The Last Goodbye - ebook

1

JACK

My name is Jack Richardson. I’m just like you. I was born in a town just like yours. I grew up on a street just like the one you grew up on. But that, I’m afraid, is where the similarities end. My life and my story ended up being beyond anything I could have imagined. And like so many stories through the ages, mine starts with a girl.

I met Jess Miller when I was 17 years old, and I know it sounds cliché but the moment I laid eyes on her I knew my life would never be the same. Do you believe in love at first sight? No? Well neither did I until I saw her. I know what you are thinking, it’s just first love, it happens to all of us, but this was more than that. I felt it in my bones. I felt it in the deepest recesses of my being. I felt like a magnet being drawn towards her. And I knew that no matter how I tried to fight it I would be pulled into her orbit. So, I didn’t try to fight it.

It was a typical Tuesday morning, nothing special or interesting about the day. I woke up, drank my body weight in coffee, grabbed a wrinkled shirt from the pile of clothes on the floor and ran out the door just in time to catch the bus. I had first period math with Mrs. Andrews, a decrepit old woman who I’m pretty sure was around when the abacus was invented. Her gray hair was pulled up in a messy bun and her sweater was pretty much made up entirely of cat hair.

I had stalled as much as I could, so I closed my locker to head to class and that is when I saw her. As sappy as it sounds, time stopped. I can remember that moment like it was yesterday, floating above myself like I was having one of those out-of-body-experiences, as if I were watching myself watch her. People say there are a few moments that define your life. Without a doubt, this was the defining moment of mine. She was perfection.

Jess wasn’t the type of girl I usually went for; not that I really ever went for too many girls, to be honest. I was always a bit of a loner. She had on raggedy combat boots that were half laced so the leftovers dragged alongside her just waiting to trip her. She wore head-to- toe black. She was your quintessential Goth girl, putting on an edgy front to hide her soft, chewy, emotional center. To me she was radiant, and no amount of black eyeliner could hide that.

I couldn’t have had less in common with her. My dad had been a star athlete growing up and always pushed me to follow in his footsteps. My mom, on the other hand, wanted me to go to an Ivy League school. So, in her mind, studying was always the priority. I was a disappointment to both of them. I was a jock, and not a particularly good one at that. But when you are blessed with my academic abilities or lack thereof, sports are often the only way to try and make a future for yourself. I was a solid second-string quarterback on the football team. Sounds impressive, right? Well, that is until I tell you that we had not won a single game the entire season, or the last two seasons. So, like I said, not all that impressive.

But I digress. I fell in love with Jess from the very first second I saw her. I actually felt my heart skip a beat. We didn’t end up meeting for a few weeks because I was too scared to approach her. Every day I would be giddy with excitement for the chance to just see her, even if it was for only a few seconds. I would daydream about her, and at night I would dream about what it would be like to actually have the courage to say hi to her. This went on for weeks, until fate, or whatever it is you believe in, intervened and we ran into each other…literally.

I was in town running some errands for my parents. I came out of the shop and pretty much knocked her over. Paying attention was never one of my virtues. I didn’t even realize it was her until she hit the ground. I felt horrible. Why did the Universe hate me so much! I had played out our first meeting so many times in my head. I would be charming and suave, and she would fall for me on the spot. But dreams and reality rarely collide. The reality of what happened was basically the opposite of romantic fireworks. Instead of being debonair, I helped her up and just walked away awkwardly without saying a word. I beat myself up all night. I finally had the chance with the girl of my dreams and I completely blew it. Spectacularly blew it! All I could hope was maybe she would think I was a mute or something. That was the best-case scenario. Why couldn’t I have just said something? Anything? “I’m sorry,” “hello,” either of those would have been fine.

The next day at school I replayed the encounter on a loop in my head. I was lost in my thoughts when I heard a voice from behind me. “You owe me a coffee.” I turned around and it was her. I just stared. I could feel my face turning red. The seconds that passed felt like hours. Say something! Anything!

I finally managed to spit out one word. “Hi.” She waited for what also felt like an eternity and then the corner of her mouth turned slightly upwards into a smirk. She said hi back and my heart melted. One word was all it took. I was a puddle on the floor. The rest is history, as they say.

From that day on we were inseparable. It was like we had been searching for each other our entire lives. And we had, but more on that later. We finished high school that year and Jess was accepted to film school at NYU. There was never even a question as to what I was going to do, I packed up what little I had and said bye to my parents and followed her to New York. And that is when our lives really began.

It didn’t take her long to ditch the Goth look in favor of something more natural. I joked with her that she ditched her “signature” look because she fell so in love with me that all the world became brighter. But that only made her roll her eyes. The truth is once we got to New York she didn’t need to make a statement with her appearance, she could accomplish much more with her films. Underneath all the black hair dye and mascara, Jess’s natural hair color was a light brown and her hazel eyes sparkled against her alabaster skin.

