The Last Beautiful Things

All around me, the world was unnaturally quiet and still, except for large, fluffy white flakes spiraling and spinning down from the blue-gray, freezing sky. Face tipped up, they landed on cheeks, lips, and lashes like soft, crystallized butterfly kisses.

Slowly, I spun in a circle, arms stretched out, body infused with joy. There is a first time for everything, even snowfall in your late seventies.

I glanced down at my feet, wrapped in two layers of grocery bags I’d tied on with twine. They crinkled every time I took a step, already collecting tiny pearls of melting snow. I must have looked ridiculous, dressed for winter the way a child dresses a scarecrow.

But none of that mattered.

I was here.

I was finally standing in real snow.

It was better than anything on TV.

Better than my old snow globe.

People like me don’t go places. I know entire apartments of people who’ve never seen snow or the ocean. We work. We try to save, watching the money melt away as life piles on. We wait for better times that never come. And before we know it, a lifetime has passed without a single adventure outside of our city.

I crunched the snow with my bag-wrapped tennis shoes, delighted, crunch, crunch. I wanted to lie down and make a snow angel, but there was nothing in the clearing here to help me get up, and when I lay down, it would be for good.

Snowflakes drifted sideways, not sure where to land. They wandered, choosing their own little dance, falling and merging. Trees were iced with them like cakes, the ground a white blanket clean as a fresh white sheet, so much beauty everywhere. My old eyes stung with it.

The cold started curiously picking through my clothing, tickling my feet and whispering chill into my fingers and ear tips, which the beanie didn’t quite cover, even though I lined it with a plastic bag too.

I had waited a long time for this, had gone through a lot to get here, and I needed this to last.

I hadn’t worried much about hitchhiking.

When you’re in your seventies and living on borrowed time, danger feels almost polite compared to the slow, suffocating kind that comes from waiting to die in a cramped, rundown apartment.

No, if these were my last days, I wanted them to have sky in them.

Snow.

Wind.

Something beautiful to hold as I went.

A couple of neighbors might miss me, but all my family was gone. I tied up what loose ends I could, gave away most of my belongings, cleaned the apartment as best I could, and made peace with the roaches years ago. They weren’t my roaches. They just lived there like everybody else in the building. The only wrong I did was skipping last month’s rent. I try not to think too hard about that. I needed the money for my bucket list.

And yes, I had one.

I painstakingly wrote it out on the back of an envelope.

The thing is, I didn’t have a long list. Just three dreams I had carried my whole life. They sat almost finished, crinkled up in my coat pocket.

• Touch Snow

• See the Ocean

• See the Northern Lights

I even drew the little black dots in front of each dream with a marker pen, so I could circle when completed, a proper list in my mind.

I’d always wanted to see the ocean. I’d seen it everywhere except in real life, promising myself I’d go someday, but someday kept getting eaten up by the bills. Real life, where I live, swallows everything but necessity, and sometimes you don’t even have money for that. It was good irony that my list was written on the back of a bill envelope, one I couldn’t pay.

The ocean, you might ask, what did I think of it? Firstly, it scared me. If I weren’t already in a place of passing, it might have taken me there sooner. I just stood up in the parking lot after stepping out of the taxi, and stared. It had cost me a bit of cash to get here, and I wasn’t sure what I expected. The taxi driver stayed in the cab, letting the meter run. I clutched my large purse tighter to my chest, as if it could shield me. The ocean seemed to exhale and inhale as it pounded on the sand. I thought the ocean would be a little calmer where people could walk in and put their toes in the foam, letting the bigness of the whole world wrap around their ankles, and everything would be beautifully blue. This furious, endless, gray body of water, slinging itself about and crashing with loud booms, just made me shake my head and climb back in the cab. I had seen the ocean, and it reminded me of the angry neighborhood I’d left behind.

Using the marker to check it off my list, I never looked out the window as we left.

What I had left of my teeth were starting to clack together, now. This was a new kind of cold. Somewhere along the way, it stole in under my clothes and wrapped itself around me. Even my breath started to hurt inside my chest, and I could feel a pinching in my toes. I thought you just had to keep your feet dry; that’s why I double-bagged.

My cheeks, already so cold and sore from smiling, somehow warmed a little when I thought about the Northern Lights. When I checked that one off, I even underlined it. Their beauty was everything and more than I thought it would be. I’d seen them in magazines, green and pink ribbons curling across the sky like somebody up there was painting. People had to help me see them where I ended up. Apparently, phones have better eyes than people do when it comes to Northern Lights. Funny thing is, these days the lights have been slipping farther and farther down the map, showing up in places they never used to. Maybe the world wanted regular people like me to have a chance, finally.

I did sit in that little café earlier and held a hot chocolate in my hands, dizzy from watching people in their brightly colored snowsuits milling about, laughing and carrying on. They were so young and alive, living a kind of life I’d only ever seen on TV. My last ride insisted on walking me from the parking lot to the café, saying he “wouldn’t leave someone’s grandma out in the cold alone.”

I gave a good cock and bull story about why I was coming here.

People see what they want to see.

I knew I could look a bit like somebody’s eccentric grandma, wrapped in layers that didn’t match, and bags tied around my feet. People’s eyes slid right over me, a grin tucked behind their mittens at how silly I must look.

But all I could do was smile in joy, as I took out my pen and checked off “touch the snow.”

I refused to let this happiness slip away.

Still not believing I had made it this far.

The truth was simpler, quieter, and sadder.

I had not felt right for a long while. After scrounging up bus fare and dragging myself to the big county hospital, and sitting half a day in the packed waiting room, dizzy with hunger and thirst because everything made me sick …Some young doctor glanced at my chart, after all the tests they ran and told me I had 6 months.

Six months.

As if he had a pipeline to the reaper’s calendar himself. Never even looked at me when he said it.

Well… a lot of folks spend years tormented, wondering when the end will come.

At least I knew.

And once you know your time is a little pile of sand running out, you stop being scared of things like hitchhiking, or cold, or what people think.

You start being scared of something else instead of dying without ever having seen anything beautiful or being able to do one damned thing you want to do.

I spied a half-buried bench near the tree line, not so far. Snow piled along its back like a waiting, soft cushion. It took a little effort, but I brushed off a place and lowered myself onto it. It felt just right to sit here. This was the life I wanted to end in, a big sky, a quiet world, a beauty I’d never been allowed to touch until now.

I folded my cold hands in my lap to catch the flakes and lifted my face to the falling snow. Each flake landed soft as a blessing, melting on my cheeks, clinging to my lashes. Maybe I’d stay here a little bit longer. Just until the next flurry passed… or until the sun came through… or until my breath ran out.

Whichever happened first.

So, I sat there small, tired, shivering, and content, and did the only thing left in the world worth doing.

I watched the snow fall.