The Lovely Shadow (37 page)

Since I am often a blithering idiot when
faced with serious emotional moments I did not surprise myself when
I simply stared at her amazing shadow and said, “Oh yeah?”

“Yes, Johnny. I have been confused, but I
know my place now. I know where I belong. I have found peace. I am
whole.”

I assumed this meant that she would be
crossing the threshold of eternity now and I was happy for her but
it was a bittersweet joy because I had already decided in my heart
that I would love her until I died. Even though I could not have
her in a regular sense, I would never settle for another and I
would miss her presence in my life.

“So, you are…going then?” I asked, hoping
that my voice did not betray my deep feeling of impending loss.

“Yes, my Love. I will be going, but… not yet.
I have the courage now. I know that I belong in eternity, but I
have waited for so long that waiting longer will not kill me.”

I couldn’t help smiling at her pun, but I
didn’t have a clue as to what she might be waiting for, so I had to
ask, “What are you waiting for?”

“For you, of course! I will enter the door
when I can hold your hand and we can enter together. You have saved
me from my past, and I would have you for my future if…if you would
also have me.”

Under normal circumstances having somebody
tell you that they are going to happily sit and patiently bide
their time waiting for you to die would be rather insulting, but it
brought me great joy. Maybe I’m just weird.

“Elle,” I said uncertainly, “are you sure
that you want to spend your time waiting on me? I mean, don’t get
me wrong here, I want nothing in this world, or in any world for
that matter, more than I want to be with you, but I want you to
find peace and joy and rest, and I don’t know that you will find
that here.”

“If I am with you, I will have those things,
and eternity will never shine brightly for me until I have you
there with me. I will wait. Will you have me?”

Being a young man of seventeen I briefly
considered the fact that by spending my life in union with a
hundred-something year old dead woman meant that I would never be
able to have sex, but that was only a fleeting thought and was
quickly chased away by the idea that there must be sex in the
afterlife, and there it was likely to be something far more amazing
than any physical union on earth could ever hope to be. I could
wait.

“Elle, I love you. I am less when you are not
with me, I would have you.”

Elle positively squealed with delight at my
words and rushed forward to embrace me. As she rushed forward her
full form became fully visible to me for the first time. I did not
have enough time to see her clearly before she was on top of me and
planting a kiss directly on my lips that felt as warm and real as
if she were a physical person, and not merely the insubstantial
manifestation of a soul.

As she kissed me passionately, and I kissed
back just as passionately, I wondered briefly just how long a man
could wait for sex without going insane.

After a first kiss that seemed to last for an
hour, Elle stepped back and allowed me to see her clearly. Her
expression was anxious as I looked at her and I knew she was
insecure about revealing herself to me. Even fully clothed as she
was, this experience was to her, very similar to revealing our
naked bodies to our new lovers for the first time—hoping they won’t
be repulsed by what they see.

She had nothing to fear, for she was
absolutely stunning. All the indistinct images of alluring feminine
beauty, the sensuality, the absolute perfection of female form that
I had seen in my mind’s eye failed to do justice to the woman who
stood before me.

She appeared to be about eighteen to twenty
years of age. Her auburn hair hung majestically down to the middle
of her back and cascaded over her slim shoulders. Her bright blue
eyes sparkled behind her long eyelashes. Her somewhat sharp nose
was nestled perfectly below her eyes and between her smooth, rosy
cheeks. Her puffy red lips were of a quality that is rarely, if
ever, found naturally and usually can only be achieved with surgery
or collagen.

Her neck was long and slender and she held
her head high, not showing any of the insecurity that had plagued
her for so long, but instead projecting an air of self assuredness
that spoke volumes for her true character before life beat her
down.

I will stop my description at her shoulders,
for to describe the rest of her would seem to be disrespectful, but
I will say only this—the rest of her body was as pleasing to my
eyes as her head and shoulders were.

I told her just how beautiful she was and she
blushed, though she was confused when I told her she was more
beautiful that Kim Basinger. From that night on, Elle was my
constant companion, except, of course, for my eternity in Hell.
That was an experience I faced alone.

Life had never seemed so good for me by the
time September rolled around in the first year of the new
millennium. June’s cancer was in remission, her strength was
returning, albeit slowly, and Elle was finally an important (and
visible) part of my life.

I was starting my senior year of school and
would be graduating in only nine months, freeing me up to do
whatever I wanted with the rest of my life. From time to time I
considered what I would do after school, and considered my unusual
gift and the responsibilities that came with it, but I couldn’t
really fathom spending my life sitting around waiting for the
spirits of the dead to find me so I could help them.

I figured I would take a year off from
school, live off my inheritance for awhile and then go from there.
My inheritance, which had been wisely invested in start-up
technology companies in the early nineties, had grown to an
unbelievable sum over the subsequent decade, and it was not likely
that I would ever be able to spend all the money I had earned, as
long as I didn’t try to fund a ridiculously extravagant
lifestyle.

I knew that just because I was financially
stable for life did not mean I should kick back and enjoy a life of
leisure. I had never respected people who did not work for a
living, and I fully intended to do something with my life, I just
had no idea what that something might be.

June had not returned to work yet, as her
limited physical endurance would not allow her to do any type of
physical labor. Fortunately our financial situation at home was not
affected much by June’s lengthy illness.

She had wonderful long term and short term
disability insurance policies and had always been financially wise,
and thus she had accumulated a healthy savings account that we
could draw from when the insurance proved to be insufficient.

