Someday by David Levithan

Author:David Levithan
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Random House Children's Books
Published: 2018-10-01T16:00:00+00:00

MONA, AGE 98

Today is the day. Dear Lord, I know today is the day.

I have traveled so far and seen through so many eyes. Now I can hear the final notes of the lifelong hymn. I know this body is the one that will bring me up to You.

I am sorry this woman is not here to witness this, to see the grateful pain in her daughter’s eyes. She is holding my hand, Lord, and I feel You in that touch, just as I feel You in this body’s undoing, my life’s release.

I knew this day would come. There was no call for me to be an exception just because I have lived my life within the lives of others. Lately I have been feeling their pain more than their joy; as the bodies cultivate the pain, only the minds can offer the joy. I spend most of my time in hospitals or hospices or under the tender care of nurses whose fatigue nearly matches my own. (They have the decency to cover it better, most of the time.) It is a mercy to be leaving this Earth from the comfort of a home, in the bed where this woman has slept for decades, the mattress bending its springs to the memory of her shape. It is not my own home or my own bed—no such thing, Lord, no such thing—but I am still enfolded in the signs of life that a hospital room cannot offer. I am grateful to You for that.

Breathing is hard right now. Soon it will be too hard. I have been close to You before, but never this close. I hope that when my spirit rises, You will greet me with open arms and wisdom. Why have I lived like this? Were the choices I made the right ones? Was there something special I was supposed to see? Was there a special way I was supposed to help?

I have failed and I have triumphed and I have failed and failed and triumphed and failed again, but I have always kept going, even when the world gave me no encouragement, when the only voice I could hear was Yours, clear as glass and loud as thunder at some times, faint and unknowable at others.

For many, many years, I fought on the side of fairness, but that struggle took its toll. I could change people’s minds when they were under my power—but the deeper challenge was changing their minds once they were on their own again. I have endured this life by seeing the unbelievable expanse of what others can endure. I have held on to my stories by understanding that each of us contains a multitude of stories, and none of these stories end up saying the exact same thing. Each of us holds at least one story within us that breaks our hearts to tell it. Each of us holds at least one story in which we are surprised by our own fortitude. Each of us holds at least one story that never came true, the story we most wanted to be able to tell.

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