That first year in New York was magic. We moved into our first apartment together. It was such a dump, there were rats and roaches that were bigger than Jess. The hot water worked maybe once a week and the electricity was just as sporadic. We spent many a night hanging out by candlelight. But it was a dump and it was perfect. We were so in love with the city, so in love with each other. It was like the party you never wanted to leave.

Every day was a new adventure whether it was her following me to check out some new indie band I’d heard of— a band that 9 times out of 10 was terrible, but she would always be there right next to me with a smile—or it was the two of us having a picnic in Central Park, Jess falling asleep on my legs. Those were my favorite days, just watching her sleep while the world moved at warp speed around us. I should have told her more often that those were my favorite days. I should have done a lot of things differently, but you can’t change things, no matter how much you want to.

It wasn’t always sunshine and rainbows, there were hard times too. When we were twenty, we found out that Jess was pregnant. It was unexpected and neither of us was ready to be parents. But the more we thought about it the more excited we became. Every time I thought about Jess waddling around the apartment pregnant and miserable, it just made me smile. I knew I always wanted children it was just sooner than I had planned. We didn’t have much, but we had love. The rest we could and would figure out together.

It turned out the Universe agreed with our initial apprehension because Jess lost the baby shortly into her second trimester. It nearly broke her but together we figured out how to move on and let it go. Well, you never really let something like that go, I don’t know, you just learn how to deal with the pain. I think neither of us would have been able to make it if we didn’t have each other. That is how you know it’s real. When the awful parts of life happen, you cling to each other like never before. And I knew that I never wanted to experience one day without her by my side.

I proposed to her six months ago with a ring my dad helped me buy because I barely made enough to pay the rent. If I’m being honest, I still had no idea what I wanted to do with my life. I joked that I was still a work in progress. I was the polar opposite of Jess. She had known her entire life that she wanted to be a documentary filmmaker. I envied that about her. She always knew who she was and where she was going. Everything about her just wanted me to be a better man. I thought about doing some elaborate proposal like one of those you see on YouTube or something but then I realized that just wasn’t us, so I did it on a normal weekend without any pomp and circumstance. She was wearing an old pair of my boxer shorts and one of my tank tops. Her hair went in 500 different directions as it always did when she first woke up and she had a little sleep crust in the corner of her eyes. She was never more beautiful than in that moment. We both had a love for Oscar Wilde so when I proposed I recited one of our favorite quotes. “To live is the rarest thing in the world, most people exist, that is all.” She replied with the rest of the quote, “And what is rarer still is to love without boundaries.” It just made sense for us because I wasn’t interested in anything other than a life with Jess. And when I popped the question, I’d never seen a bigger smile on her face in the entire five years that we were together. She leaned in so she was looking right into my eyes and just whispered, “Yes.”

What Jess and I had was everything, the kind of love you only see in the movies in some ridiculous montage.Which is just not real life, but it was for us. Our friends said we were two halves of the same soul. Kindred spirits, yin and yang, you get the idea. If they only knew how right they were.

By now I’m sure you’ve noticed that I keep talking about Jess and me in the past. Well there is a good reason for that.

I’m dead.2

JESS

In my life, four moments have changed me forever. Three of those were with Jack. The second was the day I saw him in school, so many years ago. The first, well that was a long time before he even knows about. He loves to tell the story of how he saw me at the end of the hallway at school and how that was the moment his life would never be the same. I loved hearing him talk about the Goth girl who spun the world he knew on its side. He was always so cute when he told the story of ‘how we met’ that I never had the heart to tell him it just wasn’t true. Jack and I actually met when we were six years old, he just didn’t know it. I was trying to save money to buy a new doll I wanted. My mom decided that age six would be the perfect time to teach me the value of a dollar. Mom was a forward thinker, maybe a little too forward sometimes. Children don’t really care about stock portfolios and saving for retirement. But she would say that ‘one can never be too prepared’. If I wanted to get the doll, I would have to pay for it myself. So, I decided to start a lemonade stand in front of our house to make money.

It was a hot summer day, a perfect day to make some money. That summer had been extra humid so I was selling lemonade faster than I could make it to the kids and parents in the neighborhood. I was in the middle of making up a new batch when Jason Hawkins came barreling over towards my little stand. He was the school and neighborhood bully. He was twice the size of most of us and he wasn’t the brightest crayon in the box. He was big enough that whatever he wanted he got because all the rest of the kids— and some of the parents, probably—were afraid of him. The same went for his dad, Old Man Hawkins. My mom used to joke that they were actual Neanderthals who had managed to escape extinction. Jason lumbered up to my stand breathing heavily like he always did and demanded a cup of lemonade on the house. When I refused, he knocked my lemonade stand over and pushed me down. There was nothing I could do but sit there and cry. My parents were conveniently nowhere to be seen. After he left, that’s when I first saw Jack. He didn’t live in the neighborhood, so I’d never seen him before, he just happened to be riding around on his skateboard with his friends when Jason was ruining my day.

