Chapter Fifteen #2
“Well,” Mo began as she gently ambled forward, carefully watching where she stepped through the clear creek water. “It wasn’t like the movies or what you hear from a television commercial warning about suicide. I just kind of decided to let it take me. If it wanted me, I guess?”
“It?” Aspen asked curiously, her voice calm and free of judgment. Mo lifted her arms up and out, twisting slightly as if to display her surroundings to Aspen. “So that’s why you put up a fight about me coming with you?”
“Uh…” Mo thought for a second, stopping once she reached the shore. “Yes and no. I didn’t really plan anything out. To be honest, I haven’t planned anything since before Annie died. I’ve mostly drifted from moment to moment, hoping I’d stumble upon an answer of some kind.”
“Have you found that answer?”
“I don’t know.” Mo motioned toward a large redwood stump forty or so yards down the creek. “Can we sit and have a break?”
“Of course,” Aspen said brightly, and Mo felt a surge of happiness at the return of that side of her.
The pair hiked up to the stump, and Mo surveyed its many rings as she removed her pack and propped it against the side. She leaned over the stump, running her free hand along the surface, noticing the differences in size and color.
“The tree’s history,” Aspen murmured next to Mo, leaning against her as she mirrored Mo’s position.
“This,” Aspen said gently, pointing at the center of the tree.
“It’s the tree’s first year of growth. Each of the white lines show growth during the rainy season and the dark ones show growth during the dry. ”
Mo gulped at their closeness, tingles running along her scalp and spine as she watched Aspen explain. “How do you know its age, then?”
“You count the dark rings from the middle out. The wider the white rings, the better the growing season was. Dry seasons are denoted by little growth and smaller rings. And this”—Aspen leaned in closer to Mo to point at a dark blemish on the side of the stump closest to her—“is probably scarring from a forest fire.”
“Wow.”
“Yeah, a long life automatically archived,” Aspen said reverently, turning to sit. “Right until the end.”
Mo mirrored her movements, sitting close to her on the stump and mulling over Aspen’s words.
A few minutes passed before she decided to reveal more.
“Annie was diagnosed with breast cancer right after Christmas 2016. I will never forget how strong Annie was. So sure, so just, so embattled under the weight of that kind of news. She seemed to take it like a champ while I was a bumbling mess. I really struggled to understand how this was happening to her. To us.”
Mo paused, her eyes drawing up to the evergreen canopy, admiring the wind shaking the leaves slightly, the way the trees seemed to create a barrier from the outside world.
“The chemo was scheduled soon after. My active, albeit clumsy, wife was morphed into a slow-moving, nap-taking homebody. And while the cancer and chemo stopped a lot of things, it never stopped our love. We both took leave from work. I cared for her during the entire process, enjoying the time we spent trying to make her better. Our interests changed to indoor fun. Board games, video games, audiobooks, podcasts—hell, even small jam sessions in bed. Well, until she couldn’t sing anymore.
Then I would just play one of my guitars as she hummed along.
Annie was such a good sport, down for whatever shenanigans I could think of to keep us both occupied as she became more and more bedridden.
God, I tried so hard to make her better, but… ”
Aspen didn’t push, instead reaching for Mo’s hand and squeezing lightly.
“But it metastasized in her lymph nodes and lungs. They confirmed it after her double mastectomy. I was distraught. But she was eerily calm, taking that moment to ask the doctor if that meant she could eat sushi again.” Mo laughed, rubbing her forehead with her free hand.
“I don’t follow…” Aspen said softly.
“Annie couldn’t have certain things during her aggressive type of chemo.
Sushi, raw veggies, raw eggs. You know, stuff like that.
Don’t ask why, I honestly never looked into it.
But…” Mo swallowed harshly. “I did go to her favorite sushi place and got all her favorite rolls. I also begged the place to let me borrow one of their gigantic wooden sushi boats. I must’ve looked pitiful, because they agreed.
I remember the exact look on her face when I came bursting in with the full sushi boat, sake slipped under my arm.
We had a feast in the hospital room that night. ”
“Sounds wonderful.”
“It was. We did one more round of aggressive chemo before Annie asked to stop. She was ready.”
Her words seemed to enhance all the sounds around them.
