I want to live a life I would be proud of, that you would be proud of.
You are still the best friend I’ve ever had, and I am the luckiest girl to have been blessed with twenty years on Earth with such an amazing big brother.
I love you.
Happy Birthday, Henry.
Yours Always,
Charlie bear.
When I finished reading it aloud, tears rolled down my cheeks and Beau kissed them away.
“Thank you for sharing that with me,” he whispered. “It was beautiful.”
I nodded.
“Are you ready?”
Standing up, I rolled the letter and pushed it inside the old bottle Beau had found.
“Yeah.”
We dressed and walked hand-in-hand to the water’s edge, where only the moonlight lit the waves.
Beau sealed the bottle with a cork and passed it back to me.
“Thank you for being here,” I said, and he kissed my forehead.
He gave me some space. Not a lot, but a few feet for me to be alone.
“Happy Birthday, Henry,” I whispered into the night air.
Then, with everything I could muster, I threw the bottle into the ocean.
It felt healing, the wounds in me closing a little.
I waited to see if I would catch a glimpse of it’s reflection, but it was gone.
“I’m proud of you.” Beau wrapped his arms around me from behind and rested his chin on the top of my head.
We watched for a while as the water ebbed and flowed, until finally turning back towards the cottage.
Hand-in-hand, I marvelled at how much a little really did go a long way.
I’d let him in a little, and in turn, he rewarded me with this.
Life really was a funny thing.
Beau stopped, bending over at the waist, and picked up a stick.
“What are you doing?” I laughed as he let go of my hand.
He knelt down in the wet sand and began dragging the stick through it, and after a minute, he stood, wrapping his arm around my shoulders and pulling me into his side.
Looking down at the sand, I started to cry.
For there, lit only by the moonlight in Beau’s handwriting, was…
Happy Birthday, Henry.
“Now he’s been to Cannon Beach too.”
I think there comes a time in your life when you’re simply collecting lessons.
Not necessarily that you set out with the intent to, but simply somewhere or sometime when optimism and hope sit down at the table with reality and acceptance. We need these times, just as frequently as we need an array of amazing experiences, because what makes the good, great? Knowing the value of them, and that comes from seeing the bad, and occasionally, the ugly too.
Now mind you, not all lessons feel like a magnitude of suffering.
Some are simple moments when you stand up, put on your adult shoes, do what you have to, and move on with your life.
In the last eleven months, I think I learned what it meant to be in the business of collecting lessons. Before that, I only recognized the shit-end of life’s lessons stick. I’d become blind to the ways in which we could learn, or try to learn, from our mistakes. Instead, I ploughed through my mistakes like a bulldozer on a high school track. I just went around and around for a decade, pushing the same lessons to the side as I waded through my years on borrowed time.
I think in a way I was blind.
That’s easy to do, you know, get lost in the pattern and continue around the merry-go-round.
I used to think it was the unknown that held such a possibility for damage. I was so frightened by the unknown that I never saw how truly brutal routine was.
Have you ever ridden a carousel for an entire day? If you did, I bet you’d feel sick.
Too much of anything would make you sick.
My loss. My grief. My addiction.
Those were my carousels, and they made me sick, but I’m getting better.
I’m trying.
“Charleston?”
Drawing my gaze from the window, I smiled at Doctor Colby, where she sat in her chair.
“I’m sorry.” I moved across the room and sat down across from her. “I didn’t hear what you said.”
“I was saying we only have a few minutes left and there’s something I’d like to discuss with you, if that’s all right?”
I nodded, folding my hands in my lap. “Sure.”
She took her glasses off the bridge of her nose and hooked them into the top of her notepad.
“You’ve been seeing me for some time now.”
I thought about it. “Yes, almost ten years now, I think.”
She leaned forward, twirling her pen in her right hand like she sometimes did.
“In all those years, I’ve never seen you grow as much as you have in this past year,” she praised me, and I took it warmly.
Doctor Colby knew me better than most.
“Thank you,” I whispered.
“The work isn’t done.” She leaned over the table and held out her hand. I took it. “I’m not sure the work on ourselves every really ends.”
I nodded. “I know.”
I knew keeping one’s head above water, especially with a personality like mine, would be somewhat of a continuous battle.
“What I wanted to talk to you about is that I’m not sure you need me to do that anymore.”