He came up on his skateboard and didn’t say a word. At first, I thought he was just one of Jason’s pack of goons. I was waiting for him to stomp on what was left of my lemonade stand. But he didn’t. He just took my hand and helped me up. He gave me a half smile; he had one of those slightly crooked yet totally adorable smirk kind of smiles. He wiped a tear from my cheek and just helped me pick everything up and set my stand up again. The whole time he never said a word. He smelled like bubble gum and the slightly acrid aroma of burnt rubber, no doubt from his wheels rolling on asphalt for hours. When everything was back where it should be, he just looked at me, and I looked back. We stared at each other for what felt like an eternity. There was a kindness in his eyes that made me feel safe, that made me feel like I was home. He made me feel all that without saying a word. That moment with Jack was the first that changed my life. Until then, and not surprisingly because I was only six, I had no idea what love even was. I thought my heart was going to beat out of my chest. In my short life, I had probably read a thousand stories about princesses finding their princes. They all seemed so fantastical but here he was, my very own Prince Charming who had saved me from the ogre that was Jason Hawkins. Before I could say anything, his friends called to him. He turned to me and reached into his pocket, pulled out a dollar, and put it in my tip jar. He smirked again and just said “bye”, that’s all, and hopped on his skateboard to catch up with his friends. I never even said a word to him. It’s no wonder he doesn’t remember. To this day I can picture the sun bouncing off his dark brown hair and the way his blue eyes shone like two tiny oceans. I remember being sad for weeks. I put up the lemonade stand every weekend for a year just hoping to see him again, but he never came back. My mom thought she had succeeded in making me understand the value of money. But I couldn’t care less about money or the dozens of dolls I was able to buy. I only cared about the blue-eyed boy who had skated in and out of my life.

I thought about telling him the truth so many times, but it just seemed so trivial and I didn’t want to ruin it for him. But now that is my biggest regret. He never knew the truth, never knew that I’d been in love with him for pretty much my entire life. As the years went by, he was always in my thoughts. The boy on the skateboard who changed everything. And though time had changed him, and he looked different, I knew in an instant that Jack was the boy from my lemonade stand, when we ‘met’ in high school.It was his eyes. His features may have changed, his voice may have deepened, but his eyes hadn’t. Like most of the boys in his class he was trying to seem like more of a man, so he had a decent amount of scruff on his face, more than most of the other boys. Time had changed me as well. After my dad passed I went through a pretty rough patch. I didn’t see much of a point to most things, life included. I was the walking cliché that used black eyeliner, hair dye and clothes to hide my pain. But that all changed when Jack came back into my life. As soon as I saw his eyes I just knew it was him, the boy who turned my world upside down.

When I was little my mom used to tell me all these stories from when she was younger. Before she met my dad, she was a flight attendant and had traveled the world and seen amazing places and done amazing things. At the time, I thought those stories were all made up because, well, she was my boring mom, she couldn’t possibly have had all those adventures. The one thing that has always stuck with me is how she said that life is just a series of moments. Some perfect, some interesting, some terrible and some that change your life forever.

The third moment that changed my life was when I lost him. We were supposed to have friends over for dinner, so I was going to make pasta. In the middle of cooking I realized I forgot to grab tomatoes. Jack hated them but he would always just pick around them. Those are the little things I am going to miss. I’m never going to clean another dish that has a mushy pile of his uneaten tomatoes on it.

What if I had made chicken instead of pasta, would Jack still be here? I had made him go to the place where he died. It was my fault. He had wanted to go out to dinner, but I insisted on cooking. He is gone because of me. No one prepares you for that kind of guilt, the what-ifs of life. What if I we had lived somewhere else? What if we had gone out to dinner? Would that have changed anything? Would I still be preparing to bury the one person I made sense with, the one person I never had to be anything other than myself with? How was that fair? I lost the love of my life because of one errand.

I had just put the pasta into the boiling water when I heard the first shot. It’s New York City, so gunshots are not unheard of, but these were different. I felt the sound in my stomach, in my heart. I don’t know how I knew I just did. It felt like a piece of me died in that moment. I knew right away something happened. I knew my world was once again flipped upside down. I ran out the door and down the stairs, leaving the linguini in the pot boiling away. By the time I got back several hours later the water had evaporated and the pasta had turned to ash…just like my world. For a split second I thought about letting the place fill with smoke so I could be with Jack, but the police officer who walked me back to the apartment took care of it.

When I look back on that night it’s pretty much a blur. I can remember turning the corner and running. I can remember there was so much blood. It sounds crazy but one of the things I distinctly remember seeing was a box of Lucky Charms cereal sprayed red. The poor leprechaun’s face was nearly covered in blood. It’s weird what you remember. I think it’s just the mind’s way of coping with trauma, but I can’t picture Jack lying there…and thank God. I get to remember him the way I want to remember him, smiling that crooked little smile with his bright blue eyes looking right back at me.

