Page 1 of Before We Say Goodbye
Prologue
Stuck in the Middle
Red Mountain, Washington State
March 2011
I died a woman content. And yet here I am stubbornly holding on, hoping to help the man I left behind. That’s what love is, isn’t it? From this strange vantage point, I can see my husband, but for him, I’m merely a memory now, an unbearable ache in his chest. I can only imagine what it would be like to still be in my human form and wake in our bed to realize that the person I’d spent more than forty years with, my soulmate, my best friend, my everything, was gone.
If I have any ability to reach him now, I will.
Otis and I found each other when we were lost but lost each other once we were found. My sweet but often sour berry of a man spent decades trying to break free from his cocoon. Once he did, the grand puppeteer shook up his universe yet again. The days must be rolling on like decades, and all I can hope is that he has enough remaining resolve to keep fighting.
He’s sleeping in the chair in his office, his head cast to the side, a scowl on his face. He’s been snoring since I’ve left him—a result of his overindulgence in drink and his return to smoking a pipe—so hedoesn’t hear the cries from the wounded coyote pup in the vineyard. If he did, he’d be out there in the vines searching. He’d realize that he’s still needed. But how do I wake him?
I try saying his name, and then yelling it, but I can’t break into his dimension—if that’s what I might call it. No one has given me a guidebook to navigate this realm I now inhabit.
As I watch him sleep, memories pour through me. I can see back to the Summer of Love, back to August 1969, when we first fell for each other, both of us lost souls aboard a purple bus en route to Woodstock. Who would have thought the buds of humans we once were would find our way to flowering? Never mind that it took a lifetime to blossom. Of course it did. That’s the point of the chunk of time we’re issued on earth. When our time comes—and we don’t know when that might be—let’s hope we have realized, or at leasttasted, the sweetness of our own potential.
Otis had tasted his potential more than most, but whoever pulled the strings gave him a heck of a run for his money. I wasn’t the biggest fan of my husband’s pessimism, but he often made me chuckle when he spoke with such dramatics apropos his misfortunes, how he constantly saw his own shadow like a defeated groundhog, how he lived half his life under a ladder like a man doomed, or how black cats always crossed in front of him. In a way, he was right. He’d been tested more than most. That’s what made him and his wines great. Because he had more heart than any man I’ve ever met, and despite the countless battles, he pressed on.
If only I could remind him of his own resilience.
Who could have known that the out-of-place kid I sat next to on the bus back in 1969 would become my husband of four decades?
Otis Pennington Till was certainly my kind of handsome. His thick and wavy hazelnut hair was all over the place, the perfect indicator of his inner turmoil. Like a mood ring, his eyes turned from blue to emerald and back again depending on his emotional state, and let me tell you,they changed often. His nose was a notch too broad to categorize him as gorgeous, but I wasn’t into gorgeous.
Of all things, his most attractive quality was his forehead, right where his third eye—the gateway to his higher consciousness—fought to shine through his doubt and skepticism. Though he’d deny he even had a third eye, his emotions lingered there, sometimes dancing together, often warring like feuding siblings. Along with his fears, he radiated a determination and curiosity that only the best of artists showed. Throughout our years together, no matter what we were going through, I was always proud to slip my arm into his and call him mine.
Even on deck to fifty-nine and broken in grief, and despite his thinning hair the color of ice that’s been in the freezer too long, he remains as attractive to me as ever.
What a life we lived. It is said that the grapes that make the best wine are produced by vines that must fight to survive. If the same were true for humans, then Otis and I would have made a magnificent wine. Aside from some financial help along the way, nothing had been spoon-fed to either one of us. We had carved our existence out of stone. Unfortunately, Otis still has a hard row to hoe, as he remains the last of us, the only surviving member of our family of four.
We lost our oldest son first. Camden died in Otis’s arms, and it took everything we had for the three of us to recover. As if that weren’t enough, Michael and I sipped our last breaths less than a month ago, leaving Otis to fend for himself.
Two rivers and three deaths. That’ll make more sense later.
As one can imagine, after so much loss, Otis barely shows any signs of life. Not that I can blame him. The only thing that keeps me connected to the fragile line of humanity is that I don’t want to let go till I know he’s wrapped his fingers back around the dream we shared. We fought too hard to find our place in the world. If only he could remember that—all the work we put in, the sacrifice. All the hard-earned growth we experienced. If only he realized that he’s so much of why our two boys grew into the great men they were. Despite endlesschallenges, he never gave up, and that can’t change now. The memories of our past could be the fuel he needs to keep fighting.
How can I make him remember, though? Unless ...ifI could pull it off. One thing at a time, Rebecca. One thing at a time ...
I understand his pain, why he isn’t eating, why his body looks like a bag of bones. Why he cries at night. Why he lies to my family and friends and tells them that he spread my ashes in the vineyard. The truth is that what’s left of my earthly remains rests in a piece of pottery on the mantel in his office, the office where he sleeps now. Otis can barely bring himself to go into our bedroom, let alone sleep in our bed. It’s all he can do to take care of the animals. If it weren’t for Brooks, Otis’s right-hand man, the vines would shrivel, and the wines would be poured down the drain—something thathashappened before, believe it or not.
Never have I met a man so plagued by life, yet so invested in it, so high on it, so committed. Otis is an artist who wears his heart on his forehead and is always one dial on the knob away from the right frequency—so close, yet so far. He is a long way from perfect. For that matter,Iwas a long way from perfect too.Wewere a long way from perfect. But he was my Otis, and I was his girl, and we were as meant to be as the trees and rain.
I sense that I’m soon off to join our boys, who wait for us. A piece of me died when we lost Camden, but now I’m working my way toward finding him, and I’ve never felt more alive. I suppose death is the final step toward life.
I believe Cam is already with Mike, two brothers reunited in a place that I won’t dare attempt to imagine. There’s love there, I know that. More love than any human could know. I’ll get there soon enough, but I’m not ready yet.
I attempt to brush Otis’s cheek, but my fingers pass through his skin like sunlight through air. “My dear, dear Otis,” I whisper to him, “you’ve weathered a million storms; this one is no different. When the time comes, I’ll be waiting. Mike and Cam too. When the time comes,we’llallbe together again. Because I’m your forever girl, and we’re your forever family.” I nudge closer to him, detecting the faintest woody scents of the man I loved till my last breath. A man I still love.
“But right now,” I say, “it’s time for you to keep living and chasing that perfect bottle of wine. It’s time you rise up and answer the coyote’s call.”
He can’t hear a word. Even a scream won’t find its way to him. I could slap him silly, and he wouldn’t feel a thing, but if I move just right, with the intent coming from what might still be my heart, I may be able to penetrate the wall between life and death.
Drawing from the depths of me, I reach for him and will my finger to break through the dimensions. And it does. It does! I tickle the stubble under his nose. “Wakey, wakey, Otis. You’re needed.”
The sweetest whisper woke Otis. It was as if a dimmer switch had been turned up ever so softly and gently, bringing him to consciousness. For a long moment he felt at peace, as if all the bad things hadn’t happened. A calm flowed in his core, and a forgotten smile teased the corners of his mouth.
