a while inhaling large gulps of air as if trying to retain some normality, even if just enough to open her eyes. Fred just sat there, listening to the sounds of footsteps and suppressed sobs downstairs. He had cried enough in the past month, he felt there would be no more tears. Only the pains, that deep pain that wrenched his stomach and made his throat tighten. The hours passed on solidly, anticipating a part of him to leave the world.

            When it was time, Fred rose up from the rocking chair, his back aching, his buttocks sore from sitting on the wooden chair for so long, and from atop the stairs that led into the living room where all of his family was waiting and told them in an inarticulate throaty whisper that it was time. They all walked up the stairs in succession, one by one until they were all up in the tiny room. He had sat back down in the chair, he could feel his brother’s cold hands rest on the back of his neck, he wanted to shrug them away, but for the sake of his brother, who was sniffling uncontrollably, he let them stay. His wife was but a thin skeleton wrapped in loose wrinkled skin. There was a thin sheet covering her from the waist down, where the I.V’s pumped fluids into her through seemingly hundreds of intersecting tubes. A machine monitoring her heart rate stood on what looked like a metal coat rack. Plastic bags full of dark yellow liquid hung like old bladders beside the heart monitor. It beeped, endlessly, the sound penetrating his dreams when he had fallen asleep in the chair, purely out of exhaustion. Dreams of what he thought heaven would be like, his wife standing in a cold place dressed in white. There, even in heaven, the beeping continued. Forever it would, he thought. And still, even unto the end, the sound was the only sound in the overly crowded room.

            The time was close, he could feel it. Almost as if she was taking long, strained, breaths in preparatory for what was to come. He found himself wishing he could join her, leaving the world would be a decision he thought that he could live with. As the beeping slowed, painful silence in between each, like being stabbed, and waiting for the knife to once again come down and penetrate a different part of his body, a part that hadn’t been numbed from the severed nerves of the previous puncture. For what seemed to be hours, but were more likely only minutes the beeping continued with just intervals of two or three seconds. After a while though, those intervals turned into almost a minute as her heart began to slow, readying it to finally stop. Once the sound ended, and silence enveloped the world, they would know that she had passed.

            Fred could remember through all the years that had passed by. He still remembered the day they met, the time they made love and all the memories afterward of their children, growing up in their house in Wisconsin. Those memories flooded back, unrelenting, one after another until Fred could not take it anymore. As the beeping slowed to just one beep per minute he closed his eyes tight, once again feeling the sting in between them, trying to hold back the tears. There was a smell in the air that had not been there before, he realized. Haggard breathing from behind him, from people he finally understood he knew little compared to the love he felt for the woman that lay helplessly, almost being swallowed by the bed.

            It was time he felt, as now the seconds that passed by dragged along, wanting to linger, but lingering is not what time does. Time doesn’t stop, time never ends. It continues without looking back, or without looking forward, for time exists only in the moment, and in the moment now his wife, the woman he loved more than anything else in the world, seemed to shrink, to lessen somehow, her body being swallowed up by the bed even more than before.

            Then she opened her eyes, only faintly, Fred supposed that it was possible that no one else in the room was able to see it besides him. Yet she did, she was unable to move, her head lay on its side on the feather pillow, but her eyelids slid open maybe a fraction of an inch and looked into his eyes. They met on a warm spring night, the firelight flickering on her face from the bonfire, as she turned her head toward his direction and they saw each other from across the yard. She made her way, slowly, nervously toward him, trying not to make it seem like she was doing it intentionally. They introduced each other, and talked all night on the swing outside his mother’s house. He knew then that he would spend the rest of his life with her, and thought maybe she did to. And the years that crept by steadily, but all too fast, that same love remained, until the end.

            He now saw that girl, in those eyes, and he thought he could still see the firelight flickering in her dilated pupils. It only lasted for a second, but that is all it takes, for the moment is what matters. It is what you do with the moment that is the key. Then it was over, but the firelight remained. He closed his eyes and let the tears pour down his cheeks. It was over.