The rest of that evening played out like a silent movie. I just sat there while the EMTs tried their best to revive Jack. The officers kept asking me questions, but I couldn’t hear anything. Their mouths moved in slow motion, their lips distorted by the flashing red and blue lights. I was numb…empty…hollow. The reason I woke up in the morning, the person I clung to when I went to bed at night, wasn’t there anymore. My Jack was gone. I didn’t know what to do with myself. Once we got back upstairs and the officer had taken the pot of ash off the stove, he tried asking me a few more questions. He asked me about my relationship with the “victim”; it was that word that snapped me out of my daze. I looked up at the officer. He was just a kid, like me. He didn’t know how to handle the situation any more than I did. I said softly to him, “His name was Jack Richardson. He is…was…my fiancé.” Hearing the word “was” come out of my mouth was enough for me to crack. I just sobbed and sobbed till I had no tears left. By that point Andrea from next door had come over to help, but what could she do. She was new to the building and we had just started to get to know each other. I had told Jack that I wanted to get to know her better. She tried her best to cheer me up but there was no way to make this better, no way to make it go away. In the end, she just held me and let me cry. I was grateful for her effort, but it did nothing to make this horrible day any better.

I’m sure you’ve heard stories about people who have had near-death experiences and how they say that your entire life flashes before your eyes when your time is up.

Something similar happens to people who have experienced sudden and profound tragedies. It’s not so much that your life flashes before your eyes, more so that your mind brings the seemingly mundane to the forefront and puts a different spin on it. When Jack was alive he used to do this thing. He used to trace an infinity symbol on the inside of my palm. The first time he did it I asked him why and he said that he and I were forever, just like the symbol. There was no end and no beginning for us; we just were. He was always such a sap. I used to bust his balls about it, but I secretly loved how much of a hopeless romantic he could be. And now that was gone. My forever, my infinity was no more. I had started the day as half of a pair, partners, best friends, lovers, soon-to-be spouses.

Now I was just me. Just Jess. Jess the widow. Except, I wasn’t even a widow because I never got to marry him. There isn’t even a word for what I was now. I was just broken.3

JACK

Love is a fickle thing, as the saying goes. But true love…that’s a whole different ballgame. I’m not talking about your run-of-the-mill infatuation. I’m talking about TRUE love, the kind of love that wakes you up in the middle of the night because you miss that person so much, even though they are right next to you. The kind of love that fills a hole in your heart that you didn’t even know was there. The kind of love that makes you do incredibly stupid things. All judgment goes out the window the minute you find that person. That’s what Jess and I had…until I died.

Jess had asked me to run downstairs to the bodega to pick up some tomatoes. We were having friends over and she was making pasta. Being the dutiful fiancé, I hustled down the street. But I have to be honest, we weren’t the best at adulting, but we were faking our way through it. We were still getting used to the idea of being engaged. So, every now and then we would have a dinner party with another couple because it’s what adults do, right? You make dinner and you drink wine instead of ordering pizza and drinking cheap beer from a can. Who knew my life would end because of a trip to the bodega? And for tomatoes of all things; I hated tomatoes! As fate would have it, at exactly the same time I was grabbing tomatoes from the bin, a kid decided that he was going to rob this particular bodega.

Well, the short of it is—because, like I said, this story is about love, not death—there was an exchange of shots between the owner of the bodega and the kid, and I was caught in the crossfire. It’s so depressing when you think about it, dying because of the one food in the world you can’t stand. But that’s what happened. Jess heard the shots from our apartment and came running, but by the time she got there I was almost gone.

Things get cloudy when you are dying, in case you want to prepare yourself for when it’s your time. I remember looking up at her and she was screaming and crying, but I couldn’t hear her. I wanted to tell her that I wasn’t in pain. I wanted to tell her a thousand things, but then I was gone. And then I wasn’t gone. My view had changed. I wasn’t looking up at her any longer. I was watching her leaning over me. I had crossed over. I didn’t float out of my body or anything like that. It happened more in the blink of an eye. One moment I was there, the next I wasn’t.

She tried to revive me. Surreal is watching your fiancé try to revive your dead body while you watch. The paramedics also tried but there was nothing they could do. That is not where this story ends; it’s the beginning.

People talk all the time about how their boyfriend or their wife is their soulmate. For the most part, people who say that are wrong. Soulmates are rare. How do I know this, you ask? Well, just after I died, a Guardian Angel told me. It turns out I didn’t have a Guardian Angel when I died because my other half, Jess, was still living. So, one was “assigned” to me to help me move on to the next plane, if that is what I chose to do. He was dressed in a strange- looking red coat and his name was Alistair. You’d think I’d be pissed; I was at the start of my life with Jess and in an instant, I was dead…at 22. But the funny thing is, I wasn’t. The anger goes away when your life ends, love is all that remains; well, that and the ache, the ache to feel, the ache to live, the ache to have one more minute with the person who means the most in the world to you.

