And I am.
Four months later
PART FOUR
Now & Then
FORTY
The day of the funeral is sunny and warm. One of the first nice days of spring. The snow is gone; the air smells like grass and flowers. The ocean sparkles with light.
We gather at the beach to remember him. Angie, of course. Helen. Fatima and José. Friends of Finn’s from graduate school. Finn’s mother, who I had the fortune of meeting during his last months alive—estrangement makes no sense at the end, I guess. Finn was loved, this much is clear. But there are other people here, people I didn’t expect. People who came for me. Mrs. Lewis. Gertie. The Almeidas and some of the other shop owners from Main Street. A lot can change in a few months.
Everything, really.
We stand there on the rocks as the sun rises in the sky. We laugh and we cry, and after everyone has said what they need to say, Angie, Finn’s mother, and I spread Finn’s ashes into the sea.
When it is my turn to let Finn go, I stare out onto the water for a while. And I talk to him. I don’t care if I seem crazy or strange. Finn is with me still, and I don’t need to see him to know this, to take that leap of faith. I feel it in my heart and soul and mind and all throughout my body. I still don’t know what I believe, exactly, with regard to miracles and gods, but I know that I believe in this world and the people in it. I believe that love and loving others is the most important part, the one command we must obey if we are going to think in those terms. I know that the people here on this beautiful morning have taught me this. Flesh-and-blood people who are ready with a hand, a hug, a soothing touch, to reassure me that this much is real. Finn, most of all, taught me this. How to love and how to give myself over to a life of love. I will be forever grateful for this lesson.
“I love you, Finn,” I say out loud. “Thank you for every minute.” I let the last of Finn’s ashes be taken by the breeze, and I watch as they float out toward the sea.
Angie glances at me as we walk toward the cars parked on the side of the road. “I’ve never known anyone like Finn,” she says, with a sad smile. “He was exceptional. So smart.”
I smile a little. “I know.”
We grow silent. Our arms brush as we walk. My days of no touching are over. I welcome the reassurance of so much humanity.
Something catches my eye.
At first I think I am seeing things.
Then I realize that no, it’s definitely her. My mother came to the funeral. Her back is to me and she is about to vanish around the curve of the road. But before she turns I catch her gaze.
Tears sting my eyes. I’ve spent a lot of angry tears because of my mother, but these are strangely hopeful. In her expression I see something I’ve longed to see but never have. Or maybe I’ve never let myself. There is an understanding there on her face that can only come from having known the pain of grief herself. If there is anything my mother knows, it is loss.
Maybe there is hope for my mother and me.
“Bye, Marlena,” Angie says when she reaches the car. “Don’t be a stranger.”
I nod. Then watch as she drives away.
The end came fast for Finn, but it was also slow.
It’s difficult to explain what it’s like, to be with someone so constantly during the last days of their life, until they take their last breath, especially when that person is someone you love. I used to think that describing my visions was hard, talking about what it was like to heal, but even that doesn’t compare. How could mere words capture the extraordinary beauty that is, was, the life of Finn? His last days? The two of us together?
We moved into my grandparents’ house.
The two of us worked fixing it up. We dusted and polished my grandmother’s things, cleaned the kitchen, the shelves, the workshop where my grandfather had his carpentry business in the basement, still full of his old tools. We found his sign for it there, the letters hand stenciled with a pencil, his name Manuel Oliveira painted tall and proud at the top, the word CARPENTRY in all caps underneath it. Finn set the sign on one of the shelves in the living room.
All during that winter, we lit fires in the fireplace, and we cooked dinner as the snow fell during a blizzard. He told me about his life growing up in Oregon, how he discovered his love of the brain and decided to become a scientist. I told Finn about my mother’s stories of my grandparents, about growing up on São Miguel in the middle of the Atlantic, and then immigrating to America, and trying to make a life here.
“I wish I could get to know your mother,” Finn said once.
“I wish I could get to know yours,” I said to him back.
Finn looked away. He and I were so similar in so many ways. Even the painful ones.
We had visitors. Fatima and José. Helen and Sonia. Angie, of course. One afternoon, José came over with something I asked him to retrieve from my mother’s house. It took some effort to get it through the door.
“Okay, Marlenita.” José offered me a quick kiss on the cheek and gave a wave to Finn. “I hope I got the right one,” he called out as he shut the door behind him.
I took the thin rectangular package and brought it to the couch where Finn was sitting. “I made this for you. Because of us,” I told him.
Finn peeled back the brown paper wrapping.
“Marlena,” he breathed. “What is this?”
The two of us held it there, looking at it together. Thick swirls of red and pink and white danced across the canvas, abstract peonies bursting in their bright and dizzy glory.
I got up and propped the painting against the wall. “You know how I’ve always painted my visions.” I let my eyes settle on his. “I painted this because of us. It’s my vision of loving you, of being with you, of us together.”
“It’s beautiful,” Finn said.
That night, he took the tools from my grandfather’s workshop and hung the painting on the wall of the living room so we would always see it.
It’s still hanging there today.
I live alone now, in my grandparents’ house. When the weather is warm I sit on the porch swing that Finn fixed for me. Remembering him, and us together.
“We make an ironic pair,” I told him once.
It was mid-February, just after Valentine’s Day. I’d filled the cottage walls with paper collage hearts. I’d never had a valentine before.
“How so?” he asked me.
“I’m a washed-up healer dating a dying boy.” I tried for a laugh. It came out a sob.
Finn didn’t laugh either. “Don’t think like that.”
“But it’s true,” I said, then changed the subject.
I learned a lot of things about Finn while we lived together. Like the fact that when Finn was still alive, he slept like the dead. Not funny, I know, but also true. Every night we spent in this house, I would wait for Finn to fall asleep. Then, quietly and ever so slowly, I would place my hand on his chest, right over the smooth skin that covered his ribs, slightly to the right, until I felt the pulse of his heart underneath my palm.