            His family had left after only a few short hours. Most of the time was spent downstairs; the doctors and nurses prepared everything in the room for the mortuary dispatch and legal crap that Fred could care less about. Everything that needed to be done was done. His wife wasn’t with him now, and that was all there was to it, but even that couldn’t still the rumbling beast inside his now hollow heart. He sat in the house alone. His brother and his brother’s wife had elected to stay with him for the weekend. Fred solemnly refused the offer, saying to them that they had children and a life. He wanted to tell them not to linger with death, the post mortem as well as the preparatory, but found it unsettling in the least and said nothing more, only sending them off with hugs and kisses. The truth was that he needed to be alone, for however long it took to heal, if healing was possible. He needed to think about things.

            Weeks swept by like the beating and receding of the waves in the ocean, unchanging, monotonous. Fred had made only two trips to the upstairs bedroom where his wife spent her last few hours in the span of three weeks. It still smelt of death, as if lingering on the walls and on the bed sheets no matter how often he washed them. Every time he stepped into the room it was like entering a portal of faded memories, they rushed him unexpectedly almost knocking him off of his feet.

            There was change also. A month later he found himself more apt to go outside. The sunlight blinded him, so until he got used to the blaring sun he would go out in the morning time before the first rays of morning light shone through the trees. When they did, he would hurry back inside and pull the shades closed. Most days were spent sleeping on his recliner, waking up in a daze of confusion, not knowing where or when he was. He looked around frightened, his eyes scanning the entirety of his living room, the pictures on the wall, the fireplace shelf decorated with numerous knickknacks collected over a span of thirty so years.

            Some nights he would wake up to tears streaming down his face, in a state of disoriented agony. He dreamt of his wife, laying in that bed upstairs, her eyes wide and unblinking, staring deep into his soul. Her eyes were no longer dilated, but he could see fire in them, dead, soulless fire. She would then begin to decay rapidly before him, her skin falling off in yellowing flakes, revealing the strings of meat below. Her eyes bulged as the muscles were eaten away by some unseen parasite and the white of bone shown through.

            The days following that dream he would not sleep, nor go outside.

            Sometimes his family would visit, in seemingly planned intervals. They were trying to keep him alive, because they must have seen his mental state begin to slip. God knows he saw it in himself. They would urge him to go with them to their home, insisting that the time away would help him recover. He would only sit in the rocking chair and stare straight at the fireplace and shake his head. There was no recovering he thought finally. How could one recover from almost a life of being with someone, and then the ties that felt so strong had suddenly been cut off so violently? They would know someday how this felt. They would not recover.

            It had been three months, give or take a day, when he finally mustered up the courage to go through her things upstairs. Fred felt it would be regressive, but everyone that he told suggested that the activity would help. So he did. That was the day, a cloud covered day in the middle of July that he found the letters. Hundreds upon hundreds of letters yellowed and bound by a brown twine. The faded envelope on top was addressed to Frederick M. Miles.

            The return address in the upper left hand corner of the envelope was only his wife’s name. For a moment he could only stand there, gripping the large stack of letters, his eyes fixated on his wife’s unmistakable handwriting. He steadied himself with the nearby recliner when he felt himself grow faint, and in one swift action sat down. The stack of papers nestled firmly between his legs. His oldest son, Benjamin had been helping him that day; he was busy sitting in the upstairs foyer surrounded by piles of boxes of tax related junk. The foyer was only around the corner, and his most cautious son caught the momentary silence and was up on his feet in mere seconds.

            “Dad, are you alright?” He asked, almost tripping over a large box entitled ‘misc’. Ben knelt in front of him, his eyes catching on the hefty mountain of papers his father had in his lap. Fred didn’t answer at first; he closed his eyes momentarily, his thumb caressing the aged parchment. The envelopes were not stamped, probably meaning that they were not intended on being seen by anyone else.

            “Yeah, I’m alright son. You get back to what you were doing, I just need some rest,” Fred lied, knowing how intelligent Benjamin had always been, that he wouldn’t be fooled easily. Ben said nothing and just sat there in front of his father for a little bit, their eyes locked on each other finally and Fred realized that Benjamin wouldn’t let down.