That never really goes away. So many people just go through the motions, they never really live. We take so much for granted in life, that there is always tomorrow. But what if there isn’t? It’s hard to put into words what the ache feels like. It’s not a physical pain because the physical you no longer exists. I guess you could say it is a spiritual pain, a longing.

Alistair told me Jess and I were genuine, honest-to- God soulmates. That we had lived many lives together and we were destined to find our way back to each other in each life. And because of that fact, I was given a choice. Head on “upstairs” and wait for Jess, or stay and be Jess’s Guardian Angel until it’s her time. I know we’ve just met, but I think you can figure out what my decision was. I decided to stay…for her. It is still a lot to process, even now, the whole idea of God, Angels, Guardian Angels. I always believed in God. But having faith in something and knowing for a fact all of it is real are two different things altogether.

On paper, being Jess’s Guardian Angel sounded perfect. I wouldn’t have to leave her, and I could watch over her and keep her safe. The reality is something different. For starters, Jess will never be able to see me. It gets a bit technical, but humans don’t possess the visual acuity to see the plane we exist on. Or at least that’s what I was able to piece together from what Alistair told me. Second, not only is it impossible for me to interact with Jess, I’m not able to affect anything in her world. There is no way to let her know that I’m here. As far as she knows, the moment I died in the bodega, I was gone for good. So, I had to sit there helplessly and watch the love of my life get crushed by my death. I now understood how Sisyphus feels.

No matter what I do, no matter how hard I try, I can’t change or take away her pain. The first day, once the police left, she didn’t get out of bed. She just kept smelling my pillow—which no doubt still smelled like me—and bursting into tears. There really is no other sound in the world more haunting than the wail that emanates from a person in a state of pure grief. That was when I felt the ache for the first time. It felt like an arrhythmia in my heart. But I didn’t have a heart anymore. Where my heart used to be is where I felt the ache.

What good is being a Guardian Angel if I can’t comfort Jess, hold her, stroke her hair, and let her know that everything will be all right? I just had to sit there and watch her despair unfold in slow motion. It was cruel. By the second day, she had managed to at least get out of bed to eat. But that was only because our neighbor Andrea forced her to. Death is a funny thing; you see what people are really made of. The people I thought would be there for Jess weren’t. Maybe it was too hard for them, too difficult for them to see Jess in pain, or maybe they weren’t the people I thought they were. But this stranger was there for her.

The day after I died, the ache got worse. It felt as if my entire being was tethered to Jess like a rubber band, and our souls were trying to come back together, across time, across space, across death. But they couldn’t reconnect. I didn’t have a body anymore, but that didn’t stop the ache. Nothing stops the ache, I came to find out.

The third day after I died was my funeral. Man, those things are depressing. Everyone sitting around in black, crying and cursing the universe because I was taken in my prime. I guess I should be flattered that so many people miss me. I felt like I was watching a movie, but it wasn’t a movie. It was real, and I was—well, my body anyway— nestled peacefully in a coffin. The mortician had combed my hair differently and had gone a bit crazy with the blush on my cheeks. Plus, I was wearing a suit. I didn’t even own a suit. I looked like a young version of my grandfather. I didn’t look like me. But I guess it really didn’t matter.

Jess and I had talked once about what we would want if we died. We both agreed we didn’t want some somber affair. We wanted the other to celebrate our life. But that’s easier said than done, as it turns out. Jess sat in the front row looking catatonic. The pastor, whom I’d never met before, prattled on about how I died so young, blah, blah, blah. I didn’t even know this guy but here he was reading from his script where my name had been inserted. Then Jess came to the lectern to speak.

She wiped a tear and crumpled up her Kleenex. “I don’t even know where to start. I can’t believe he is gone,” she said before getting choked up.

She continued, “Jack and I met when we were six. He thinks we met when we were seventeen, but the truth is he came to my rescue when he didn’t know anything about me. That was just the kind of guy he was. I’ve loved him my entire life. He never knew I was the little girl with the lemonade stand he helped fix. I never told him and now I’ll never be able to tell him.”

Ache…

The memories came flooding back to me like a tidal wave. I had completely forgotten all about the girl and her lemonade stand. How could I have not known? All these years she just let me believe that we met in high school. That was the thing about Jess; even when you thought you knew everything about her, she could still surprise you. She continued, “Jack was my home. To quote our favorite author, Oscar Wilde, ‘You don’t love someone for their looks, or their clothes, or their fancy car, but because they sing a song that only you can hear.’” She choked out the last couple words before she started to crumble again. But my Jess is strong. She gathered herself and looked up in my direction; except she couldn’t see me, she could only see everyone grieving. Then she turned and walked over to my casket and whispered, “Jack, I miss your song.”

