<\/p>\n
Fugue.\u00a0 noun\u00a0 [from French fugue, an adaptation of the Italian fuga, literally \u201cflight\u201d\u00a0\u00a0 1. a piece of\u00a0 music in which one or more short melodies or phrases are introduced by one part and developed by others from time to time with various contrapuntal devices.\u00a0 2.\u00a0 Psychiatry.\u00a0 A flight from one\u2019s own identity\u2026(Oxford Dictionary)<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
She could still feel his lips, wet, on hers.\u00a0 It had been years.\u00a0 Years since that night when he had leaned over her, when his mouth had opened onto hers, and she had melted into him.<\/p>\n
Now here she was, ten years later, to the summer, on a plane bound for his town.<\/p>\n
The call had come two days earlier.<\/p>\n
She\u2019d been listening to a fugue.\u00a0 Bach.\u00a0 The counterpoint in them always stirred her.\u00a0\u00a0 A theme introduced, and then taken over, made larger, opened up,\u00a0developed until it finally concluded in simplicity.<\/p>\n
She had answered the phone with a long, drawn, inquisitive but quiet \u201chello\u201d.\u00a0 People never really realize how they sound on the phone, but she imagined she sounded rather reflective, rather larger than life, and, perhaps slightly distracted \u2013 no one on the phone should think you are waiting for them to call.<\/p>\n
\u201cSara?\u201d\u00a0 She hadn\u2019t recognized the voice.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s John.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 John.\u00a0 John.\u00a0 She had thought.\u00a0 John.<\/p>\n
\u201cFrom Vancouver.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cJohn!\u201d\u00a0 Immediate recognition, as if ten years of life did not stand between that summer and today.\u00a0 John!<\/p>\n
\u201cOh my God!\u201d\u00a0 Sara held her breath.\u00a0\u00a0 There would be only one reason that Luc\u2019s friend John would ever telephone her.\u00a0 She was breathless.<\/p>\n
\u201cSara,\u201d John continued quietly.\u00a0 \u201cHe died yesterday.\u201d\u00a0 Silence.\u00a0 The painful silence of shock, followed by the even greater pain of reality.<\/p>\n
Tears filled Sara\u2019s being in the moment that followed the silence.\u00a0 They filled her from the centre of her soul, outward.\u00a0 They filled her like water fills a glass.\u00a0 And in the moment, which seemed like\u00a0many\u00a0more, they welled\u00a0over,\u00a0and flowed from her eyes like silent rivers that had been running the brook bed for centuries.<\/p>\n
She mustered a tight, drawn \u201coh\u201d.<\/p>\n
Then, \u201coh John.\u201d<\/p>\n
He was quiet a moment, and then continued, safe in an explanation of details.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was yesterday.\u00a0 He\u2019d said he would meet me at the course.\u00a0 He still golfs, you know, Sara.\u00a0 He\u2019s real\u00a0good now.\u201d\u00a0 He was quiet again.<\/p>\n
\u201cAnyway.\u201d\u00a0 Back to the details, perhaps realizing he\u2019d used the present tense.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe just didn\u2019t come.\u00a0 He never does that, you know.\u00a0 You know<\/em> him.\u00a0 He is always where he says he\u2019ll be.\u00a0 Never\u00a0stands\u00a0you up.\u00a0 I knew something was wrong.\u201d<\/p>\n Sara listened, suddenly small and silent as she drew in the painful breaths of loss.<\/p>\n \u201cAt first I just thought he\u2019d been caught on the phone or somethin\u2019.\u00a0\u00a0 You know?\u201d\u00a0 A pause.\u00a0 Sara said nothing. \u201cThen I worried about an accident, you know?\u00a0 I went over to his place—\u201c<\/p>\n Sara\u2019s faint breathing stopped when John\u2019s voice stopped.<\/p>\n Oh my God, she thought\u2026.he found Luc.\u00a0 HE found his best friend!<\/p>\n \u201cOh John,\u201d she gasped.\u00a0 And in a braver moment, \u201cJohn I am so sorry.\u201d<\/p>\n Luc had had a heart attack, they\u2019d said.\u00a0 It was not surprising, she\u2019d thought. He had smoked most of his life,\u00a0and hadn\u2019t seen a doctor much.