A Season of Firsts

Epilogue

Little did they know, but they were giving me treasure. I did my best to carefully remember every little thing about Emma Riley Rayburn. I tucked away the small and big memories of all shapes and sizes, and every little quirk of hers, every expression that her face had made, into safe hiding places in my mind.

I still take them out and look at them, sometimes. It hurts, but at the same time it comforts. And there's no way I'm letting them go.

I stayed in touch with her family. More than that, actually. They never once made me feel unwelcome in their home, even though in my eyes, I was the cause of Emma's death. Still, her parents loved me as if I was their own son and I loved their children as my own siblings. Carpenter gave great advice. Cleo cared. Eddie was optimistic. They were lights in my world and still are.
Only a year apart, Stevie and Eddie became really close as they both grew older. Eddie would tell her stories from the bible and eventually she wanted to start coming to church with me, making me rejoice inwardly.

One afternoon, on a particularly bad day, when I was having flashbacks and couldn't stop thinking about Emma when she looked so sickly and feeble in the hospital bed where she died, Stevie knocked on the door of my room.

"Come in," I said.

Stevie tip toed in, watching me with those big hazel eyes as she neared my bed where I was sitting. "Have you been crying?" she asked.

I sighed and nodded. She pulled her lips in a funny way and looked at me strangely. "But it's a happy day."

I looked at her, confused. "How so?"

"Because, Aiden," she said. "I want to be baptized."

I had smiled so big that I almost forgot how awful I had felt a minute ago. Almost.

That same day, we were both baptized. I felt as if I were clean afterwards. New. Different. And I was nearly certain that if Emma had been here, she would have been happy for me.

I was okay for a while.

Then Daniel and Cleo got engaged, later on in their lives. I was so glad for them. I took them out for dinner to celebrate. I'd come to care for them both so much, and seeing how happy they were together was great. I told them I saw it coming a mile away, making them laugh. I told them that I hoped that it was the start of an amazing journey. I told them that Emma would have been over the moon.
I didn't tell them that I screamed into my pillow that night, full of frustration and envy and disappointment. I didn't tell them that while I was looking forward to seeing their future play out beautifully, it also reminded me of what Emma and I could have had. What we could have been.

It was better they didn't know.

And life went on. My parents were sympathetic, but they had always thought that what Emma and I had was not going to last anyway. Because we were young, and young love dies fast, right?

But ours didn't. Even after she was gone.

I prayed all the time, asking for peace. I cried, sometimes. I threw myself into my studies towards the end of high school and then even more so when I was in college, trying to forget. I wasn't trying to forget Emma or who she was, but rather other things. I fought for high grades through the gloom that came after her death. I could get lost, spending hours doing math. I knew I was good at math.

But I was even better at making mistakes.

And that was what I spent in the time after that December day trying to forget- the mistakes I had made.
The 'if only' haunted me. Perhaps, I'd think to myself, and I still do now, perhaps if I had just told her sooner, she would have lived. Maybe she would have changed her mind about her atheism. Maybe we would have gone to college together, got married, been a family.
But I've said it before. Maybes are maybes, they are not something worth dwelling on. Yet, I still haven't learned that. Maybe it takes time.

On my nineteenth birthday, I remembered my promise. How had I forgotten for so long? I don't know. But I was grateful I remembered, so that I could keep it.
I asked Emma's parents for her ashes, which they hadn't buried, but kept in a smallish, engraved box. They didn't even ask questions when they gave it to me, and their trust in me after everything that had happened made me even more emotional than I already was.

I drove to an old friend's house and asked her if I could borrow her hot air balloon. She said yes.
And as the balloon lifted me into the sky, it seemed that it was decades ago that I took Emma up with me. Both of us excited and a little thrilled by the slight sense of danger that comes with being so high above everything else, me feeling a little dizzy and sick because of my height phobia. Two sixteen-year olds without an idea of what lay ahead.
I'd made a promise that day. I'd promised her it wouldn't be the last time we did that together.

Now here I was, making sure it was a promise kept. When I was floating above a thick, green forest, I opened the lid of the box and let her ashes fly away. Then I was done- I had done what I'd said I'd do.

And in letting her go I found a way to keep her close forever. It's not something I could explain, even if I tried.

The pain, the guilt, the regret. The longing. Hints of it still follow me wherever I go. But I will find freedom. This season will pass and another, happier season will come.
I know this because I trust my God, and He has a plan.

A very good plan.

The End

---

"To everything there is a season,
A time for every purpose under heaven:
A time to be born,
And a time to die;
A time to plant
And a time to pluck what is planted.
A time to kill,
And a time to heal;
A time to break down,
And a time to build up;
A time to weep,
And a time to laugh;
A time to mourn...

...and a time to dance."

Ecclesiastes 3:1-8.