Dear Remi

I wish I knew Rita in the ‘before’ portion of this life. Before the diagnosis. Refractory Acute Myeloid Leukemia. Nonresponsive to treatment the oncologist said six weeks ago in his office. I do not remember the treatment plan. I do not remember the statistics. I do not remember the next steps.

I remember. Likely six months at best.

I am thirty-four years old. Thirty-four. The next thing I remember was sitting in our practical Honda Pilot, because we were doing ‘before’ the right way. Right financial decisions. Healthy diet. Exercise. White picket fence. We had even been discussing another baby.

In the passenger seat with my husband in the driver's seat; both of us weeping, his hand on mine. I choke out, “Remi. She is only four, Matthew. She won’t even remember me.”

I live in the after now. The after, where every Tuesday night belongs to Rita and me, from midnight until sometimes sunrise. Unable to sleep, the Tuesday after D-Day, I got in my car and went for a drive. On the outskirts of town, I saw a small diner that I had never considered visiting before. The sign, Penny’s Diner, was lit in orange, fluorescent lighting casting a reflection in the puddles from recent rainfall.

A bell chimes as I walk through the door. I take a seat in a booth near the front windows. The server walks over to me. Her red hair was piled into a tight bun that looked one shift away from collapsing. Purple-framed glasses adorned her face. Her name tag reads, Rita.

“Sweetheart, what can I get you tonight,” Rita questions. Her voice is smaller than her appearance. Soft and calming.

“Just a coffee please,” I responded. I am looking behind Rita at a glass dome on the counter which showcases slices of pie.

Rita returns with my coffee, in a white mug displaying the name of Penny’s Diner in orange text. I also see she has a slice of apple pie and blackberry pie on the tray.

“These are headed for the trash in a few hours. Seems a shame. Apple or blackberry?” she asked.

Smiling, I said, “thank you,” and glance to her nametag, I had already forgotten her name.

“Rita,” she says, extending her arms out in a playful gesture, as if she is announcing herself. “If you need a refill just holler, I will be wiping booths down over there” pointing to the other side of the diner. “I don’t generally have customers overnight. I am happy for a friendly face tonight…” and she trails off in a way I know she is asking me for my name.

“Alex,” I say as I blow on my coffee and take a sip. “It is nice to meet you, Rita.”

The first night at the diner, I drank my coffee quietly. Rita checked on me often, and after spending two quiet hours with myself, I asked her for my check, paid in cash, left her a large tip and went home where I laid awake in bed watching the ceiling fan whirl above me.

The next Tuesday, after Matthew and Remi were asleep, I packed a Trader Joe's bag I normally used for groceries. Inside were notecards, my tablet, a notebook, and my favorite pens. I would carry that bag into Penny's Diner every Tuesday until I no longer could. When I walked through the door, the bell chimed.

“Alex!” Rita called from the other side of the diner, waving, “Are you coming for a sleepover tonight?” she laughs as she glances at my overstuffed bag.

“Hi Rita. I can’t sleep again tonight, figured I might as well be productive.” I say, patting my bag.

“Coffee?” Rita asks. “Pie?” Her expression says she already knows the answer.

“Please and thank you” I responded.

Sitting in the same booth, I reflect for a moment on the diner. The worn booths, red bar stools, and flickering fluorescent lights. I take out the notecards and start to draft ideas.

Riding without training wheels.

First day of school.

I set the pen down. Certain milestones felt close enough to touch. Others already belonged to someone else's future

First date.

First heartbreak.

Getting your driver’s license.

Graduation Day.

College orientation.

Wedding Day.

Rita walks over, coffee pot in hand asking if I am ready for a refresh. I put my hand over the cup and tell her I do not think I need to be fueled by caffeine tonight. She returns quickly with iced water in a red plastic cup with a faded Pepsi logo on it.

“If you need anything hon, I’m just over there,” she says.

I smile at her in return and look down at my notecards. I arranged my tablet and put ear buds in. I aim the tablet camera at me in selfie mode. I fix my hair and make sure there is no evidence of tears in my eyes. I spread a layer of pale pink lip-gloss on my lips and pinch my cheeks a bit to give them warmth. My complexion has become ashen in the last three weeks.

I pressed record.

“Hi Remi!!! OH MY GOSH! No training wheels? You worked so hard on that. Daddy loves mountain biking, and I can picture you two biking trails. I love you SO much sweet Remi. Congratulations baby girl!”