\u00a0 There may have been heart problems he never knew about.<\/p>\n Instantly, she remembered the times he\u2019d said that he wondered if he would die alone.\u00a0 That perhaps he would be dead and no one would find him for days.\u00a0 Having lived alone so much of his life, this could have been a real possibility.\u00a0 He had always gone on to say that it wouldn\u2019t have mattered to anyone anyway.\u00a0 She had always corrected him.\u00a0 And, uncomfortable with this, he had always made light of it.<\/p>\n Which had always led to a frustrated, Sara\u2026.and he would say \u201cYou just don\u2019t get it.\u00a0 That\u2019s not what I meant.\u00a0 You just don\u2019t get it.\u00a0 You are so funny about things like this.\u201d\u00a0 He\u2019d meant that she\u2019d always take a chance to say she cared.<\/p>\n And now it had happened.\u00a0 And her first thought was of unbearable loss.\u00a0 She had failed.\u00a0 She had never been able to help him realize that he did matter.\u00a0 That his life was terribly important to her.\u00a0 To John.\u00a0 And there were other friends too.\u00a0 But that his death was the ultimate loss in\u00a0her life.<\/p>\n She and John had made the plans.\u00a0 She had said, of course\u00a0she would attend the funeral.\u00a0 Of course!\u00a0 And John had agreed to pick her up at the airport.\u00a0 She\u2019d called a travel agent who had booked her on a flight from Toronto to Vancouver the next day.\u00a0 She didn\u2019t have much to put in place in order to get away.\u00a0 Not anymore, anyway.<\/p>\n She remembered when she had first met Luc, how very much there had to been to put in place in order to see him.\u00a0 Children to have taken care of.\u00a0 Schedules to have made.\u00a0 Food to have prepared for her absence.\u00a0 Stories to concoct to satisfy her husband\u2019s curiosity.\u00a0 There had been so much, back then.<\/p>\n Now there was nothing.\u00a0 She had called a friend to look after Liam, her cat.\u00a0 And to pick up the mail and newspapers.\u00a0 \u201cWould you mind,\u201d she had said.\u00a0 \u201cI need to go to the funeral of an old friend\u2026..it\u2019s in Vancouver.\u201d\u00a0 But that was all.\u00a0 No one would miss her otherwise.\u00a0 Everything else was gone.<\/p>\n Now here she sat, in a window seat on the plane bound for Vancouver.\u00a0 It would be hours before she arrived.<\/p>\n She remembered her first trip there.\u00a0 The hopes and dreams that had led her there.\u00a0 The excitement.\u00a0 The curiosity.\u00a0 The sheer indulgence of it.\u00a0 Of their meeting. \u00a0Of their meeting in person, after having met through letters and phone calls.\u00a0\u00a0 She remembered how her legs had shaken uncontrollably as she walked off the plane.\u00a0 How she\u2019d worried if she would recognize him from the pictures he had sent her.\u00a0 How she\u2019d fixed her eyes on everything but the people around her, afraid that she would recognize him before he recognized her.\u00a0 She had considered herself a fool, she remembered.\u00a0 In fact, her first words to him, as he had come up behind her near the baggage carousel, had been<\/p>\n \u201cWe are fucking stupid.\u00a0 God damned stupid.\u00a0 I will never do this again, as long as I live.\u201d\u00a0 And laughter.<\/p>\n There had always been lots of laughter.<\/p>\n ***************************************************<\/p>\n They had spent an exhilarating week. \u00a0She was free.\u00a0 Free at last from the constraints of her life.\u00a0 The children whose every need she had met every moment of her life for thirteen years.\u00a0 The husband whose every need she had never been able to meet.\u00a0 The freedom was overwhelming to her.<\/p>\n And Luc had been a perfect gentleman.\u00a0 They\u2019d slept together, nestled in one another\u2019s arms.\u00a0 Together as if they had never been apart.\u00a0 They\u2019d told stories, Luc mostly.\u00a0 She had listened in awe of his life, his experiences, his travels.