Her appearance was getting better by the day.
She had regained color in her skin, and no longer looked like a
corpse. She had begun to pack on some pounds again, and her hair
was beginning to grow back.

The biggest sign for me that health was
returning to June was the gradual reduction in her aura.

Through all the trials of chemotherapy, June
had refused to purchase and wear a wig, even though her doctor
tried to convince her that doing so would boost her self confidence
and help her to heal faster.

That doctor was painfully unaware that June
possessed more self confidence than Hitler and she did not suffer
any bruises to her ego when she wasn’t looking her best. Her self
confidence had never been built around her appearance and it was
unlikely that she was suddenly going to change that perception of
herself simply because she was bald and skinny.

Since June was not working, she developed new
hobbies, one of which was looking up every college in the damn
country and ordering brochures from them.

At least a half dozen of them would come in
the mail every day and at supper time June would spend the entire
meal going over the benefits and drawbacks of each institution,
trying to convince me that I really needed to consider this school
or that school.

The college suppers were annoying, but I
never told June that I found them so. As annoying as it was, it was
nice to see her being passionate again. Though her self confidence
had not suffered during her illness, some of her fire had burned
itself out and it was great to see the coals slowly being fanned
back into flames.

Time seemed to have put His slingshot away,
pulled all His cards off the table and decided to step away
complacently, allowing us to simply drift safely along in the
currents of His river, enjoying the slow moving placid waters
instead of paddling frantically and uselessly away from whirlpools
and whitewater.

September rolled into October which rolled
into November. Thanksgiving was a special event at our house that
year, and June invited several of the women she had met during her
chemotherapy sessions to join us for supper. We all had things to
be thankful for that year.

Elle rarely joined us at the dinner table.
For one she did not need to eat, nor could she even if she wanted
to, and for two, she understood that dinner, as well as our morning
time, was an important ritual for June and I that we both cherished
and needed. Elle was not jealous of the time I spent with June, but
she was slightly envious of the fact that I had such a wonderful
mother figure in my life, which was something she’d never been
blessed with.

However, I did ask Elle to join us for our
Thanksgiving dinner that year. I had never told anybody about Elle,
and she agreed with me that it would likely be best if I kept that
part of my life private, if for no other reason than to remain free
of institutional life.

She politely declined my offer to be given a
seat at the table but did agree to stay nearby where she could see
me, and I her, and thus we could both feel like she was a part of
the festivities.

I spent Thanksgiving Day slaving away in the
kitchen, trying to prepare a grand meal for nine people. By the
time the dinner was all prepared, the guests had already been there
for about an hour and I was fairly certain that the chatter of
eight women who had been through similar trials of ovarian cancer
and chemotherapy, and who now found their cancer in remission was a
similar racket to what one might find when a fox slips into a hen
house.

I struggled through the dinner, listening to
the ladies chittering and chattering, clinking and clanking, and
making more ungodly noise than I would have thought possible for
women who had been at least as sick and weak as June had been.

By the time supper ended, I had a splitting
headache and politely excused myself from the remainder of the
incessant chatter and went to bed. I loved June enough to die for
her, but apparently that love did not extend to the torture of
sitting through the equivalent of a women’s social club
meeting.

Thanksgiving had come and gone, and soon it
was time for Christmas. Fortunately, June wanted to spend Christmas
alone, which we did. Elle was present but June did not know it. And
then, before we knew it, it was New Year’s Eve.

June and I spent the night sitting on the
front porch staring out at the moonlit snow, and discussing how
much hope we had for the future, and how different this New Year’s
Eve was from the last.

While the rest of the world had been
terrified of Y2K the previous year, June and I had been only scared
of losing one another in the blackness of death. The Eve of 2001
was filled with hope, rather than despair.

That was New Year’s Eve. That was the last
time I knew what hope of any kind felt like. On January third of
2001 June had a doctor’s appointment for a checkup. We were both so
convinced that her cancer had been beaten that we were doubly
devastated when the doctor found that June’s cancer had recurred;
she was no longer in remission, but in the throes of an aggressive
second attack.

Her aura had begun to grow again as well.

June’s options the second time around were
limited and she chose none of them. She had been a fighter her
entire life, and had never backed down from a fight, but she was
not willing to step into the ring with Chemo again.

“I’ll either beat it by the grace of God, or
I’ll go visit Him personally and punch Him in the nose if He
decides not to cure me.” June said, on the few occasions that I
tried to dissuade her from a course of inaction.

June’s health deteriorated alarmingly fast.
Although many years have passed since her struggle, I still try to
block the memories from that period of time from my mind. They are
too painful.

Through the entire ordeal, June never
whimpered or complained, at least not when she thought I would hear
it, but some nights, when the pain was particularly bad for her, I
could hear her whimpering from her bedroom.

Elle tried to console me through the process,
but I was pretty much inconsolable. June stubbornly refused any
type of medical treatment, and had come to peace with the fact that
this would probably kill her. I found no peace in the prospect of
her death.

On June third, 2001, one week before my
eighteenth birthday, and one day after I graduated high school at
the top of my class, June lost her painful struggle with ovarian
cancer, and I lost everything.

On the morning that I found June lying cold
and stiff in her bed I went numb. Elle followed me around talking
to me, but I have no idea what she said. I couldn’t hear, I
couldn’t see, I couldn’t feel, and I couldn’t think.

At some point I must have dialed nine-one-one
because an ambulance pulled up the driveway at about nine-thirty in
the morning and I led the men to June’s room. I turned away as they
did the gruesome work they had to do.