ACHE…

I wanted to run to her and hold her. I wanted to scream to her that I was there and everything was going to be fine. But I couldn’t do anything except watch her shatter into a million pieces. She was a scattered puzzle that I couldn’t put back together. After the funeral, everyone went back to our apartment. Jess’s mom was there to make sure everything was taken care of. Jess and her mom haven’t always seen eye to eye, but I could tell by the look on her face that Jess was grateful she was…well…being a mom, bossing everyone around, and making sure that no one was hassling her.

Jess’s mom Erika and I didn’t always get along either. The thing with her is she always means well, so you can’t really get too mad at her. So, while she orders everyone around and tries to make everything perfect, you usually just grumble to yourself that she’s driving you crazy. She never thought I was the best fit for her only daughter.

Jess, of course, was brilliant and there was never any doubt that anything she wanted in her life would be hers. Erika thought I, on the other hand, was a bit of a slacker who, to quote her, “will never really live up to his potential.” It’s kinda funny; who knew how right she was. The one thing she never doubted though was how much I loved her daughter. When she’d had a bit too much wine, she used to just watch us and muse about how she wished Jess’s father had looked at her the way I looked at Jess. It was the closest thing I ever got to a compliment from Erika Miller.

Jess was sitting in the corner staring at a picture of the two of us on the mantle when Erika took a break from barking at people to come and sit down beside her. Jess snapped out of her daze. “Hey, Mom.” Erika brushed her hair around her ears. “How are you holding up?” Jess picked up the picture of us and hugged it before replying. “I don’t know…numb…it doesn’t feel real…I feel like he is still here, Mom. Is that crazy?” Erika smiled softly. “No, sweetheart, the good ones never really leave us, they always stay here,” she said, patting her heart gently. Jess just listened, a single tear rolling down her cheek. “You didn’t really like him, Mom.” Erika stiffened up and adjusted her blouse and pearls. “Quite the contrary, my love, I was quite fond of Jack. No matter what was going on, I knew as long as you were with Jack you were safe and you were loved. That is all a mother can hope for. Not that I ever would’ve told him that. You have to keep men on their toes, otherwise they go all soft”. Jess leaned her head on Erika’s shoulder and started to cry. If I still had a heart, it would have broken in that moment, just watching her try to hold it together in front of everyone.

Ache…

That’s the other funny thing about dying; you find out what people thought of you. Well, that is if you are lucky—or unlucky—enough to stick around. Who knew Erika actually liked me all these years. If I were a betting man, I would have said she’d be thanking her lucky stars that I kicked the bucket.

Eventually the reception ended, and Jess and her mom spent a good 30 minutes in the kitchen trying to figure out where to put all the casseroles people brought over. I still don’t understand why people always bring casseroles to funerals. Maybe mix it up! Who doesn’t love a good fruit salad? In case you haven’t noticed, sarcasm is how I deal with everything. Not everything changes when you die.

The other tricky thing about being a Guardian Angel is time. Time doesn’t mean the same thing it does to humans. I found that out the first time Alistair took me “upstairs”— and by “upstairs”, I don’t mean the 2nd floor of our apartment building; I’m talking about the pearly white gates, the Big H. Alistair’s job was to show me the ropes, so to speak.

Jess had just turned in for the night. She put on a pair of my sweatpants and one of my t-shirts and curled up on my side of the bed. It made me smile because she used to make a fuss about how she could only sleep on one side of the bed, her side. I guess both sides of the bed were technically hers now. I was sitting in this ratty old club chair that I bought when Jess and I started dating. She used to joke that it went with nothing in the apartment and she was going to throw it away one of these days. I would just smirk back and tell her the chair goes with me, and if it goes, I go. Reluctantly she agreed, but I knew she still hated it.

Things were silent in the apartment when Alistair appeared. He had this bad habit of just appearing out of nowhere and that’s what he did that night. I was sitting in my chair, getting ready to watch Jess sleep for the third night in a row, when he materialized right in front of me. It’s not really possible to scare a Guardian Angel, but man that guy loved to try and give you a heart attack.

I guess I didn’t really explain the whole Guardian Angel thing very well. First off, we don’t have wings. Guardian Angels were human once, so we pretty much just look human. Now Angel Angels, they were never human, so they look way more impressive with their big wings and all. I look how I looked the day I died; well, minus the blood and the giant hole in my chest. I died in a pair of jeans, a dark gray hoodie, and some black Chuck Taylors. I don’t know if this is how I will look forever, but seeing how Alistair looked, I’m guessing that might be the case. At least I’m comfortable.

Alistair, I’m pretty sure, was a British soldier when he was alive. He still wore the standard uniform for the British redcoat soldiers from the 18th and 19th centuries. So, since his outfit hadn’t changed, I was pretty sure I’d be rocking the slacker hoodie look till the end of days.