\u00a0 She felt sometimes that they had been brought together so that her eyes would be opened to the vastness of life she had never imagined.<\/p>\n They kissed.\u00a0 They touched.\u00a0 But it was all very quiet and small.\u00a0 No rapture of love-making.\u00a0 No frenzied meeting of their bodies.\u00a0 Just a quiet love that was so small that it might have been overlooked by some.<\/p>\n And the kiss.\u00a0 The precise moment in time when Sara\u2019s soul had come alive. Like the first note or chord of a concerto.\u00a0\u00a0 He had wanted her in that moment.\u00a0 She had wanted him.\u00a0 And the wetness of the kiss had felt like a pool of passion that would envelop both of them.\u00a0 And then it had stopped.\u00a0 They had not gone further.\u00a0 They had each feared the outcome.<\/p>\n So the one kiss.\u00a0 A moment in time.\u00a0 His lips on hers, wanting hers.\u00a0 Her lips exploring his with passion\u00a0she could only have imagined before that moment.<\/p>\n Oh, they had talked about it.\u00a0 She had had a difficult time putting aside that memory.\u00a0 They had talked about it rationally and logically.\u00a0 And sometimes irrationally.\u00a0 In an emotional moment, she had begged him even to recapture that moment.\u00a0 Just even for the moment, if not more.\u00a0 But he had refused.\u00a0\u00a0 He had tried to explain, but it was lost on her.\u00a0 She had wanted him more than life itself.\u00a0 Yet at the same time, she\u2019d wanted his happiness even more than her own.\u00a0 And so it was that they had never made love.\u00a0 Never kissed that way again.<\/p>\n But Sara\u2019s soul had its memory.\u00a0 That moment was the peg that she strung the rest of her life upon.\u00a0 Not a life lived in\u00a0promise\u00a0of\u00a0relationship, but a life lived full and complete because of the opening that had happened in that moment. She\u2019d known then that it was possible for her to feel emotional, physical and spiritual depth beyond her wildest dreams.\u00a0 And it had changed her life.<\/p>\n She had gone back to Ontario, to her life.\u00a0 Eventually, knowing the depths she needed to reach, she had left.\u00a0 Mothered the children as best she could from a distance, and deepened her life experiences as much as she could.\u00a0 She and Luc had exchanged letters now and again.\u00a0 They had seen one another occasionally, but not often.\u00a0 And never slept in one another\u2019s arms again.<\/p>\n But in her secret dreams, she had lived with Luc, and shared his heart every day since they had met.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 She had tried to redefine friendship; thought there could be a friendship that included the physical closeness she had experienced with him.\u00a0\u00a0 Interesting that she had chosen one person to open to, and not to open her life to everyone she knew.\u00a0 Still guarded.<\/p>\n She had believed early on in their relationship, during their week together, that she had something that was meant for him.\u00a0 She had guessed at it.\u00a0 Wondered what it might be.\u00a0 The obvious things like opening up his soul.\u00a0 Like proving that relationships are not always hurtful.\u00a0 She\u2019d never laboured\u00a0over these notes, but she\u2019d always believed that time was what he needed.\u00a0 That one day, given time, he would be full and complete.\u00a0 Not perhaps with<\/em> her, but perhaps because<\/em> of her.\u00a0 And she\u2019d given that time willingly, from her heart, at her own cost.<\/p>\n And now.<\/p>\n And now.<\/p>\n Time was the one thing they no longer had.<\/p>\n Suddenly she was aware of the loudness of the plane.\u00a0 She was angry.\u00a0 \u201cWhy him?\u201d she prayed, shaking her internal fist at her god.\u00a0 \u201cWhy, damn it?\u00a0 I loved him.\u00a0 They way you want me to love.\u00a0 I gave him my entire soul.\u00a0 Every bit of me!\u201d\u00a0 She was working herself into a frenzy.<\/p>\n She looked out the window.\u00a0 They were now above the clouds.\u00a0 She remembers flying home from Vancouver the first time.\u00a0 Her eyes had been drenched in tears.