Epilogue
At the end of life, or in our most quiet and contemplative seasons, the luckiest of us go back through our moments, lost and found.
We don’t trot out our achievements or dissect what we’ll leave behind.
When time gets small, we pick the smallest fragments of it that shine inexplicably and hold them close.
Merritt Young thought about the women in her life more than anything else, toward the end.
She thought of her mom letting her and her sister sit on the counter while she prepared meals, making idle chat or singing along to Shania Twain or Stevie Nicks.
How her mom always called the three of them the “the Three Musketeers.” She thought of trying to get out of yard work with her sister and devising a plan together, rubbing poison ivy on their calves thinking this would be enough—that their mom would tell their dad they needed to stay in and watch movies, they couldn’t sweat and spread the rash, et cetera.
But they’d grossly underestimated how bad those rashes would be and just how much they’d spread, and spent that weekend taking turns in oatmeal baths, being snippy at each other.
Still, they’d been united in their misery.
She thought of her sister curling her hair before her first dance and that time she got to be the one to teach Devin how to apply eyeliner.
How good it felt to be the one teaching her something for a change.
She thought about how it felt to see Devin become a mom and how good she knew her sister would be at it because of how she’d micromanaged and looked after her.
That’s what she’d put in the letters she left to her nephews.
She told them to listen to their mom, because even if Merritt hated to admit it, Devin knew what she was doing, and she was proof of that.
Devin had been the best big sister, Merritt’s bonus mom whether or not she wanted her to be.
She thought of all the punch-drunk late nights laughing with her best friend over nothing, when every bit of recall was so funny it would make their ribs hurt and their lungs seize.
She found all their fights so silly now, too—the ones with her sister and all her best girlfriends.
Those jealous, insecure fits that only came to the surface because they’d made each other feel safe to be utterly themselves.
How each little fight grew them into women who cherished other women.
Merritt thought about boys and men, too, of course.
But those moments were more abstract than anything, flashes and colors and warm pangs.
She thought about the mortifying giddiness of having a crush, and the thrill of putting a guy in his place when he deserved it.
The adrenaline climb and crash of falling in and out of love.
God, if nothing else, the drama had been a fun ride, hadn’t it?
When Silas Byrd showed up at the hospital still bandaged from his own brush with death, Merritt loved how he looked when she tilted her chin and said, “There he is. The one who got away.” Like he was trying to balance on his back foot and was proud of her at the same time.
Merritt took that chance to send Bea to get something to eat, knowing she hadn’t in at least twelve hours, too afraid to leave her side.
“I don’t plan on dying in the ten minutes it’ll take you to grab a sandwich, BB,” Merritt said when Bea tried to refuse.
That sigh her poor friend let out . . . that was when Merritt felt some bitterness. By then, she was looking forward to no more pain, but she couldn’t stand thinking of her loved ones hurting for so much longer. Hell, at least she got good drugs.
“You better not,” Bea had said before she cut a pleading look up at Silas. A look they shared before they both turned away like it stung.
Merritt wondered, but . . . she didn’t know what she thought she saw. Everyone shared all sorts of heavy looks around her these days.
“Sounds like a you problem if I do,” Merritt replied, giving her best shrug. Bea kissed her forehead and left for the cafeteria.
Silas didn’t try to make the moment profounder or more emotional than Merritt wanted it to be, and what a strength that was, she thought. To be willing to keep someone afloat while holding the weight of knowing they’ll be gone soon. They laughed about memories and even gossiped a bit.
“You’ll cheer her up, right?” Merritt asked him. “BB? She’ll need a firm hand when it comes to cheering up after.” A litany of memories drenched in feeling churned through Merritt . . . how good it felt to see her friend succeed, celebrate, win, shine. She wanted to know that would go on.
Silas’s expression wavered some, but eventually, he said, “Yeah. I’ll do my best.”
“Make sure she doesn’t settle for anyone, either. I’m counting on you. No one that doesn’t deserve her.”
“So, no one, then?” he’d said with a wry puff of a laugh. Their eyes met before he began studying the bandage on his hand.
Merritt searched him. “Exactly. She deserves someone who knows it.”
Silas only gave her a solemn nod, meeting her eyes once more, and Merritt knew he’d make good on that promise, somehow. She knew it in the same way she knew she was dying. Something in her flesh and bones.
