Chapter Seventeen: The Fourth Time the Universe Spoke to Me

So There We Were

So as I lay there drifting off to sleep with Gayle at my side for the first time, something happened that I can only tell you exactly the way it came to me.

This does not need embellishment.

It was real.

I was there in that California king, settling into sleep, comfortable with a new person beside me, perhaps for the first time truly at rest in what had become my new life. And then, with what I believe was the last remaining energy of a person who had cared for me as deeply as Brenda did, I felt it clearly.

A hand in mine. As present as any other hand had ever been.

Not imagined. Not symbolic. Not something I later dressed up into meaning.

I felt it as I was drifting off. My hand in hers. Hers in mine. Clear enough that there was no mistaking it.

And then I heard her speak to me one last time.

“Be happy.”

That was it. Those two words woke me up.

I opened my eyes and looked down. My left hand was resting alone on my stomach. Gayle was on her side, turned away, nowhere near my hand. No confusion. No possibility that I had mistaken the source.

And in that instant I understood what I had not fully understood through the whole journey.

Brenda had been the caregiver.

She had been sending me on my way all along. Through the illness. Through the loss. Through the dark places I barely escaped. Through the voice that pulled me back. Through the strange and necessary steps that led me into a new life I could not yet see. I was a nurse to a person leaving this earth. She knew then and I know it now she was pointing me to new life and renewed joy.

And now, with those final words, she released me.

Be happy. With that, the caregiver was gone.

And she had set me on my way.