\u00a0 She\u2019d had a window seat then, too, and she\u00a0remembered now how she\u2019d thought she was\u00a0lucky\u00a0because she could turn her head from the rest of the passengers.\u00a0\u00a0 She turned her head now.\u00a0 She remembered the clouds.\u00a0 The shapes and the forms that had once seemed so meaningless.\u00a0 And then how, after her week with Luc, she had been able to see that these formless shapes had paths between them, that they were like experiences that we could manoeuvre around, pause at, memories we could take away with us.<\/p>\n And the rainbow!\u00a0 Oh yes, the rainbow!\u00a0 That had come from nowhere on a clear sunny day.\u00a0 The rainbow that she imagined Luc had sent to her to help guide her.\u00a0 To help her find her way through the shapes.\u00a0 She had told him about the rainbow.\u00a0 She imagined he\u2019d never really understood, that she knew the real reason for the rainbow, yet that the imagery was far more important to her.<\/p>\n Eventually she hadn\u2019t cared.\u00a0 She\u2019d spun her own stories of hope.\u00a0 They were her lifeline.<\/p>\n He\u2019s gone, she remembered now.\u00a0 He\u2019s gone, and I can never talk to him again.\u00a0 Even to share the weather.\u00a0 She remembered how she\u2019d revelled\u00a0even in those conversations.\u00a0 Silly, she\u2019d thought, as she had often over the years.\u00a0 But those conversations had always been windows through which she felt their souls connected.\u00a0 Every conversation had been that.<\/p>\n She thought about what would happen at the funeral.\u00a0 The arrangements.\u00a0 She was afraid.\u00a0 She could not imagine seeing him.\u00a0 Not like that.\u00a0 She couldn\u2019t do it.<\/p>\n Oh yes, she could.\u00a0 He had always said she could do ANYTHING.<\/p>\n Still\u00a0he gave her strength.\u00a0 Even in his death.<\/p>\n But the thought frightened her.<\/p>\n Where was he now, she wondered?\u00a0 Did his soul open as he died?\u00a0 Did he think of her?\u00a0 Why would he, he would have said.<\/p>\n She was crying again. \u00a0Now hard. Holding her chest with her arms so it didn\u2019t heave.<\/p>\n She imagined not.\u00a0 She imagined so.\u00a0 She was lost in her imaginings.\u00a0 She had been lost there for a very long time.<\/p>\n She reached down into her carry-on and pulled out a little pad and a pen.\u00a0 And she turned to the window and used the armrest as a table.\u00a0 Hiding her musings from interested eyes.<\/p>\n And she wrote,<\/p>\n In silence you were strength.<\/em><\/p>\n Alone, you were passion.<\/em><\/p>\n In the darkness you shone brilliantly.<\/em><\/p>\n And your grounding you gave wings to my flight.<\/em><\/p>\n She stopped.\u00a0 That part was easy, but it felt like there should be more.\u00a0 It felt silly.\u00a0 He had always been her strength, whether he accepted it or not.\u00a0 He had always been her passion.\u00a0 And her guiding light, despite his unwillingness to accept that too.<\/p>\n She kept writing.<\/p>\n In your death you give life.<\/em><\/p>\n Well there\u2019s a line for you, she thought.\u00a0 Sounds like something biblical.\u00a0 It goes with the rest, but is it true?\u00a0 I don\u2019t feel life right now.\u00a0\u00a0 And her mind wandered to places that were painful.\u00a0 Like what Luc would have thought of that line.\u00a0 In your death you are\u00a0life.<\/p>\n God\u2019s jokes on us, she thought, without any humour.<\/p>\n Then she thought of the ten years since she\u2019d met Luc.\u00a0 The years she had quietly formed her hopes and dreams with no regard to reality.\u00a0 There had been the odd letter.\u00a0 The times he had allowed her the tiniest glimpses of his soul.\u00a0 Few.\u00a0 But some.<\/p>\n Luc had lived life on the surface.\u00a0 Taken his lot, played the game, tried hard to figure out the deals as they were presented, and to make each interaction pleasant.\u00a0 But not more than pleasant.\u00a0 Depth to Luc was wasted.\u00a0 That had been the key difference between them.