Soaking

I remember everything about that night. The tiny details- the time on the dashboard (10:12),
the last lyric I heard ("Come back down here, I'll show you where it hurts"),
the color of the car coming at us(red)- stick with me more than anything.
And then Grace's words, her last words on this earth-"David, look out!"-before the headlights swallowed everything whole.

I remember her hand suddenly reaching up and grabbing mine, the way she looked into my eyes in that last second before the darkness set in, her face full of calm and love and acceptance rather than panic, as if she knew that that was the last image I would have of her.
As if she knew what was waiting for her.
As if she had accepted it.

On the day that they buried her, the sky cried with the mourners and got everyone's fancy black shoes wet as they stood in the grass around her final resting place with their umbrellas up, creating a black wall between the beautiful dead and the sky she'd loved so much.
I went without an umbrella and let the rain soak me through, staring up at the sky and remembering.
I remembered the day we lay in the desert and made animals from the clouds, the day she walked all across town with her head tilted up, never looking at the ground. I held her hand and guided her, never letting her fall. I remembered how I had promised her that I would find a way to make her fly, to hollow her bones and stick her with feathers and find a way to trust that when she flew away she'd always fly back to me.

Grace had hated cemeteries. She was terrified by the idea that once you were dead you lost all control of where you could go and what you could do and were stuck in a pen with other dead souls, as if you would contaminate the living if you were allowed out.
But even so, her parents bought the plot next to her grandparents and had a headstone made because her own wishes no longer mattered and my voice was silenced. Forget that I knew her better than anyone else. Forget that she had loved me up to the very end. Forget that her last act was to grab my hand and the last words out of her mouth had included my name. Remember only that I had been driving. Remember only that this was my fault. All my fault. She was dead and cold and lifeless and I was still here and for that I would never be forgiven.

I left the funeral before it was over. I got nothing but glares and anger and regret from being there. There was no closure, no peace. There was only anger at the way they were doing it all wrong- burying her below the earth, praying to a God she didn't believe in, calling upon him to bring her to the Kingdom of Heaven, a fictional place which she had never wanted to belong to. It would do better to honor her memory in a place she loved, a place she would've wanted to be her final resting place.

I took the bus and rode for an hour before I reached our favorite spot, a playlist of memories accompanying me all the way, blasting through my headphones and hitting me harder than that red car had hit Grace.
I thanked the driver and got off the bus, walking towards the canyon that Grace and I had always loved. It was a small canyon, in what felt like the heart of the desert, though it wasn't that far out of our small Arizona town. It was breathtakingly beautiful in the simplest way, not huge and overbearing the way the Grand Canyon or the mountains are. It was quietly beautiful, just the way Grace had been. I stood on the edge and let the memory of Grace flow through me, staring up at the sky as she had so many times before.
I let the wind flow through me and whispered her name, letting her come back to me in the smell of the dust. Her thin lips, shy smile, the way she bit the inside of her cheek when she was nervous. I imagined her in front of me, sandy hair ruffled by the wind, eyes wide with exhilaration, cheeks flushed with life the way they never would be again. In my mind she was laughing, she was jumping up and down, she was belting out her favorite song, writing a poem, crying, sleeping so peacefully it seemed a crime to disturb her.
I clutched at the memories, my face wet either with tears or the rain, I wasn't sure which, and breathed her in, slowly, taking the time to remember everything I loved about her, every moment of the last three years.
Finally I opened my eyes, gathered my breath, and, keeping my mind focused on the image of Grace, stepped of the edge to meet her.