The Woman My Grandmother Loved.

Chapter Fifteen

"I'm glad I'll be leaving soon after you will," Becky says, as she pushes the unruly curls that dance in the wind. "I wouldn't be able to stay here. I just wouldn't."

"I'm glad you're leaving too. I wouldn't want you to be sad here; not when it has always been one of our happiest places." Anita says, looking forward at the horizon.

Becky looks at her, drinking in the image and trying to commit the moment to memory. Remember every line, every curve, every mole on her skin. She was so beautiful at that moment. The pensive angle of her mouth; the sadness her voice held. She was exquisite and she was love personified the way nobody else would quite manage to be.

"It will. This year has been the happiest I have ever been in my life and it is only because I met you." Becky says wanting her to know. There was nothing to hide now, there had never been anything to hide between them. No games stemming from insecurity, no dismissal of the little things.

"I'm glad," Anita says, her eyes watery but refusing to budge from the horizon. Not wanting to cry because she was still with Becky. "This has been the happiest year of my life too."

"We've been sad for a long time, now," Becky says, looking at the water as it rose and fell and trying to derive security from its monotony the way she had the day on the cliff.

"I know," Anita admits with a sigh and then wipes her tears away, trying to shake herself out of it. "I don't want to be sad, at least not yet. If sadness is inevitable then I want to face it alone. I'll be happy today."

"Yet, we'll always share it. The grief is ours just as the love will remain." Becky says, her voice soft. Unable to shake off her sadness, wanting to erase it.

"We'll be happy now, Becky. Our goodbye won't be sad." Anita says, her voice stronger willing herself to believe the words. She wanted to believe the words so badly, hold onto them as the potency of her ardor threatened to drown her.

"You're right," Becky says, shaking herself out of it. Convincing herself to. "Our goodbye won't be sad."

"Lives of great men all remind us
We can make our lives sublime,
And, departing, leave behind us
Footprints on the sands of time." Anita says, quoting Henry W Longfellow. "If these sands were the sands of time, what would you leave behind?" She asks Becky.

"Do I have to be great to leave behind something? If I don't, does it erase the fact that I was once here?" Becky questions her.

"It doesn't. But if you don't leave something behind, how will you be remembered?" Anita replies, wanting to reach over and brush Becky's wild curls away from her pulchritudinous face.

"Is being forgotten as tragic as the fact that most people live stocking a mausoleum to remember them before they are even forgotten? They live in preparation of death and I, for one, think that is the saddest way to live." Becky says, her green eyes thoughtful and serious.

"That. I hadn't thought of it in that way. Why do you not want to be remembered?" Anita asks her, wondering if her own desire to be stamped across history made her vain and shallow.

"I do want to be remembered." Becky confessed, "But I am not afraid of being forgotten. I think that there is grace in going as the tides go, creating space for the new to take over. I will never be erased. Being forgotten is not the same thing as erasure."

"How so?" Anita asks, spellbound by the captivating manner in which Becky spoke. Wisdom beyond her years.

"There were countless people before us; we remember the names of very few. But each and every one of them led us to where we are today. They are nameless but isn't that how we are born? Every single one of their nameless decisions twisting and turning and coiling around to give us the shared history of humanity. Names are forgotten, my love, but we are people who not just names and we cannot be erased."