Bokelskere.no

My sister will die over and over again for the rest of my life. Grief is forever. It doesn't go away; it becomes part of you, step for step, breath for breath. I will never stop grieving Bailey because I will never stop loving her. That's just how it is. Grief and love is cojoined, you don't get one without the other.

There's not one truth ever, just a whole bunch of stories, all going at once, in our heads, in our hearts, all getting in the way of each other. It's all a beautiful calamitous mess.

All her knowledge is gone now. Everything she ever learned, or heard, or saw [...] I heard this expression once: Each time someone dies, a library burns.

I watch them retreat into the theater arm in arm, whishing I had an eraser so I could wipe her out of this picture. Or a vacuum. A vacuum would be better, just suck her up, gone. Out of his arms. Out of my chair. For good.

But I can't look away and he can't seem to either. Time has slowed so much that I wonder if when we stop staring at each other we will be old and our whole lives will be over with just a few measly kisses between us.

Something occurs to me then: Bailey loved both Toby and me so much - he and I almost make up her whole heart, and maybe that's it, what we were trying to do by being together, maybe we were trying to put her heart back together again.

The first thing I notice is the sky, so full of blue and the kind of brilliant white clouds that make you estatic to have eyes. Nothing can go wrong under this sky.

I’ve never once thought about the interpretative, the storytelling aspect of life, of my life. I always felt like I was in a story, yes, but not like I was the author of it, or like I had any say in its telling whatsoever. You can tell your story any way you damn well please. It’s your solo.

There are people everywhere standing in line at the movies, buying curtains, walking dogs, while inside, their hearts are ripping to shreds. For years. For their whole lives. I don't believe time heals. I don't want it to. If I heal, doesn't that mean I've accepted the world without her?

But then I think about my sister and what a shelless turtle she was and how she wanted me to be one too. C'mon, Lennie, she used to say to me at least ten times a day. C'mon, Len. And that makes me feel better, like it's her life rather than her death that is now teaching me how to be, who to be.