“This one’s perfect!” She was leaning against me, short of breath, but she stepped away and put her hand on top of it, “I’ll tell you exactly what I want written on it!”
I nodded. It was so strange to be happy that she’d found what she’d been looking for, the thing that symbolized what I dreaded the most, her leaving and never coming back. I hated to admit that the stone was lovely, but I told her so anyway.
She stayed awhile, she stayed with me as long as she could. The really crazy thing about when she finally left, is that she waited until it wasn’t just her and me. You see, one evening she said goodnight and simply went to sleep. The next morning, she didn’t wake up. Still, she didn’t die right away. It took her two more nights. Her parents and sister surrounded her, with me sitting at the head of her bed. I tried to move, to make space for them, but they told me no. They told me she needed me there. Instead, they took the other sides. Together, we held her hands and we told her all the things we needed for her to know before it was too late. That was more for us than for her. It was already too late, really, and we knew she knew them all already. We only said them because, somehow, it made it easier to let her go.
She went out with a flicker. A quick breath, a sigh, and, like a whisper, she was gone.
Not one of us believed it at first. We just sat in silence and waited for her next breath. When it didn’t come, we understood.
I didn’t see her headstone again until after she was buried. Grey, polished to a gleam, with words in pink, her favorite color, it said her name. Rhiannon Paige Griess, in large, beautiful script, with her birthday to the lower left and the date she left the world on the lower right. And above her name was a raised heart that held a portrait of her, taken when her face was bright, her hair was full and red, and her eyes shined like the sun had the first time she and I sat at the gazebo, after we’d walked in the rain.
I missed her so much.
I came to visit her every day for months after she died, even in the winter when the snow was deep and I had no business standing in it. I left her there, you know, every time, under that lovely stone, but only because I had no other choice.
She left me a message that her sister gave me after her funeral. It was written on stationary that had Snoopy and Woodstock chasing butterflies along the bottom.
“To my Ryan,
Life is made up of moments. Good ones, bad ones, forgettable ones and ones we’d rather not remember, but do. But those don’t matter so much. When you’re dying, the only ones that matter are the unforgettable ones. Dying gives you lots of time to reflect and every time I find one of those, you’re in it. You are the stuff that makes my life worth remembering. I’m going to miss you, but I promise if I can, I’ll visit you, maybe just for a minute now and again, but I will. I promise you’ll know it’s me when I do. I don’t know how I will let you know yet, but when the time is right, I will just be there and you’ll know. It will be another unforgettable moment for us both. I’ll do this again and again until you get to where I’m going, if I can. Speaking of that, when you do get there, hopefully I’ll know my way around and we’ll take a really, really long walk together. I assume you agree and it’s a date.
Keep looking for me. I love you.
Rhiannon”
I read that note again and again. I carried it in my coat pocket for two years to remind me. I looked for her everywhere, but she never arrived. Eventually, I slipped it inside a book and left it on a shelf. Twelve years passed before I took it out to read it again. That was just now, tonight.
I’d gotten on with my life, of course. I’d made other friends, had other relationships. I even have a daughter, although I’ve never married, but I still waited for Rhiannon to keep her promise and come back to me, even for a minute, just so I could know she was still out there somewhere, just so I could know she was all right. I missed her so deeply and so terribly, but I went on. Sometimes numb, sometimes happy, but always with a hole in my heart.
Today, I went to visit her grave. I hadn’t been there since late autumn. It’s nearly summer now and her stone was littered with dried grass clippings the wind had picked up from the ground. I cleaned it with my hands and sleeves. I sat for a long time, remembering her, missing her. I waited for her to appear and, as always, she did not. Then something inside my soul broke and I told her this:
“Look, I don’t know if you can hear me and I don’t know where you are, but I know you’re not here. I used to come here to wait for you, but you never came. So I started looking for you everywhere else, but you were never there, either. I have to believe now that you can’t come back, that it’s against the rules, because I can’t believe that you’d lie to me. But I also still can’t believe that you’re just gone. So, please, don’t be angry, but I don’t think I’m coming back here again. I can’t keep looking for you. I still love you, I always will, but I can’t look for you anymore. I’ve got to live my life. I have to make new unforgettable memories. So, you’re off the hook. You’re free. If I can get to you some day, I will, and you can show me around, but until then, goodbye, Rhiannon. You’ll always be my perfect girl.”
I stood quickly and started to leave, but it seemed I only took a couple of steps before I stopped and looked back. I don’t know why I did. I suppose, having said goodbye to my dearest friend, I wanted to take one last glance at where she lay, to press firmly into my mind a picture of a place I might never return to again.
I felt like my heart was missing from my chest, like all that was left inside of me was a hollow space that would never be filled. I thought of her beautiful face, her soft eyes, and how desperately I missed her smile. I thought of how, even after all of these years, I would still die to have her back, even if only for a moment. But I was as hopeless for that to happen as I had been to save her.
The ache increased, closing around my throat like a fist. I swallowed and began to leave again, but something caught my eye.
A butterfly, bright purple and very dark blue, came from the ground beside her stone. It settled beside her photo, on the ridge of the heart that framed it, its beautiful wings beating slowly open and closed. There, in that moment, I knew it was aware that I had seen it and I knew it was looking back at me.
I froze. My heart suddenly jumped. I felt it pound in my chest, sending a rush of heat into my face. That old, familiar love I felt for Rhiannon poured into that empty spot, cooling that ache, washing away all of my sorrow and pain, replacing it with peace for the first time in twelve years.
She had finally come.
A tear rolled from my eye and landed on the back of my hand. Suddenly, I was laughing, a quiet, gentle laugh from deep inside my soul.
“Thank you,” I said to the butterfly, “I thought you’d never make it.”
It sat a moment, still and beautiful. And then, with the gentle pulse of its wings, it fluttered up from the stone. It hovered for a second, floating, as if to say it was free and so was I. It, free from gravity, free from pain. And me, free now from all the things that kept me returning to that place, where I knew she was no more, and from looking for her in the places I now knew I’d never find her.
The butterfly hung, suspended, and I understood that Rhiannon and I would meet again, here and there, in different ways and different forms, when she could manage it, and I was ready to receive her glimmer.
“You can go,” I whispered, “I’ll be fine now.”
And then, just as quickly as the butterfly had arrived, it lifted into the air, disappeared into the magnificent sky, and was gone.
Melodie Ramone, Glimmer
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