The creek babbled loudly. A few birds chirped with newfound gusto.
The wind blew harder through the foliage, rocking the trees back and forth.
Every syllable she released was not only heightening her senses but making her feel lighter—like they were a heavy weight, and she was becoming buoyant again.
“We had a lot of conversations about what I was going to do after she was gone. But for the life of me, I don’t remember one request she had. I thought she was going to live all the way up until she died. I never lost hope.”
“And maybe that’s why you torture yourself so,” Aspen said. “Because a part of you still hopes that she will recover. Even though you know she’s gone.”
“Probably, yeah,” Mo choked out, tears forming in her eyes. “And she’d hate that.”
“She might but—but I understand. It’s hard to let go of hope.
Especially with something like life or death.
It’s hard to hope it will actually change for the better.
” Aspen moved their intertwined hands to her lap, using her free hand to lightly rub along Mo’s knuckle.
“But I don’t think Annie would be mad at you.
She seems the forgiving type—being married to you and all. ”
Mo laughed a wet, coughing laugh as her tears fell. “You’re right.”
“Per usual,” Aspen softly stated. “But for real—it’s hard to let go of what-ifs. Stop torturing yourself over feeling something human.”
“Thank you.” Mo wiped her eyes before turning to meet Aspen’s, a question lingering between them. After a few moments Mo decided to ask it, assuming Aspen would shut it down but hoping she’d actually answer. “What aren’t you letting go of?”
Aspen blinked rapidly, the question apparently catching her off guard. Mo watched as she went through a few different emotions before taking a deep breath and giving her a guilty smile. “I guess I’m easy to read, huh?”
“If someone is paying attention.” Mo squeezed her hand lightly. “But you don’t have to share if you don’t want to. But I…I want to listen.”
Aspen’s foot began to wiggle as her lips twisted in thought, her head wobbling in contemplation. “All right. Your struggle with letting go of Annie’s…Annie. It, uh, hit a chord with me.”
“How so?”
“Life’s not always been the kindest, I guess?
A lot of people have let me down over the years.
I’ve always waited patiently, hoping those people would make a change.
But that change…it never seems to come. But I still look for it.
Even now,” Aspen shakily admitted, looking up the creek and away from Mo.
“Kyle?”
“Kyle.” Aspen nodded before adding with the smallest of murmurs, “My parents.”
“I’ve avoided asking about them, even though I wanted to. Any time they are mentioned you get a particular look in your eyes.”
“Growing up was…hard. My parents were what some people would stereotype as traveling hippies. They were high school sweethearts, both from around Eureka but they rarely stayed there. Instead, they drove their RV up and down the coast, from Vancouver down into Mexico. I was an accident. A night where birth control was laid to the wayside, I figure. But for some reason or another, they decided to keep me.”
Mo slid her leg up under herself, turning to fully watch Aspen as she relayed the story. She could feel the weight of it all sit between them, like this was something Aspen rarely shared.
“They bought another RV and permanently parked it in Eureka, kind of making that our home base of sorts. When I was really little, I was easy to take with them. Anytime they wanted to be free of me, they would just feed me and put me to bed, locking me inside that hunk of metal. It worked. Up until I needed further care and teaching. And just like children do, I learned to talk, think, and was required by the government they despised to go to school. So they would leave me in Eureka for most of the year. Sometimes overnight, sometimes on the weekends.”
“By yourself?” Mo gruffed, appalled, finding herself angry at Aspen’s parents.
“Technically, yeah. Janice, Virginia’s mother and our closest neighbor, decided to watch over me.
She would make sure I ate, went to school, and had everything that I needed to survive.
When I was a kid, I kind of saw her like a grandmother, so I didn’t really understand why I couldn’t just live with her.
But she was feeble and unable to care for me full time, so she did her best with what my parents selfishly left for her. ” Aspen shrugged.
“I’m sorry.” Mo studied the side of Aspen’s head. “That’s terrible.”
“I was really lonely. I waited patiently for my parents to come home and was incredibly clingy when they would, only causing them to push me away more. A vicious cycle that I self-medicated with books and an overeagerness to make friends. Unfortunately, Kyle was the only one who actually showed me real affection so…”
“You took to him,” Mo said.