I know she is right. Then in a softer tone, I whisper, “I’m better than that, Sharon. I’m simply better.”
“Yes, you are. We both are.”
“Yeah.” I’m worn out… tired of these memories that beat me down. “It hurt too much to hate him, Sharon. I had to do something. I was going crazy. It was while I lived in Japan that I was at my lowest. My insides were tearing me up. All those horrible memories haunted me. I almost couldn’t go on; I got so depressed. Then… I can’t explain it, but finally something lifted. The pain, that suffocating burden broke… kinda like a fever would… and my poetry came back to me again.”
“Well, they say that writing helps the healing process, and poetry is even better. You can’t blame yourself, Dawn. You reacted like any abused person would.”
“Yeah. I know. Ha! Well, if life is poetry, then this is my poem.” I laugh at the irony because I know my poems are scary, not joy-filled lyrics of love and light.
We are silent then. The bustling of the restaurant’s lunch crowd glides on around us, customers being seated, glasses clinking. I focus on John again, the time that has gone by since we last saw each other. I think about the conflict of my emotions toward John—loving him, hating him. The realization that now I will really never see him again hits me, and then I remember… the bus stop a few days ago…
Compassion fills me like a warm breeze as I recall the robin’s-egg blue of the sky that stands out in contrast to the large wooden crucifix of Saint Anthony’s on Third Street. I step off of the bus at my regular stop the morning of March 13, 1988. The sun is bright with barely a cloud for shade. Without warning, I hear the calling of my name, clear and sharp: “Dawn.”
I whip around to look toward the church—up in the direction of the voice. It is John’s voice… and distinctly he calls my name again. In the sky, directly above where I am waiting and staring, frozen to the sidewalk, is only the crucifix jutting up from the pointed steeple of the church. He’s not alive anymore, I whisper to myself. He is not on this earth. A flock of small sparrows darts up and to the right, and as an airplane’s thin streak of white smoke passes by, John’s voice cries out in a tone that can only be the pouring out of someone’s last words to earth: “Forgive me?”
John?
“Dawn. “The vibration of my name triggers every cell’s full attention. “Forgive me, Dawn? I’m sorry.”
The words catch in my heart. A sudden memory of the affection I felt between us envelops me, and I am overcome with the deepest sadness.
“I’m sorry,” his voice pleads again. Then—with those words—it is as if a veil of confusion lifts from me and I understand. I recognize the heaviness, the viselike pressure of pain and sorrow he carried these last several years. His suffering seems to sear through me, and I take on his identity for that moment, a vision of crippling remorse that tears at his soul and leaves him paralyzed with overwhelming helplessness. I see that his life had been consumed by fear, a tireless weight that finally drowned him… and now in death his bondage is ended and he is ready to move on.
Whether this is an illusion or real, to me there is no question what my response will be. No throat-clutching anger or old pain to halt me… Yes, John. I forgive you…
As suddenly as it appeared, the presence is gone.
Blares and whirrs of the nearby traffic on Third Street bring me back into the moment, and numbly I continue to my apartment in a daze about what has just happened.
At the door to greet me, my roommate has the Los Angeles Times in hand. “I’m sorry,” he tells me, pointing to the headlines. I know what he is about to say. “John passed away this morning.”
“I know,” I tell him, and he hugs me as I melt into his body and cry.
Sharon is stirring her tea compulsively after the long bout of silence between us. Awkward about wanting to share my experience, I decide to be brief. “He came to me at my bus stop on the day that he died, Sharon. Well… it was his voice, really.” I blush a little and continue. “He asked me to forgive him. And, well… I said yes.”
Sharon stops clanking her tea glass, and her face drains ghostly white. “He came to me too,” she says grimly. “But not like that!” She looks appalled.
“He did?”
Scooting straight up in her seat, she flattens her napkin tightly on her lap. “I couldn’t sleep…,” she begins. “You remember how solidly I usually sleep?”
“Uh-huh.” I nod.
“Well, that night was different. I hadn’t thought of him for a while, not other than briefly, but for some reason that night I couldn’t get him out of my head. I knew then it was going to be a rough night. I finally started to fall asleep around midnight when I distinctly heard screaming… an agonizing, pitiful scream. I sat bolt upright, scared to death! The screaming came from the closet and got closer… the most god-awful noise you’d ever want to hear. It was John. He came wailing from out of the closet, past the foot of the bed, toward the door to the hallway. There… was another door there instead. Not the bedroom door, but a large, round, vaultlike door.” She wipes the accumulating beads of sweat from her brow. “Wailing piteously, John was pulled through this door. And then it slammed shut.”
My heart is pounding. “Did he say anything to you?” I ask, horrified.
“Nope. Didn’t look at me either. Just crossed through the room… screaming. I’ll never forget that sound as long as I live.” She looks weary. “When I checked the clock… it was exactly one in the morning. Later, when I read the paper, I found out that was the exact time he died.”
“My God, Sharon!”
“I know. Well, there is no doubt to me where he is now. Hell. He made his bed, if you ask me…”
I swallow a gulp of air hard, picturing her sinister bedroom vision, and I shudder. How horrible… how sad. Can something like that be possible? Sitting still for a few moments, I shake the disturbing images off my psyche. John’s voice and presence were too real to me, too strong and sudden; I cannot deny it. What Sharon saw was her vision, not mine… and I’m glad. I don’t want to be caged by my hatred anymore. It’s sad that she is so inflexible and hard still. And John… he could have been so much more, I think. But instead… It’s just a pity.
“Well, enough about him,” Sharon interrupts, intentionally changing the somber mood. “That’s not all I came here for. I need to give you something.” She retrieves a package wrapped in bunny paper that she carried in with her under her arm. “Happy Easter!”
“Sharon! No. Really?”
“Well, Easter is coming up and, anyway, I decided we needed to celebrate.” Her smile beams with anticipation, and a nostalgic sense of old home startles me. I reach over to open the card.
Dear Dawn,
For these many years I have thought about you, wondering if you were safe, knowing that one day we would see each other again. I’ve had this on my wall since the day you left to remind me of you, and today I happily return it. We have survived some of the hardest times any person should have to endure and now it is time to enjoy each other in better days. I’m so glad to have you back in my life.
Unsure of how I feel, I don’t speak. Gingerly I peel the paper back from her gift to me. There, packaged ever so carefully, is my favorite signed and dated Stewart Moskowitz lithograph of comical penguins following a “trojan duck.” It is a gift originally from John and Sharon, given in what I call the good times. “I thought John destroyed this.”