I pressed the red square to stop the recording. Rita is looking at me across the row of empty booths. Tears stream down my face. She stops at my table with a stack of napkins.

“Alex, hon.” she questions, “are you okay? It’s just us girls here. You can talk to me. I’ve heard it all. I’ve worked this overnight shift for twenty years and have seen it all. Divorce. Abuse. All of it.”

“I am okay,” I say, taking the napkins. “I just…” pausing my thought, “I just need to use the restroom.” Her eyes go from interested to concerned. Something shifted in Rita's expression. I look away.

Back at the booth the next two videos on my list for tonight go much like the first. I press record, alter my voice into happy mommy mode, deliver my message to Remi and push the red square. Once I have finished recording three videos, I open the box of flash drives I purchased. I also purchased tags, they were plain brown cardstock, no larger than my palm, with rounded edges and a small hole punched through one end to weave ribbon through. For these videos I had decided on a pale pink ribbon. I uploaded the videos onto separate flash drives and tied them to the ribbon attached to the tag. On the tag, I wrote the name of each video.

Dear Remi: When you ride without training wheels. Love, Mommy.

I used different colored pens and wrote in my neatest block print in hopes by the time she needed these she could read the text on her own. As I am scrawling little pictures on the tags of flowers, and lady bugs Rita sits on the bench across from me, uninvited. I look up at her and pass one of the completed tags across the table, the flash drive dragging on the linoleum table surface.

She picks it up and reads it. “Who is Remi?”

“My daughter. She is four.” I answer.

Rita looks up at me, and her eyes hover over the port scar just below my right collarbone, “What is your prognosis honey?”

“Months at best,” I say out loud for the first time, the sentence settling between us like a dense fog.

“You know what I’ve learned” she asks. I shake my head fighting the urge to cry. “Most people think the opposite of death is life. It ain’t.” She points at the pile of pink-ribboned flash drives. “It’s forgetting.”

She takes my hand. “Looks to me like you are giving Remi every reason to remember.”

That thought stayed with me for a long time after she said it. Maybe remembrance was something you built.

Rita scoots from the booth. I finish my water, pack my bag and head home. At home I take all the flash drives I have prepared and transfer them to a wooden jewelry box I ordered from Etsy. It is a box for an older girl, maybe even a woman. No spinning ballerinas or wind-up keys. It is mahogany, the grain willowing through the wood like waves on a shore. I transfer some pieces from my own jewelry box into it and scatter the flash drives in the bottom. I place the box deep inside my closet.

Soon, the booth was always waiting. Coffee, water, and pie.

“Hey hon!” Rita called from the kitchen. “Peach pie tonight! It’s my Gran’s recipe. You can only make it a few weeks out of the year when the peaches are perfect. I will be right over.”

The coffee tonight is fresh, and the peach pie is the best I have ever had. When Rita comes over, she takes her apron off and sits across from me.

“What is on the list tonight?” she asks. I passed her my note card. Aloud she reads, “First heartbreak. That is a tough one. Driver’s license! Go Remi! Graduation day.” She looks up from the notecard at me. I smile, but the word graduation sits heavy between us. “Finish your pie, I am going to do the dishes and then I will be back to help.”

Rita is a stranger, and somehow, she has wandered into the worst moment of my life without so much as knocking. Before I can decide whether to tell her this is none of her business, she's back, sliding into the booth with a slice of peach pie and a diet Pepsi.

Together we got started. She holds the tablet for me and presses record.

“Oh Rems. First heartbreaks are so awful. Take care of yourself first. Eat well. Make sure you drink enough water. Is the show Friends still around? It will make you laugh. It is okay to cry and to be angry, and it takes as long as it takes. Lean on Daddy. I love you baby girl.”

We recorded the next videos. Once Rita pressed the red square on the last video of the night she reached for the ribbons. These ribbons are ocean blue. More mature than pale pink, after all Remi is growing up. As I am scribbling away on the tags, now in cursive, and drawing abstract shapes, no longer flowers and bugs, Rita says,

“Hon, what you are doing is beautiful. I wish my mom had done the same. I lost her when I was fifteen.”

“Oh Rita, I’m sorry. There is never enough time.” I say. “You were so young. That had to be hard.” As I absentmindedly rework a tag that isn't quite right, Rita starts talking. The rest comes out like water through a broken dam.

