Satellites and Violets

Gina was old now by nearly anyone’s standards. Her face was wrinkled and her joints creaked when she moved, especially first thing in the morning or when rain was on the way. The young people she passed in the streets on the way to buy bread and vegetables from the market saw someone else’s grandmother in a tattered grey cardigan and a faded, flowered skirt — a stranger they didn’t know and couldn’t relate to.

Sometimes Gina herself would see the same when she looked into the sea-green eyes of her reflection in the morning when it was time to get ready for the day — a stranger she didn’t recognize. A stranger with her eyes and her vivid memories of a wonderful life well-lived, but someone else’s papery skin and bowed back.

She wasn’t quite sure when she started seeing a stranger in the mirror instead of merely an aging version of herself, but she was sure it started around when Jim passed away. He had walked into her life when she was only 20 years old, but she knew he was the one for her right away.

Imagine living on a still planet, everything frozen in place — all the people, the animals, and the blades of grass — and then watching it all come to life and begin to move, live, and breathe around you. That was exactly how Gina’s young heart interpreted the moment when she first met Jim on the sandy white beach near where she lived with her family.

They’d walked along the shore watching the waves. He’d given her a seashell. She’d given him a silver comb she’d worn in her hair every day since she was a little girl. Jim wrapped the comb in a piece of soft linen and kept it in the drawer of his nightstand. Gina brought the seashell home to her mother and told her excitedly that it was from the man she was going to marry.

That day, Gina’s mother had chuckled softly and shook her head as she expertly kneaded the white dough for that day’s bread. A year later, she smiled proudly as she helped her daughter fix her hair for her wedding day and adjusted her wedding veil so that it was just so. After the wedding, just before Jim and Gina were to leave for their honeymoon in Spain to see the beaches there, Gina’s father told Jim to take care of his daughter.

The next day was the first day of a wonderful patchwork life well-lived together. They had two beautiful, healthy twin sons who grew up to be sailors. Then they had a frail, fragile daughter who didn’t grow up at all. They bought a big, beautiful home in the city where they could raise their family and build a life. They sold it after their children moved away and found a smaller one on the beach right down the way from the house where Gina grew up.

With Jim in her life, Gina barely noticed the passing of the years. She supposed he had started to show his age over the years just as she had, but it wasn’t something she thought a lot about. He was always just Jim with his twinkling blue eyes and his off-color sense of humor.

Until he wasn’t quite Jim anymore. Alzheimer’s could do that to people, you know. One minute, he was present and alert — himself in every possible way. The next he might think he was a little boy growing up in Stockholm. Other minutes — the most terrible type of all — would find him with no idea who he was or who Gina was.

The day Jim passed away brought with it many mixed feelings for Gina and their children. On the one hand, they were glad he wasn’t hurting, sick, and confused anymore. But on the other, it was as if someone had put out the sun one night and forgotten to turn it back on the next day.

Gina would always see Jim’s love as the finest prize she ever could have won in life, and the thought of him would always bring a smile to her face, but it was hard to go on sometimes without his hand in hers.

Sometimes at night, when Gina would lie in bed waiting to fall asleep, she’d lie very still and picture a network of satellites orbiting the earth, transmitting countless signals this way and that way. The closer sleep came to spiriting her away for the night, the more certain she’d feel that she was picking up on Jim’s signal.

There was the rhythmic, high-pitched chirping of the satellites themselves as they moved along their merry way. Then there would be a bit of Jim’s loud, raucous laughter in the distance, carried past on an unseen gust of wind. There’d be the sound of the seagulls in Gina’s ears and the heavy weight of Jim’s hand on hers as they watched the sun rise over the waves together from their porch over coffee. And then darkness and oblivion until it was time to start another day.

........

Jim had it good where he was living now in heaven. He had a little log cabin with a smart little chimney and a fireplace, located way out in the middle of a field of wheat. It looked remarkably like a place he’d never been but would dream of often as a little boy. The sun was always shining and it was always harvest time, the sound of the threshers mowing the wheat carrying on the wind as it blew past the cabin.

Although he in no way wished for Gina’s life to be cut short like the stalks of wheat way out there in the field, he dreamed longingly of the day he would see her again. He knew she’d love the cabin. He already had it all decorated and prepared, exactly the way he knew she’d like it.

There was a rocking chair on the porch facing the east where the sun would rise every morning. There was a Dutch oven on the stove, just like the one Gina’s mother had used to bake bread every day and then given to Gina just before she passed on. There was honey in the pantry and butter in the icebox. There were even tinkling wind chimes hanging outside what would one day be their bedroom window.

In the meantime — while he waited — Jim had taken to gardening. There was no place he loved to be more than out back with his flowerbeds, pulling weeds and turning the earth with his little green-handled trowel as the scent of the flowers perfumed the air around him. At night, he’d sit out there and watch the moon rise as the crickets chirped, thinking about the past and dreaming ahead toward the future.

Jim loved all his flowers like friends, but he loved the violets most of all. Their beautiful purple heads were shapely and proud, but hung modestly under their own weight. Their sweet, delicate perfume reminded him so much of the scent Gina used to wear. When he found himself missing her particularly badly, he’d make robust bouquets of the violets and place them around the house.

When he’d go to sleep on nights like those, his head full of dreams of the past and the air around him full of violets, he’d have the most vivid dreams. The clearest ones would often find him ascending into space. He’d follow the chirping and whirring of satellites and then chase them around the perimeter of the earth as they sped along — going nowhere in particular, but moving with purpose nevertheless.

One night, he saw Gina there — up in space, orbiting among the satellites herself. Somehow he knew she was looking for him. He’d try to reach her, but only just miss her, smelling the gentle scent of violets in the wake she’d leave behind. He supposed it was not meant to be just yet, and he didn’t want to interrupt her life, whatever it might be like.

But he missed her just the same. He couldn’t help it. Jim had had many wins in his life, but Gina was his finest prize — the one that gave meaning and weight to all the others.

........

The days in heaven were pleasant, so they were never hard, but Jim lost track of how many there had been after a while. There were no clocks in heaven. You did as you liked and you told time by the sun. Time wasn’t measured or squandered here. It was left free and unfettered to be and do as it liked.

And Jim was young again here — in the prime of his life once again. Gone was the Alzheimer’s, and the arthritis, and the vague dull aching in his back that never fully went away no matter how much medication he took. Gone was the grey hair and the wrinkled, papery skin he’d developed in his old age. He couldn’t tell the years in his face, so he learned to stop thinking in years at all — a positive development for anyone’s eternal wellbeing.

One morning, he was sitting on his front porch, holding a bouquet of freshly picked violets for reasons he didn’t quite understand. He kept staring down the cobbled road he’d never followed but always assumed led to nowhere. It was as if he were waiting for someone. And then all at once, he understood why.

As the sun hung low in the sky, getting ready to set, he saw a figure making its way up the road, making steady progress in the direction of his little cabin. As the figure grew nearer, hope became understanding and understanding became elation.

It was Gina, looking as fresh and lovely as she did years and years ago when they’d first been married. Her long hair stirred in the breeze and her white sundress rippled around her long legs as she walked. When she recognized him, her walk turned to a jog and Jim found himself sprinting to meet her.

On Earth, Gina had finally died peacefully in her sleep, dreaming of Jim and of flying with the satellites. But here in heaven, she was alive and well. She’d never be sick, or tired, or lonely again.

“Welcome home, my love,” said Jim warmly as he looked deeply into his wife’s familiar green eyes and pressed the bouquet of violets into her open hands. “I have so much to show you.”