These Three Words by Jacobs Holly

Author:Jacobs, Holly [Jacobs, Holly]
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub, azw3
Published: 2015-11-24T08:00:00+00:00

Even though I’d tried to hold on to that moment, I’d forgotten.

Until now. Until it could be too late.

How had I forgotten all the moments I’d remembered so freely today? How had I let one horrible moment obscure them?

I thought about that same man a few floors away from me.

I wondered what else I’d forgotten.

Chapter Eight

After Siobhan left, no one else came into the chapel. After a day spent with people, all of them suffering under the weight of their waiting, the quiet solitude was a balm.

There was no hum of machines. No nurses popping in and bustling about. No doctors looking serious.

I couldn’t hear call bells or PA announcements.

I’d spent the day delving into the past, remembering what Gray and I once had. Though I could remember those moments clearly again now, I wasn’t sure we could ever get back to that easier, happier point in our relationship. There was no going back.

And it was hard to look to the future with his life still hanging by a thread.

For a long time, I sat in silence, simply trying to live in the here and now.

Here and now, Gray was alive and recuperating a few floors away.

Here and now, the divorce papers were still in my hand, unsigned.

So here and now, I was still his wife.

But keeping myself in the here and now was difficult. Try as I might, the past kept tumbling into my thoughts, intermingling with fears of the future.

I’d spent the last eight months unable to look backward and hating to look forward.

Live in the now. I’d heard that advice or variations of it for years, but how can you live in the present without the certainty of the past and the possibility of the future?

It felt as if I’d spent the past months at Ferncliff in limbo.

In the quiet chapel, I worked to sit silently in the present.

I was here.

Gray was still here.

I started to shove the envelope back in my purse, but it seemed like too much effort so I let it fall to my lap.

For just a moment, I let the past and present take care of themselves, and I stilled. I settled into that one moment and found my respite. Slowly, even the muted sounds of the hospital faded. There was just that moment. One breath after another.

No past pulling at me. No present intruding.

I was here. Gray was just a few floors up.

I was his wife.

He was my husband.

I’m not sure how long I sat in the quiet chapel, pushing all thoughts and worries aside. Having them creep back in, then pushing them away again.

It became a rhythm like my breathing.

In and out.

Out and in.

I lost track of time. I’d almost forgotten about the world that bustled along beyond this room’s walls.

But the respite couldn’t last.

“You’ve been here a long time,” a male voice said quietly from behind me.

He hadn’t been quiet enough not to make me jump.

He looked apologetic. “I don’t want to interrupt your prayers, but I wondered if I could sit with you?”

He was a young man in well-worn jeans and an Erie Otters T-shirt.

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