After Everything

The clock ticks in the heavy silence. She can practically feel it in her bones. The tick, tick, tick of it all. Like every day, every moment, is ticking by, dragging on and on, and yet every day, every moment is coming faster and faster, one right after the other until they all become a blur. And now here she is, wrapped in the heavy weight of the silence of this room and the ticking of the clock. Even here, at the end of everything, she can’t escape the feeling that it’s all slipped through her fingers without her even noticing.

She looks down at her hands, as if she expects to see her life draining out of them. But there’s nothing. Nothing but her old, tired hands, resting in her lap. She uncurls her fists and peers at them. At the lines cutting deeply across her palms. Once, a long time ago, she’d had her palm read. She remembers laughing as she stumbled out the door. Laughing, because the palm reader had told her she would have everything she’d ever desired. She didn’t believe it. Couldn’t get past the feeling that she’d always be alone in the world.

She runs her fingers over those lines, gazes in wonder at the veins that intersect them. The calluses and the fingerprints. The one swollen knuckle, a perpetual reminder of old wounds. Her left ring finger bears a permanent indent from the simple gold band she wore for decades. Old scars from random accidents, some she never did know where they came from. The faded ink stain that has been her constant companion since she first picked up a pen.

These hands were not the same ones that palm reader had held all those years ago. These hands had seen life. Her hands are not quite unbendable. She can still see the inexperienced youth in them, the memory of who she once was. But there’s more now. So much more. Almost as if each swollen knuckle, every faded scar carries a story with it, a precious part of herself.

In those swollen knuckles she sees the stories she spun in the early morning hours, bleary eyed and exhausted. She had started with pen and paper, but the stories, the worlds, the people she created grew bigger and bigger until she accepted her need to type them. For the longest time, those stories were her life. Absently, she flexes her fingers and gently shakes them out, an old habit she stopped noticing years ago. She had nothing else but the magical worlds and people she created herself. It had been a full life, if a lonely one.

The small, faded scar just below her right thumb knuckle holds the memory of meeting the love her life, a story she couldn’t have written better herself. A crowded coffee shop, a too-big pile of books in her arms, and an accidental run-in with a handsome stranger that would send her life reeling out of control in blissful chaos. She can still feel his hand in hers, strong and safe. Feel his arms around her, the heat of his body. Hear the rumble of his laugh and see the way his eyes crinkle around the edges. Her life went from lonely to full in one unexpected moment.

Running her fingertips over one another, she remembers running them over ancient ruins on their honeymoon, feeling the indescribable flood of emotions that came from standing under the weight of all that history. Feeling small, a part of something other than herself. And then later that evening, feeling like a part of something else, someone else. Hands running over skin and sheets, electricity. Falling asleep with a hand on his chest, happy, in love.

A cut here, a big one. So big it needed five stitches. She remembers how embarrassed she was, cutting herself like that. Doing something so simple, so everyday. She remembers the nausea. Not just from the bright red blood dripping onto the floor, but from the shame of it all. She shakes the feeling away. She’s long done with feelings of shame and regret. And then his hands, covering her own, holding her close.

She remembers caressing the hair of her newborns, so soft she almost couldn’t feel it, minutes stretching into hours as she lost herself in their eyes and smiles, felt their laughter like a tickle in her soul. Wiping away tears, tickling tiny feet, turning page after page of bedtime stories. Holding their hands through first steps, first days, a thousand first big things. And the feel of their hands letting go of her own, taking big steps on their own into the world, her heart swelling with pride and love.

The memories pour across her vision now, coming so fast she can barely see them. Scrubbing dried purple paint from under her fingernails. Burying those hands in cool dirt every spring, coaxing blooming life from the earth. The biting, joyful cold of thousands of snowball fights. The prick from the pin of her son’s wedding boutonniere. Her love’s warm hand enveloping her own. Licking decadent chocolate brownie batter from her fingertips. Thick lotion slathered all over, the scent of jasmine lingering in the air.

No, these hands are a far cry from that young girl who thought her life would never begin, thought she’d spend it alone with her stories. These hands had lived a full life. They’d held and carried the most precious things, the most loved things. They’d cared for, provided for, worked for this long, abundant life she’d made. She smiles softly as she realizes nothing has slipped through her fingers. She’s held on when she needed to and let go when it was time. And now, once again, it was time.

Alone in this room, with its endlessly ticking clock, the silence no longer feels like it’s weighing her down. She closes her eyes and feels as if the weight she’s carried in her bones, all the responsibilities and expectations of living, slowly lifts. The light euphoria of crossing every item off a to-do list. She had checked off every task, every dream, and now she could rest. She was free. She had lived and loved in all the big and the small ways. She remembers once more, the weight and warmth of her lover’s hand in hers, that last anchor holding her here. And as the ticking of the clock fades, she lets go.