Page 76 of Revelry
Today would be the day I let go.
Her resting place was easy to spot. Even if I hadn’t been here every single year on the anniversary of her death, I wouldn’t have missed it. Her headstone was bright white, her name in large, all-capitalized letters. There was one, single yellow rose engraved on the front—the rose of friendship. The gray and black headstones around hers seemed to only point to her more, as if they all knew who I was here to see, too.
It was such an eerie scene, the hill of the cemetery, graves only half covered by the ground while the other half of them protruded, shielded by marble or granite or stone or cement. The mountains were the backdrop for these lives taken, lives no longer lived, and wasn’t that the kicker? To die and be surrounded by life—by plants, animals, humans, all living like they’ll never know what it feels like to die.
I’d been the opposite.
I’d only existed, breathed—and just barely. I’d stopped living the day Dani did, and it seemed I was only waiting to be taken down with her. Only when I’d met Wren had I realized that was a disservice to my cousin. She wouldn’t have wanted me to be miserable, to live every day the same, to wake and work and sleep until every year of my life had withered away.
She would have wanted me to live.
Wren had shown me how.
And maybe that was all that mattered.
The night before had been long, sleepless, filled with tossing and turning and thoughts as dark as the night. I’d started off angry—at Wren, at myself—but somewhere in the early hours of the morning I transitioned into sadness, and then into acceptance as the sun rose over the mountains. I wanted to be with Wren, I wanted to build a new life with her, but maybe that wasn’t her purpose at all.
Maybe the reason she came into my life was simply to bring me back from the dead.
Every morning felt like a new possibility instead of a cross I had to bear, and I knew I had her to thank for that. She’d shown me how to remember Dani’s life and still live my own, and I knew I’d never be the same man I was before I knew she existed.
So, as I knelt beside Dani’s grave and placed twelve yellow roses down before her, I took the deepest breath I could imagine, and I did the impossible.
I let her go.
“Hey, loser,” I said to the stone that was meant to represent her. It was all I said for a while, and the longer I stared at the stone, the more I felt her there with me. It was almost as if she’d placed a hand over mine, as if she was leaning in to listen, as if she already knew what I was there to say.
I cleared my throat, though it was tight and raw already. I’d had so much I wanted to say when I got here and yet I knew it didn’t matter if I actually spoke at all. Dani could feel me, just like I could feel her.
So instead of speaking, I just sat with her. There was no wind, not through the fog, and so it was almost like sitting in silence with her. My heart beat was loud but steady, my breaths calm though I wasn’t. I ran a hand over the edge of her stone, traced the letters of her name, and then I leaned my forehead against the granite.
And I cried.
My shoulders shook, chest aching, tears rushing from my eyes and running along the bridge of my nose until they fell into the grass at my knees. Just when I thought I was out of breath, stomach clenching and lungs burning as my ribcage crushed in on them, my body would think for me, inhaling deep and starting the process all over again.
It hurt.
It healed.
Time passed like a lucid dream, seconds and hours one in the same. By the time I’d released every emotion I’d harbored for seven years, my eyes were just slits I peered through, swollen and red and raw like every other part of me felt. I ran the back of my wrist under my nose with a sniff, balancing on shaky knees until I found the strength to stand.
“I love you,” I finally spoke, voice foreign. “And I will always remember you, but now I promise tolivefor you, too.”
It was short, simple, but it was everything I felt. It was my heart and soul in just a few words. And as I turned to leave, I dropped the weight there in the cemetery, and it was Dani’s voice I heard in my head as I did.
Let go.
My next breath was cleaner, easier. It was the first in a new life. I’d let go of the guilt, of the pain, and now I would move forward. But the hardest was still yet to come.
Dani was first, but Wren was next. And though I knew I had to let her go, every cell and molecule in my body held tight to her, as if she were the lifeline, as if she were the blood and the air.
I knew Ihadto let her go.
I just didn’t know if I actually could.
RUMINATE
ROO-muh-nayt
