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My chest burns imagining a life without Grace. I lean off the wall and look through the glass into the hospital room, staring at the machines that are hooked up to Grace as she sleeps. My father almost succeeded.
From behind, Marion squeezes my shoulder and says softly, “You didn’t kill your mother. Cancer did. And Grace didn’t do anything to make her mother act the way she did—that is all on Lily.”
“Assuming she remembers me—” I start as I turn to face her again.
Marion puts her hand over my own. “She will.”
“Assuming she does, how do I get through to her? How do I get her to understand that she’s loved? By you, by me…that she can trust in our love enough to just relax in it?” I use the words that Marion used to describe my mother’s love for me. Because isn’t that what we all deserve? To find someone who loves us enough that we don’t have to work so hard? That we don’t have to prove it day in and day out. That you can just lean into the love, relax in it, and justbehappy.
Marion smiles. “Now that I have an easy answer to…and you already know it because you’ve been doing it and you’ll keep on doing it, because you do love Grace…and you know exactly what she needs.”
“I do?”
“Yes. You show up. You use your actions, your words, your days, your time, to show her what you would do inherently without even having to think about it.You love her. Day in and day out. Bringing her coffee, switching from glass coffee cups to Styrofoam,”—I smile at the reminder of Grace’s clumsiness—“you dance with her, you draw her baths, you make her dreams come true, you give her what she’s always wanted—a family.”
On any other night I’d be at home with Grace doing all of those things. Instead, I’m standing in a hospital corridor having a heart-to-heart with my dead mother’s best friend because Grace doesn’t remember me. Because my father almost blew her up.
I close my eyes as I remember the feel of my daughter kicking below my palm. The way she moved when I spoke to her, or the way it felt like she was dancing with us when I swayed Grace around our kitchen. I miss them both so much that I physically ache.
“I’ve been doing all of those things,” I counter, “but Grace still didn’t trust me enough to tell me about her meetings with Lily.”
Marion frowns. “That’s not fair. We both know they had a complicated relationship. And shehasnoticed what you’ve been doing, Cash. You know she has. But there’s one thing you haven’t done…one thing that I think you and I both know you want more than anything. And sometimes you have to ask for what you want. Are you ready to do that?”
Before today I would have said no. Not because I don’t want to make Grace my wife more than I want just about anything. But because I wasn’t sure it was something thatshewanted. I’m still not one hundred percent sure it is. But Marion is right. If I don’t ask for what I want, how will I ever get it? And I want a love that we can both relax in. A love that my mother had for me. I want the family that I’ve craved my entire life for my daughter.
Hope…even from the grave my mother gives it to me in spades. And that’s exactly what a mother’s love should do. I feel it as I look at Marion. It’s not the guilt or the shame that overwhelms me and sends me spiraling, it’s my mother’s love which anchors me to my future, which pushes me to believe that Grace and I can have it all.
She’ll wake up. She’ll remember me. And we will be a family.
Hope.
