“He would have been a great baseball player. Unless he got my genes. Then he would just be tall and a complete klutz.”
We both laughed, and then grew silent. The game had its charms, but it always left the player with more sorrow than before they started. I knew she was thinking about all we would miss doing together.
“Luke,” she said, as she sat up and turned toward me. Her blue eyes looked tired, worn out, but they still shone. And I thanked God for every second there was still life in them. Her eyes were what first drew me to her back in 10th grade, and I wasn’t sure how I would live without them. I felt like I had known them forever.
“I know this stuff isn’t easy to talk about,” she continued, “but I want you to be okay. More than anything. I’ll be in a better place. I won’t be hurting like I am now. But I don’t want you to hurt. This isn’t fair what’s happening to us. I always thought we would grow old together. But, God had other plans, and I want you to be okay. I don’t have much left to pray for except that.”
I really wanted to tell her to shut up. If it had been in our earlier years, I probably would have. We fought a lot in the beginning, but we were really young.
“God brought you into my life, and gave us a wonderful time together. He knew it would be short, so I think that’s probably why He let us start so young.”
“We were so foolish,” I said. “But, we were in love.”
She smiled. “You’ll need time to move on, Luke. Time to get past this. But I need you to promise me you will. I need you to promise me that you’ll find someone new to love. You have so much love to give, and it would be a shame if it went to waste.”
The last thing in the world I wanted to be thinking about was moving on, loving another person. Love was special, but love took a lot of work. We had married right out of high school, and we had struggled. We were immature, we didn’t have much money, and we argued more than I had ever argued with anyone else before. But, we made it work. She was my best friend and we made it work. I loved her, and I didn’t want to think about anything else. Fucking cancer.
She wasn’t done. Apparently, she had planned this speech for a little while.
“I’m jealous that someone will get to spend the time with you that was supposed to be mine. But then again, it obviously wasn’t supposed to be mine. Or this wouldn’t have happened.” She held her arms up when she said this, as if they signified that her entire being was now cancer. That probably wasn’t far from the truth.
The words were taking her energy away; I could feel her slowing down. But she wasn’t going to stop, not until she was done.
“I want you to have kids. I want you to have grandkids. I want you snuggled up on a couch with someone when you’re old and gray. I just wish it could have been me.”
“I don’t want it to be anyone else,” I stammered, the tears in my throat, controlling my voice. “I hate this. I don’t want to lose you.”
We sat there the rest of the night and cried together until we fell asleep in the recliner. The next two days we would wake up early, enjoy the sunrise, listen to the river and the wind in the trees. Her parents would spend time with us until the sun went down. They would leave, and Carrie and I would return to the recliner and talk and cry and laugh some more. The third morning I woke up to one of the most majestic sunrises that I had ever seen. I shook Carrie gently to wake her up, but she wouldn’t wake up.
I made it to the morning meeting in time, and I was able to share with the rest of the faculty what had happened overnight with Robin. Everyone joined together to pray for her and Walt, but everyone was encouraged that the doctors had been able to successfully perform the surgery. Most considered it miraculous that Walt had been able to get her to the hospital in time. I was inclined to agree.
I spent the majority of the morning balancing my thoughts of Robin and the ones I was having about April. I hadn’t seen her that morning yet, and I found it preoccupying wondering what color her dress was, or how she had fixed her hair that day.
I went down to the lunchroom and sat with my coworkers, but there wasn’t any sign of April. I assumed she had been next door—no student had complained that the classroom was teacher-less. She couldn’t have been having lunch with her husband, who was of course in Boston. I ate hurriedly and excused myself from the table, pretending like I had to get back and prepare for my next period.
I walked down the hallway toward our classrooms, and her light was still on. I got close to the door and peered through the glass. She was sitting at Robin’s desk, her head buried in her arms. At first I thought she might have been sleeping, but I could see her hands moving through her hair.