Beyond the Point(124)



Hannah lounged in a beach chair, reading the final few pages of East of Eden. In the book, the main character, Adam, was nearing his end while his son Caleb stood at his deathbed, begging for forgiveness.

Picking her eyes up from the page, Hannah looked out at the water, breathing in the scent of coconut and salt. The sun hovered above the horizon, casting long golden rays across the sand. The water looked like bright blue Kool-Aid, rolling and crashing with waves. Nature, again, reminded her of her size in the universe. But if humans were so small, why did they want life to matter so much?

Sarah Goodrich had emailed Hannah after the funeral with an offer. Their old basketball teammate was deployed to Afghanistan—her second deployment since graduating from West Point in 2001. But because she was deployed, her beachfront home on the North Shore of Oahu was currently unoccupied. In that e-mail, Sarah told Hannah the house’s lockbox code and said that she could go any time she wanted, no questions asked. And so, at the urging of Dani and Avery, the three of them had booked round-trip tickets using the last of Dani’s frequent-flier miles. There were perks to having a network as wide as the Army and a friend as wealthy as Dani. And if she was going to wake up at four in the morning anyway, she might as well wake up in Hawaii.

The grief counselor said that sleeplessness was a common symptom of grief—that it might take more than a year before she could sleep normally again. But Hannah didn’t want to be normal. If not sleeping was how she could keep Tim’s memory alive, then she hoped she’d never sleep a full night again. That was why she was out there, alone. Digging her feet into the warm sand. Watching the surf come in. She wanted to remember him.

Out in the distance, three tanned surfers sat on boards, bobbing up and down in the water, waiting for the right wave to ride. Hannah caught herself watching them, wondering if they were teenagers, or if they were older. It was hard to tell. Soon, one paddled hard in front of a growing swell. He stood on his board and glided seamlessly across the water until he crashed. When he emerged from the surf, he shook his long dark hair and gave his friends a wave of his pinky and thumb, the shaka. A girl throwing a Frisbee for her dog along the water’s edge noticed Hannah and smiled, as if to say, Isn’t this morning amazing?

It was amazing. And that was what made it so difficult. Tim had never been to Hawaii, and now he never would. Would every amazing moment she experienced now also feel like a loss? The grief counselor had said she would have to learn to hold grief and joy at the same time without minimizing either emotion. She wondered if she’d ever grow tired from the weight.

Tim would never learn to surf, although she could imagine his young body adapting to the waves with ease. And that was part of the sorrow, too: Tim would only ever have a young body. There would be no old Tim. No Tim the dad or Tim the grumpy Old Grad, visiting West Point for a class reunion, like her grandfather did when Hannah was young. Was her future already decided, even then? Would Tim the grandfather have told his granddaughter to choose a different school, just as Hannah’s grandfather had tried to do? She wasn’t sure. But despite it all, Hannah was still grateful she hadn’t listened to her grandfather all those years ago. She just wished the story had a different ending.

In light of a life, four years together was far too few. Soon, the time she’d spent with Tim would pale in comparison to her time without him. Inevitably, her memories would fade. She feared the day she wouldn’t be able to conjure his face in her mind. A flat, two-dimensional picture would never capture the sound of his laugh or the little wrinkle between his eyebrows when he was concentrating. Everything she had to remember him by was a shadow of the real thing. More than once, she’d let herself call his cell phone, just to hear the prerecorded voicemail message. At some point, that phone plan would be canceled. His voice would be deleted. It was more than she could handle.

She’d attended West Point, despite her grandfather’s fears, because she felt God telling her it was the right move. She’d met and married Tim for the same reason. Every leap of faith had been worth the risk. Until now.

She looked down at the page in front of her. Caleb begged his father, Adam, for a blessing. Hannah had never had to beg for anything in her life. But she knew that if she didn’t beg, her faith would grow cold and brittle, until it crumbled into dust.

Standing up from her chair, Hannah walked down the beach, letting the emotion well up inside her. For so many years, she’d followed a prescription that she’d trusted would result in a beautiful life. Girls don’t fight back. They don’t get angry. They don’t demand things—especially not from men. They are loyal and faithful and quiet and trusting. But slowly, surely, all of those rules had unraveled. It was time to release. To let go. This was why she’d come here. To let the sound of the ocean drown out the sound of her cries.

Soon, the water lapped up against her bare ankles. She remembered the salty taste of Tim’s mouth and the feel of his body next to hers in the water last summer. And then she screamed.

She screamed that it wasn’t worth it.

That she hated God.

That she didn’t trust him.

That if this was what having faith meant, then she wasn’t sure she wanted it anymore.

She screamed of the betrayal and the fear and the loss. She screamed the same three words, over and over again, until her scream became a whisper.

“How could you?”

The wild waves pulled away from her feet and soon, quietness filled the space of her screaming. She left her shorts on the sand and dove under the water, feeling its cool, salty relief on her skin. When she emerged from under the water, the little cross necklace felt warm and wet in her hand.

Claire Gibson's Books