            “I loved your mother.” Simply said, large shining droplets began to form under his eyes.

            Fred choked back tears himself. “Yeah, I know dad, I loved her too,” he said, averting his stare to the stack of envelopes, “what are these?”

            That was the question Fred wished that his son would not have asked him. He knew perfectly well what the letters were; it was just a question of why they were here, and how. The air in the room grew tense as he found the right words. A large gust of wind blew the branches of the large oak beside the house and scratched the glass window like long wooden fingers. The sound hurt their ears. Ben began to get up to close the curtain, but his father grabbed his wrist, telling him wordlessly to stay put. He looked over to the window, the darkening cumulonimbus clouds had ominously hinted at rain, but had yet to become heavy enough to burst open. The darkness seemed to make the leaves and every other bit of foliage around seem brighter, a deeper green that resembled the depths of the South American rain forest and not the North Central Great Plains.

            The world was always filled with horror, one after the other like a relentless assault on the emotions. Fred often wondered how much a man can take before he is finally full, until he cannot take anymore, when the floodgates of madness come pouring through. He had finally stepped over that part, on his way to recovery, even giving the world another chance at redemption for his terrible loss.

            But now the letters from long ago had resurfaced and that madness tempted to creep back into that hollow place in Fred’s mind. He needed to tell his son what the letters meant, but not all at once. There were things in this world that Ben or any of his children could even possibly understand.

            He sat upright in the chair, “Son, these letters were written by your mother a long time ago, as kind of an experiment,” he stopped, letting the words sink in, “see, your mother and I loved each other so much and we often wondered how strong that love might be, as young people often do. It was tested a few times don’t get me wrong, but after a few years there was no questioning the love.”

            “It was shown when we had you Benjamin, incontestably the strongest message that our love could show. Years and years go by and we seem to have forgotten what it meant to question it. It just came so naturally you see. And then she began writing, for hours a day while you were in school, in the mornings she would get up before dawn and sit in the bay window downstairs, just jotting away in that old notebook of hers. Every once in a while she would make a copy of a letter on parchment paper like they used to do so long ago and let me read it. It was one of those things that became religious. If she wasn’t writing those letters she was sick or the kids were sick, I’m not kidding you.”

            Ben smiled, and Fred laughed an old worn out laugh. He had known his mother very well, and her boisterous spirit and work ethic had inspired all of them. Fred had known this also.

            He continued with the story, Ben now sitting atop one of the full boxes, listening intently. “We went on with our lives, I worked, and your mother wrote and raised the kids. Every day for almost three years the letters churned out one after the other. And I read them just as quickly as she could write them. And then she just stopped, as if a writer who cannot think of anything more to write about. Those things don’t happen though; people like your mother can invent anything to write about.”

            “What did she write about?” Ben asked.

            Fred looked down at the yellow envelopes and smiled, a glistening tear finally gleaming down his cheek.

            “Us,” he merely said.

            Ben was puzzled. He had never known his father to speak in riddles like this; he had always been a very straight forward man, a man of few words let alone a man of stories. Ben wondered if anyone else besides his mother had listened to him talk this much. It wasn’t a bad thing though, he liked this very much. He could finally see life again in his father’s eyes.

            Then his father spoke again, “Ben, I would like to read you these letters as well as your brother and sister, but I want you to know that after the first three years, her writing had become, well, strange.”

            “What do you mean by strange?” Ben wondered.

            Fred looked up and met his son’s eyes again, “Well, lets just say our love runs a little deeper than you or I would initially have thought. It’s something a person that is not dying would never be able to comprehend.”

            “I don’t understand.”