The rest of Merritt’s time was spent in and out of more moments with the people she loved keeping vigil.
Merritt thought of the wet slide of a kiss in a back seat, the icy ocean biting at her ankles, a full-bodied scream up at the night sky.
The ocean sucking away the sand beneath her feet until she sank deeper and deeper, grew number and number.
How it felt to walk through the door of her childhood home as an adult after she’d moved away.
The sounds of her dad tinkering in the garage and her mom in the kitchen, humming to the same songs she still loved, making Merritt’s favorite meal.
The smells. God, she loved the smells. She loved that moment before anyone realized she was there, when she could pretend she was just a kid again, getting home from school.
No bills or big questions about what her life meant or worrying about what she should have been doing with her time.
She hoped this is what dying would feel like.
Like stepping into a warm home where someone, something—even if that something was peace—was waiting to welcome her.
It’s our moments that we’ll keep going back to. Things we mourn as they’re happening because we don’t want them to slip away, and things we don’t realize are significant at all, at the time.
Sometimes those moments have a ripple effect of impact that we’ll never realize. Circles that keep expanding through our lives and continue after we’re gone.
Moments like:
Two young women in a hospital bed, comforting each other and whispering, “We were girls together.” A nurse overhears it and is inspired to call the sister she hasn’t spoken to in three years.
A little girl on a bus, embarrassed on her first day of school in a new town.
A little boy handing her his flannel. Neither of them knows it, but helping her instills some foundational element in him.
One day, the idea of becoming a firefighter will present itself, and he’ll think, Yeah, that’s it.
I want to help, too. The connection that little girl forms with that boy is one thread in a gorgeous tapestry of life, picked up and added to by countless others.
A curly-haired baker sees a news story about a wildfire and a pair of horses at the exact right moment in time. It drives her to send a package and a letter. A man picks it up at the right moment, and it leads him to forge his way back to his wife.
A little boy is encouraged to dance by his nanny, and it allows him to stay true to himself, to carry that confidence for the rest of his days and to spread that same confidence to a hundred others.
A red-haired woman holding her brown-haired baby girl for the first time.
A hundred thousand moments when her baby laughs and sounds so much like her dearest friend it steals her breath away.
The grandparents and aunts and uncles whose lives that baby lights up.
The moment her gummy smile unites a grieving sister and a grieving friend and turns them into a family.
The moments that red-haired mother feels her heart expanding again and again, doubling in size to make room for so much unfathomable love.
Like when her best friend becomes her husband.
With tears in his eyes, he kisses her before the officiant tells him he can do so, and the room full of people sparks into laughter.
When he makes her a mother again. When she gives him a son that looks exactly like him and drives him insane, the same way he drove his own parents mad with unbound joy.
When she comes home from her regular job on a regular weekday and sees her family in the front yard during summer.
All three of them shirtless and in boots or diapers or tutus and watering the plants bordering their front porch, their cat keeping watch from the top step.
When that dad lets their babies color in his scars until he looks like a stained-glass window, making him truly grateful for them for the first time.
A man who loved baseball never felt it loved him back until he finds a new lens to see it through—as a coach. He inspires so many others directly and indirectly, whether through his own coaching or through witnessing his sheer passion for it.
A girl meets a goose who brings her out of her shell, makes her believe in good things again.
The moment a food critic finds meaning in his profession.
A burned-out chef rediscovers his love for feeding people.
When a 911 call is the beginning of a love story instead of a tragedy.
When a woman takes a chance on herself and starts a business selling flowers. When she embraces her softness as a strength.
When a young mom is isolated during a pandemic and finds herself hungry for community and an escape, so she starts writing stories to give herself both.
One day, she tells a friend she’s written a book.
That friend demands she share it with others.
You pick it up and feel seen. Maybe something in it makes you want to apologize to someone, or you realize you’re settling for treatment you don’t deserve.
It makes you ache for more. It makes you slow down and see the beauty in small things.
It ignites new gratitude for your family or opens you up to finding one for yourself.
You shout to your friends, and you make new ones, bonding over your shared love for it.
You even send messages to the author, whose community grows to proportions she can’t fathom.
You change her life. For the first time in all her years, that author is happy she never stopped being Weird.
That she played pretend so hard she made a family in a small, rainy Oregon town, built on puns and imperfect love.
When you became family, too.