Chasing Abby(79)

I step inside the room and grab the handle of the door. “I’m going to sleep.”
“Don’t forget your water.”
I take the glass from her and quickly close the door before she can give me any sage advice about how to get over Caleb. I set the glass of water on the nightstand, then I open the top drawer and easily find the small white remote for the window coverings. I scoop it up and press the down arrow button until the blinds and the new ivory curtains are completely closed.
I switch on my bedside lamp and stare at the mirror in the corner for a while before I gather the courage to sit down at my desk. Opening the laptop, my heart jumps when I see the desktop background. It’s a picture of Caleb and me in the quad at school. His friend Ewan took this picture of us on Caleb’s eighteenth birthday in January. I stare at him for a few minutes, searching his face for some sign of what he was planning to do. But I see nothing.
Caleb was always terrible at keeping secrets. Maybe he didn’t consider his living will a secret. Maybe he thought of it more as a gift, like the guitar he gave me for my birthday almost five months ago. And since he knew he wouldn’t be around to give it to me, he just put it out of his mind.
Well, he had it in his mind long enough to sign the papers and write me a letter. And, according to his estate lawyer, Caleb had one final gift for me. An email he wanted me to read once I was strong enough.
I log into my computer and, for a split second, consider changing the desktop background so I don’t have to stare at his smiling face. Or the way his eyebrow got crooked when he smiled hugely. Or the way his hand is pretending to squeeze my breast and I’m laughing so hard you can see my tonsils. If I change this background image, that will be the beginning of forgetting Caleb and, as painful as it is to remember, I think I’d rather die than forget him.
I open up my email program and it takes about five minutes for thousands of emails to load. There are emails from almost every single person in my senior high school class, expressing their condolences for Caleb’s death. There are more emails from people I don’t know than there are from people whose names I vaguely recognize.
I search my inbox for “Gill Burrows” and quickly find the email I’m looking for. The subject line reads: Caleb’s final request. My cursor hovers over the message, just waiting for me to double-click to open it. But I can’t. If I open that email, that will be it. I will never hear from him again. I’m not ready to let him go yet.
I minimize the program and close the lid on my laptop. Caleb wanted me to open that message when I was strong enough. And today I’m not. Today, I wonder if I’ll ever open that email.



CALEB WAS CREMATED three days after he gave me his heart and his ashes were held in an antique blue and white vase, which had previously graced the shelves in Claire’s library. The vase was kept in the library, on the shelf nearest the ’68 Stratocaster, until three weeks after his death, three days after I returned home. Then, according to Caleb’s instructions, his ashes were to be buried in the ground next to the plot where his father’s ashes are buried.
It’s a muggy, overcast Labor Day weekend and I’ve never seen so many people dressed in black gathered in one place. The clouds refuse to part, as if God has shrouded our corner of the earth in a shadow of darkness to pay His respects. I don’t want to speak at the memorial. I don’t want to bare my heart and soul in front of a crowd of hundreds of mourners. But I can’t not speak. This isn’t just anyone. This is Caleb. This is my heart.
I tread softly over the neatly trimmed grass until I reach the well-worn patch behind the wooden podium where four others have spoken before me. I glance at the crowd and quickly turn back to the speech I have displayed on my phone. The crowd is silent, as this is the moment I’m sure they’ve all been waiting for.