            “You don’t have to. Not now anyways, and you won’t until you read them for yourself, because after almost thirty years she did not write. But when she became sick, she had begun again. It was like before, only she spent more and more time near the bay window in the den. That was a silent time, a quiet time, and I became frustrated, as I believe anyone would do without knowing why she was spending so much time to herself. A year passed by, a thousand doctor visits later and almost a hundred letters had been written. I tried to get her to let me read a few, but she wouldn’t let me. Some of the doctors wrote her behavior as a result of her sickness progressing into a realm that was almost dementia. I refused to believe it, not at first and then later on began to believe it myself. That is why I had put your mother in the hospital for so long, because she was no longer herself.”

            Ben remembered that time, he had been angry at his father. Now he understood.

            “But I felt bad for doing so, and I myself spent most of my time in her room. In the last few months before she slipped away though, she returned. The light in her eyes came back, and I brought her home.”

            Fred stopped, holding back the tears that were sure to come. Finally when he had composed himself he continued, “She told me she was going to die soon. But that she had prepared for it, and that was why she was gone for so long. She told me that she had come back because we all needed to see her again before she left permanently. That was when she gave me the remaining letters. I was scared to open them, didn’t for a week, until I had finally mustered up the courage. Son, I’m going to read to you the first letter that I had read that day, the letter that I cannot till this day keep from my mind, the nightmares still haunt me, of her dying in my bed, and of where she is now.”

            “How would you know that?” Ben asked, shaking his head. Fred gazed absently out the window where outside it had grown considerably darker, wondering how late it had gotten.

            Fred took a deep breath, “Because, she told me.” Ben frowned, as if he had been tricked by an old fortune teller who foresaw something obvious. His father laughed, but there was no humor that came out of his mouth, only a dry ‘Hah’.

            “Here, read for yourself.” Fred handed him the top most letter in the stack. Hesitantly, Ben took it. The feel of the envelope was rough, brittle; he felt that if he squeezed too hard that the paper would crumble to dust in his fingers. He looked up at his father as his finger nevertheless worked to separate the sealed paper from the fold at the top. A second later he had the yellowing parchment, a single page in his hands. He looked down at the letter before him and was startled by what he saw.

            First, he had to check his watch, which as well as showing the time also showed the date. It was the fourteenth of February. He looked again at the top right hand corner of the letter. “When had mom passed away?” He asked the man that barely seemed to be his father at all that sat before him. There was a terrible grin on Fred’s face, one that contradicted his eyes which were cold and empty.

            He said nothing though. The date on the letter was handwritten in careful calligrapher’s handwriting, September, 4^th, 2008.  It was the day the family had gathered together in the house, the day that had been embedded in his head as the day that his mother had died.

            As if confirming what was running through his son’s mind Fred said, “She had written that letter a year before that day, exactly. That was the first of the last letters she wrote to me. At first when I read it I thought your mother’s awfully tired mind had written the wrong date, two thousand and seven and not two thousand and eight. But later when I asked her, about a week before she died, she told me she had meant it.”

            A million things were running through Benjamin’s mind. How could it be possible for his mother to have somehow foreseen her own death, especially writing about it exactly a year before it had occurred? Nothing about the letter he was holding in his hand made sense. He started to fold up the sheet, wanting to rip it up into a thousand pieces and burn all of those letters. It was not funny, not funny at all.

            “You must read it,” his father had said, reaching his hand out and touched him lightly below his chin. “It is very important, you see, the first hundreds of letters your mother wrote to me were about our life on this earth. But the stack that I hold in my hand now, is about her life after this life on earth, you see, she had been gifted a vision of what was going to happen. It must have been so much to comprehend that for so long she didn’t seem to be alive; a dead vessel is what I think I had said before.”

            The panic that had arisen in Ben had eventually receded and he looked down again at the paper, unfolded it and began to read slowly.

            Instead of there being long paragraphs, his mother had written in lines. One sentence for each line, none of the words making any sense at all.

            Dear,

                        I hold on, only for you.

                        But I see colors and light spectacular light.

                        Cold and no feeling only me.

                         There is no body, no form here, where I am I do not stand or sit or cower or rejoice.

                        I am only here.

                        I am only.

                        If fear existed here, maybe, I would be terrified to not know, but I do know.

                        Sight does not exist here, so I cannot explain in words what it looks like.

