Elizabeth swam below me, two hundred fifty feet below in the icy waters of the golden ravine, the craggy hills smothering me on either side as I watched. Swimming on her back, her piercing gaze made its way from the water’s surface to my eyes and deep into my soul, jarring a memory of the last time we’d seen each other.
Holding my hand, she lay in the bed before me, asking me to take care of her children, asking me to promise to love her always, asking me to make amends with her parents. I shivered in the all-white room with its metal-framed bed, the steel-encased windows from wall to wall, looking out onto the cold city thirty stories below. The white tile, hard on my feet, aching from standing for so many hours, and the white fluorescent lighting above mocked me with cold contempt and bitter weariness. I knew the tile and lighting had witnessed many such scenes before and held no special regard for bed-side promises. The tile and the lighting could arrest the scene at any moment it chose, taking the occupant of its bed before these promises could be asked or before they could be made.
My beloved Elizabeth asked her promises and I made them – seeing to it that her children were well cared for, living with their uncle and aunt in Eugene; speaking to her parents in Salem, conveying her sorrow that she never forgave them or asked for their forgiveness, and enduring their bitter tears of regret; and loving her. Always loving her.
How best could I love her, I thought, as I gazed at the image swimming before me, two hundred fifty feet down in the icy waters of the golden gate? And suddently I knew. A moment later, I was free of my obstacles, free like a bird, flying through the air at rip-roaring speed, making my way from the vermilion-clad bridge to the waters beneath its majestic stance, reaching my Elizabeth in a calm void that was all-enveloping.
No comments:
Post a Comment