Alistair adjusted his coat. “You’re supposed to watch over her, not stare at her like some sort of stalker while she sleeps.” He was right, but I’d been a Guardian Angel for three days and it’s not like you get a handbook about what to do; it’s a feel-your-way-through-it sort of thing. Though he still had his British accent and proper mannerisms, he didn’t really speak like a colonial soldier. His vernacular had clearly changed over the centuries. I looked at Jess. “What else am I supposed to do other than stare at her? She looks so sad and I’m helpless, I can’t do anything, she doesn’t even know that I am here”. He put a calming hand on my shoulder. “She might not be able to see you, but she can feel that you are still here. That is the best you get. You’re more of a comfort than anything else, my dear boy. You can’t change anything in her life, but you can be there to help her with those moments that try to break you.” I remember thinking at the time, that’s not good enough! Why can’t I change her life? There has to be a way. What is the point of it all if I can’t take away her pain? What is the point if I can’t help her move on with her life? If I’d only known then how prophetic that thought was and how that idea would eventually change the course of everything for both of us.

I told this to Alistair, but he was no help. I would soon realize this was a pattern with my red-coated friend. I also wanted to understand the ache I kept feeling. All Alistair told me was that those were all good questions and he knew where to get the answers. He took my hand and we left Jess sleeping in her bed. The next thing I knew, we were heading “upstairs”.4

JESS

It had been six months since Jack passed. I finally felt ready to go back to NYU after taking a semester off from film school. When Jack was alive, we used to go to the Film Forum on Saturday nights and watch old movies. One of my favorite dates was when he took me to see The Picture of Dorian Gray, obviously because it was based on the novel by Oscar Wilde. I knew old movies weren’t really Jack’s thing; he watched them just for me. He thought I never noticed, but he used to spend half the movie watching me enjoy it. That was Jack, always finding something to enjoy even in things he hated. I loved that about him when he was alive, and I miss that now that he is gone.

I thought about that as I walked back into my first class. The second I walked into my film theory class it just felt wrong. It felt so pointless to me, which was new because it was one of my favorite classes. After everything I had been through recently, just the effort to put on clothes and leave the house was sometimes a struggle. It seemed exhausting to be spending an entire hour discussing some movie from the early 1900s that most people don’t even know exists. It was the opposite of how I used to feel. I could spend hours with my classmates debating what a particular director’s vision was or how the choices a cinematographer made in a certain film changed the course of cinema. But now it was altogether uninteresting. I felt lost. For the first time in my life, I didn’t know where I was going. I spent most of the day just wandering around the city and I know it sounds ridiculous, but I even said a prayer to Jack in case he was up there watching over me to maybe send me a sign. It was wishful thinking because, of course, I didn’t see any signs.

I had made plans to meet up with Andrea for dinner that night. She has become a close friend of mine. After everything, she is the one person who stepped up and was there for me, even on the days I couldn’t get out of bed. She would lie in bed with me all day in her pajamas and we would just watch bad movies. I’m so grateful to have her in my life because I know I am not currently the most fun person to be around. We met up at this little tapas place in the West Village off Bleecker Street. She has been forcing me to get out of the house at least once a week.

Honestly, I’d rather just become a full-on agoraphobic hermit and never leave my house, but deep down I know at some point I am going to need to move on. Jack would want me to move on and be happy.

As I walked into the restaurant, Andrea had already grabbed us a table. She looked stunning as usual. She was half Japanese and had spent a good part of her childhood in Osaka. She is also pretty feisty, and I love that about her. One of my favorite things is to watch a guy hit on her. God forbid they tell her that she looks ‘exotic’. She would usually snap back at them some variation of “I’m Japanese, not a unicorn!” It made me laugh every time and right now I needed to laugh more than anything. It turned out to be a pretty fun night. We drank sangria like it was water and laughed nonstop, and not just the polite laugh, but the kind of laugh where your stomach hurts and you’re worried that sangria is going to shoot out of your nose. It was nice to feel like I had rejoined the human race for at least an evening. As we were getting ready to leave, that’s when it happened—the last moment that changed the course of my life.

Sitting at a nearby table was a nice-looking couple, clearly on a first date from all the fidgeting and awkward smiling they were both doing. As we passed by, I could hear the girl giggling that she had never had escargot before and wasn’t sure how to eat it. I remember chuckling to myself, as I had the same thing happen one night when Jack and I had gone out to dinner. He wasn’t sure how to use the little tongs to hold the shell in place and he ended up accidentally flinging the snail across the restaurant. I could see the girl trying to grab the escargot with her fork as we walked out the front door. We hadn’t gotten more than three steps outside when we heard screams coming from inside the restaurant.

Andrea and I both turned toward the sound of the screams. When we looked in the window, we could see the girl was now grasping her throat and looking terrified. She was choking. I don’t know what came over me, but I dropped my purse and ran back into the restaurant. When I got inside everyone was panicking; no one knew what to do.