                        I love. Only.

                        And I remember you, and firelight. I don’t understand the total encompassing love.

                        That I feel now.

 

            That was it, the rest of the page was empty space, and at the bottom of the page was a single letter, E. Ben looked up to his father, questioningly.

            And then as if answering the question that Ben was about to ask, his father said, “TheE stands for Ever. It is explained in another letter, but instead of going through all of these, I would like for you to read this last one.”

            He retrieved another letter, much like the first one and handed it to Ben. The previous letter he folded back up and slid it carefully under the twine on top of the stack where it had been before. The tree branch smacked the window again as a gust of wind picked up outside, he could hear it sigh as it passed by the window pane which was now dotted with water droplets that speckled the glass as the minutes went by. Ben turned the folded paper in his hands, as if not wanting to read its contents. Part of him did not wish to read it, but part of him, perhaps a stronger part of him that longed to hear what his mother had seen. Roaring overhead interrupted the silence as the clouds finally gave way and began to rain, the sound was a million tiny drops of water falling on the rooftop shingles.

            Ben began to open the last letter, his father only a few feet away, eyeing him intently. The sound of the rain overhead was mixed with the crash of thunder, and as if on cue the rain poured harder. He didn’t realize his hands were shaking, whatever was in the letter almost had an electrifying quality, his father’s eyes almost bulging out of their sockets.

            He wanted to tell Fred to calm down. He would have if he could speak, he found no words to articulate, and they remained formless in his mind.  Whatever it was he was about to open had some profound effect on his nervous system, even though he had no idea what could possibly be in it. He unfolded the paper.

            Nothing.

            Ben shot up to meet his dad’s face, which hadn’t changed, not in surprise or agony, but in perfect contentment like he was prepared for the page that had caused so much nervous excitement to be completely blank.

            What should have been anger, what probably would have turned into anger under different circumstances resurfaced as curiosity. He looked back down at the blank page, turned the paper over compulsively to make sure that there hadn’t been anything on the other side. It was blank as well. After a few long seconds, he folded the paper back up and slid it carefully into its envelope and handed it back to his father. They sat in silence for a long while. To an outside observer they would have appeared to be reading each other’s minds, or caught in a ferocious blinking game, because their eyes did not depart from each other’s gaze.

            Then suddenly his father tucked the envelope beneath all of the others, wordlessly got up and returned them to the place in the closet where he had gotten them. He seemed to be in deep thought, considering things that were unbeknownst to Ben.

            It was time to leave, he realized, although hardly any of the boxes had been sorted like he had promised his father upon arrival earlier this morning. He thought it could wait; this very strange visit had outstayed its welcome and had become apparent. Getting up, Benjamin leaned over and gave his father a kiss on top of his balding head. As soon as Ben was outside, the rain had dissipated to a mere drizzle. He rain nonetheless to his care, pressing the little button on his key, the car beeped, signifying that it had been unlocked. Just before he ducked into the car, he looked up to the window of the room where his father still most likely sat in the same rocking chair just as he had when Ben left.

            On the way home, Benjamin, almost in a trancelike state, wondered why there had been a blank letter amidst all the other letters that his mother had dated post-mortem. His mind kept replaying his father’s last words; he had wanted Ben to read the letter. To read the letter, this should have suggested that there be something on the page. As soon as he got home he tried calling his father’s home phone, they hadn’t yet convinced him to purchase a cell phone to keep with him at all times, just for emergencies, but no one answered. Instead of hanging up, he let the phone ring.

            Finally Fred picked up. His voice was strained, as if he had been crying. Ben asked if he was okay, his father played his normal façade, a practiced poker face that every man seems to acquire after gaining an adequate amount of experience in this world. Ben played along, knowing that arguing anything would have the opposite affect and wouldn’t tell him anything. Shortly after hanging up the phone, he went upstairs where his wife was still asleep.

            That night he had the most unusual dream. It was just as if he had been over at his father’s that day, but no one was home. He traveled slowly up the stairs, turned the corner into the room where they had found the letters.