“Yeah, she died in a car accident. My daddy was a drunk. Mad as a hornet’s nest after Momma left us. That is how he said it too, she left us. Not she died. Once I was eighteen, I left there and found myself here. Married to the wrong man after the wrong man. Finally, I decided I didn’t need no man and found happiness myself. I have a dog now, just a mutt from the shelter over on route seventeen, her name is Maggie.” She pulls out her phone and shows me photos of Maggie. A scruffy shepherd mix with one floppy ear and a white patch on her chest. In every picture, Maggie looks directly at the camera like she knows she's the prettiest girl in town. “All I need. I am paying my bills and doing my thing now.”

We talk until my coffee turns cold. Then we talked some more. At some point the sky beyond the diner's window softens from black to gray, to crimson.

"Well," Rita says, glancing outside, "would you look at that."

Morning has arrived.

I tell Rita I have to go. When I finally crawl into bed a half hour later, I sleep better than I have in weeks.

The tradition continues. Soon, the booth feels less like a booth and more like ours. Sometimes Rita leaves flowers on the table. Sometimes she brings ribbons she finds while thrifting, insisting a particular color feels like a graduation or a wedding. She shows me photographs from the life she lived before I knew her. At the beach in a yellow bikini, laughing beside a man whose arm is draped over her shoulders.

I bring things too. Photographs of Remi missing her front teeth. Matthew burning burgers on the grill. The ordinary moments that suddenly feel worth preserving.

Tonight, we will make videos for when Remi is older. Looking at the notecard, “Wedding Day,” Rita sighs. “I’m sorry Alex, are you ready?”

Hesitantly, I respond, “as ready as I can be.”

“Dear dear Remi. I am so sorry I cannot be with you on this day. I am sure you look radiant. Celebrate yourself and your new spouse today. Dad is going to cry, and that is okay. Congratulations Rem. I wish you a lifetime of happiness and all the things you want and hope for. I love you to the moon and back, baby girl.”

Rita presses the red square. “I feel like you, Matthew, and Remi are my family now, and I’ve never even met them,” she says, reaching for a tissue from the box which now is always on the table.

“I feel the same,” I say. “Which is why I must ask you something. You can say no if it is too much.” Rita takes my hand, looks at me, and waits. “I am making this box for Remi.” I opened the camera app on my phone and showed her the box. Now filled with new jewelry, and jewelry I am gifting to her from my collection. The flash drives are lined up against the black satin backing held in place with pieces of elastic. They start with the pink ribbons and display an array of colors for dozens of videos.

“One day, I am going to stop coming here. I will come as long as I can, but once I stop coming can you wait thirty days and then deliver the box to Matthew?”

Rita has tears streaming down her face and simply says, “Alex, I would be honored.”

The next week, I brought her the box which Rita keeps at the diner. When I have things to add, I bring them to her. One day around 8pm on a Saturday I stop in. The bell rings and Rita looks up and is happy to see me but behind me trails Matthew and Remi too. Rita, to my relief, acts like she does not know me, but she is soaking in the moment from behind the counter.

After the night we all visited Penny’s Diner, weeks passed. Rita sets up the booth, arranges the pie, and refills the tissues. The door chime never rings.

Forty-five days later, Rita cautiously approaches my front door, the box is wrapped and she holds it tenderly. She knocks, Matthew answers. Rita explains everything. The diner, the booth, and the box. She hands it to him and as she turns to leave, he says, “Rita wait. Alex left something and I didn’t know what it was, but it has your name on it.”

Matthew hands Rita a small box. In the car Rita opens it, inside is a flash drive, tied with an orange ribbon and the tag reads, “Dear Rita: My guardian angel,” coffee mugs and pie slices are hand drawn on the tag. Once she returns to her home, she inserts it into her laptop, and she and Maggie see Alex’s face fill the screen.

“Hi beautiful Rita. My sunshine in the darkest storm of my life. Thank you for being my dear friend. A friend I wish I had my entire life, not just the last season. I made videos for Matthew too; they are in the box you just delivered. I told him everything about you. I asked him to welcome you to our family and he and Remi will love you just as much as I did. You made such a difference for me in the end. I hope you know that. I love you, Rita.”

Rita’s hair is now gray, not just at the temples. The gray highlights are tinsel through her strands, and her purple frames now require prescription lenses. When she sits at the table adorned with cornucopias, crystal wine glasses, and burnt orange linen napkins with merlot-colored rings, her knees ache. It has been fifteen years since Alex died. Rita has been at most family holidays since then.

“Aunt Rita, will you pass the rolls,” Remi asks.

Remi then laughs.

It was her mother’s laugh.