Acting on instinct, I ran up behind her and started to do the Heimlich maneuver. I had learned it when I was in school, but I had no idea if I was doing it right or not. All I knew was if no one tried something, this woman would die from trying to impress some guy she may or may not even like. My hands moved around her waist as if on autopilot. I thrust up into her sternum once and nothing happened. She continued to panic and gasp for air. I tightened my grip around her waist and thrust my hands into her sternum again, harder this time. The next thing I knew, she coughed and spit out the half-eaten piece of escargot and it landed on the table with a squishy thud.

Her date just stood there motionless, unsure what to do. The woman turned to me, still trying to catch her breath, and then she burst into tears and I threw my arms around her. In between her sobs she said, “You saved my life, thank you so much.” It was the first time I had hugged someone since Jack died. I felt happy that everything was okay, but I was also a little uncomfortable with the closeness. I wanted to pull away, but I fought the impulse. All I could think about was what I had just done. If I hadn’t helped this stranger, she might be dead right now. We all might have been looking at her body slumped over the table. I’d been feeling lost for so long but in that moment I finally felt like something made sense to me. This woman’s family wouldn’t have to know the pain of losing her they loved. They wouldn’t have to feel the pain I was living with. It made me think of Jack. He was the guy who always put other people before himself. He was the consummate gentleman, he held doors for people, helped old ladies across the street, and he would sacrifice just so other people didn’t have to. It made me think, if he were here right now, he would have been proud of me. I smiled to myself. It sounds silly, even now, but I remember in those first months after he passed I was looking for some kind of sign, any sign to tell me what I should do now because no one tells you how to move on from a loss like mine.

It sounds weird but I had this whole life planned with Jack and since he was no longer a part of it, I felt like I’d be cheating on him if I continued on that path. When he was alive, we talked endlessly about how I would finish film school and become some hotshot independent film director and he would travel with me and keep me company. It was a great dream. But that dream was gone.

As I was saving that woman’s life, I knew this was the sign I had been waiting for. Had you told me at the time that a snail would change my life, I would have laughed in your face, but there it was. Saving this woman’s life gave me a purpose. I couldn’t save Jack but if I could stop someone else from feeling the pain and loss that I felt, then maybe something good could come out of something terrible.

The next day I marched into the administration office at NYU and changed my major to Pre-Med. I would become a doctor, that way at least I could even the score with death. Death took Jack from me, so I would take people from death.12

JESS

It had been close to ten minutes now since we turned off the machines. I took a step closer to his body and took Eric’s arm and checked his pulse. Nothing. I unhooked my stethoscope and checked for a heartbeat. Nothing. I looked back towards Betty and Bob. “It’s over, he’s gone.” The words had barely finished coming out of my mouth when Eric sat up and started coughing, trying to catch his breath! I screamed and jumped back across the room. Betty matched my scream, but hers was excitement. She jumped up and ran to her son’s side. How the hell could this be happening? Eric should be dead. He had been brain dead for close to a week now. I had done everything right. I had followed the protocols. How was he now sitting upright and alive?

My head was spinning. I couldn’t even begin to grasp what was happening, I made a huge mistake. I went through it all again in my head. I tried to form words, a thought, anything to say to Betty and Bob but I just couldn’t. It shouldn’t be happening. It went against everything I had learned. I had no explanation for what I was seeing. Betty was crying tears of joy now and hugging Eric who was still coughing and trying to catch his breath. I ran over to him and started checking his vitals and sure enough he now had a pulse. I was in shock. There was no medical explanation for this. I can’t even begin to describe what I was feeling. Eric was alive and that was amazing news. But, I had also failed this family. I had failed Betty and Bob, two people I had come to care about despite my best efforts. I had told them there was nothing that could save their son. He was gone. But I was wrong. He was alive and I had failed him too. I pulled out my penlight and shone it in his eyes and they had the appropriate pupillary response. Everything was checking out. How had this all changed from one second to the next? I looked him in the eyes. “Eric, Eric, my name is Dr. Miller, do you know where you are?” There was no response, he just continued to cough. He couldn’t seem to catch his breath. I grabbed the oxygen mask and placed it over his mouth as best I could. “Eric, Eric, I need you to look at me, try to take a deep breath, in through your nose and out through your mouth.” His eyes met mine, and for a brief second, I had this really strong sense that I knew him. Something in his eyes looked familiar, but then it was gone. Eric was slowly starting to calm down with the help of the oxygen mask. My first priority was to make sure he was stable, make sure everything was okay, but then I was going to get to the bottom of this. For whatever reason their son was still here. I didn’t want to think of the word because I am a doctor and doctors don’t believe in miracles, we believe in science and what can be proved, but this was a miracle if there ever was one. Once Betty had calmed down a little, she came over to me and put her arms around me and held me close. When she let go of me, she walked back over to Eric and put her arms around him. “I knew you would come back to us, I prayed and prayed, and God listened.”