            Instead of his dad sitting in the rocking chair, he saw his mother, standing near the window. When he entered the room, she turned around. The fear that she would become some sort of monster vanished when he saw her calming features. Relief washed over him and he walked over to her, but before he could get a few feet closer she held her hand out, palm toward him, to tell him to stop. He didn’t think she could speak in this dream, like the blank letter, she had not yet been given words. She turned the palm out gesture into a pointing finger as if to accuse him of something, but swung her arm toward the closet where the letters had been kept. Hanging impossibly over the door was a calendar, with a red circle around one specific date. He noticed without actually seeing the date, like he had known all along that it was tomorrows date.

            Benjamin woke abruptly. It was still dark, but urgency had washed over him and he realized that the reason he wasn’t able to read anything on the letter the previous day was because the date on the letter was today’s date. He silently got dressed; quickly throwing on anything he could find laying around and grabbed the car keys. He tried to make the least possible noise he could.

            Yesterday’s rain had all but disappeared, its remnants remaining only on the sodden leaves on the ground near the trees and dark, damp places. As he pulled up to his father’s house, he realized that all the lights were on. He could almost feel movement, and although it was early, and still dark, the morning’s light had yet to show its illuminant face through the cluster of oaks to the east.

            Keys not yet sheathed on his key ring that he always kept clipped to his belt loop, he quickly made his way up the porch steps, not bothering to knock he turned the door handle, the door came open easily.

            He wasn’t kidding with his earlier observation. Every light, even the floor lamps and desk lamps shone even the most miniscule light. All the televisions were on, showing some infomercial with some guy with a beard showing off a shiny knife. As he mad his way up the stairs, just as he did in his dream he could hear his father moving back and forth in the room. Insanely he wondered if it was his father at all and not some restless ghost. He cautiously peeked around the corner. He didn’t want to give his dad a heart attack.

            “Dad,” he whispered. His father was busy moving boxes back and forth in an excited manner. It was much like he had been when he was showing him the letters.

            At the sound of his son’s voice he turned. There was a strange smile on his face when he said, “You figured it out didn’t you?” He winked and bent over to pick up a seemingly heavy box and sat it up on a stack of other seemingly heavy boxes. It was almost as if his father had been bestowed with some renewed energy that Ben had never seen before.

            Ben walked a little closer, picking up the folders that he had been sorting yesterday and sat them back inside the box they had come from.

            “I think so,” Ben said, whispering still, as if not wanting anyone to hear him, “I had a dream last night, of mom.”

            Frederick stopped what he was doing, and with the same smile on his face, said, “So did I.”

            Ben hadn’t realized before but his father was holding in his hand the letter that he had opened the previous day. He would have bet a million dollars that it was no longer blank. His father reached out, reminding Benjamin of his dream, with the envelope pinched in between his thumb and forefinger. Ben retrieved the letter and began to open it excitedly.

            There was only one paragraph, but it now made sense, unlike the first letter he had read.

            Dear,

                        Here now in the Ever, which is the place I am now, I can know what love truly is. All there are here are memories, and I can finally describe to you because I have found my sight. Fred, my love, I am here, reliving my life with you, at the bonfire, that night that we talked so tirelessly. There is nothing but the total encompassing love that is ever so infinite. This is where I am, because to me, heaven, well, heaven was all the happy memories and contentment with my life. I love you ever so much, and long for your presence here. Remember, Ever is where I am. Ever is the moment, the in-between, neither future nor past, but present. I love you, forever and always.

                      Your Jan.

            All Ben could do was stand there, he could say nothing, and the letter had fallen out of his hands, fluttering to the ground. He looked up at his father, who smiled back at him tearfully. He understood now, why the letter had been blank. Until we learn through experience of this life, to love, is the key to understanding the life beyond it.

            Fred and his son both looked out through the window, where the first rays of light shone through the trees and softened the air around them. There was nothing to be said, because the most important things are those that do not need to be said, that remain quiet, as quiet as the sunrise, as quiet as love itself.