<\/p>\n She had created her world of passion and love based on what she\u2019d felt in her heart was there.\u00a0 It was a deeper sense of being than any other she could imagine.\u00a0 She knew her soul mate — she had met him.\u00a0 And so there was that world\u2026.the world of fancy.\u00a0 Not that she did not live in reality too.\u00a0 Of course she did.\u00a0 She did all the regular things that people do: \u00a0held a job\u00a0 — hers was as a sports writer at the local paper.\u00a0 She\u2019d dutifully, sometimes happily, visited with her children, had been present at her grandson\u2019s birth, and had spent quiet evenings with friends.\u00a0 But she also, secretly, lived in her spun dream, her flight of fancy.<\/p>\n In death you give life.\u00a0 No, she thought, it can\u2019t be.\u00a0 It doesn\u2019t work.\u00a0 But she was compelled to write.\u00a0 She needed to write.\u00a0 It was as if it was the only way she might communicate with Luc.\u00a0 Now.<\/p>\n Now.<\/p>\n Now, in the moments of unfolding on the plane, she felt spent.\u00a0 Like a fugue that dissolved in the middle, abandoned.\u00a0 Tired.\u00a0 Defeated.<\/p>\n But as her mind went to rest, her heart played on.\u00a0 It was how she survived.\u00a0 She allowed her dreams to take flight, her soul to have wings.\u00a0 And in those moments she wondered silently at the whole thing.\u00a0 The whole story, the beginning, its middle, and now its end.<\/p>\n Its\u00a0meaning.\u00a0Its\u00a0importance.<\/p>\n She wondered.\u00a0 Perhaps Luc had existed in her life not to share her depth, but to provoke it.\u00a0 He had existed in her life to open her, to move her, to guide her.\u00a0 Had she never known him, she would never have become the person she was.\u00a0 The person who loved so unconditionally and immensely that even angels took note.<\/p>\n Luc had been there.\u00a0 Been brought to her life for that.\u00a0 And had been taken from her life in order for her to know completely the depth of the experience.<\/p>\n In your death you give life.<\/em><\/p>\n She thought about what she might say to his friends.\u00a0 None of them she knew very well.\u00a0 But she had loved them too.\u00a0 In her own way.\u00a0 What would she say to them now?<\/p>\n She kept writing.\u00a0 And the story unfolded.\u00a0 From the kiss.\u00a0 To today.\u00a0 It was a modern tragedy, some would say, she thought.\u00a0 Others would be scornful of her undying love for a man who said \u201cno\u201d.<\/p>\n She read the story, tightly, through her tears, the next morning at Luc\u2019s funeral.\u00a0\u00a0 Her eyes reddened and swollen.\u00a0 But she read the story.\u00a0 For all to hear.\u00a0 For them all to know how loved Luc had been.\u00a0 How alone he had never been.<\/p>\n \u201cIn your death you are life,\u201d she finished slowly.\u00a0 And repeated. \u201c In your death you are life, Luc.\u201d\u00a0 She walked over to the\u00a0casket,\u00a0and laid her paper on the polished wooden box.\u00a0 A box, she had thought.\u00a0 For the soul that was part of me.\u00a0 A box.<\/p>\n She laid her story on the box, bent over and kissed the top, and said so quietly,<\/p>\n \u201cFly away now friend.\u00a0 Fly away.\u00a0 Safe journey.\u201d<\/p>\n And she walked quietly back to her seat.<\/p>\n Later, John and Sara went to Luc\u2019s house.\u00a0 As they turned in the driveway, Sara\u2019s heart withered.\u00a0 Her breath went away again.\u00a0 She tasted the coffee left on her\u00a0tongue,\u00a0and hated it.\u00a0 It reminded her of the coffee she\u2019d tasted with Luc ten years earlier.\u00a0 The fun they\u2019d had over coffee and a cigarette.\u00a0 She closed her eyes.\u00a0\u00a0 The driveway to Luc\u2019s house had been the doorway to her heaven.\u00a0 And now it was hard for her to remember the moment of realization that in dying Luc had made it possible for her dream to live forever \u2013 for the entire depth of the experience to envelop her.<\/p>\n John unlocked the door and slowly pushed it in.\u00a0 Sara could not hold back the tears now, remembering the times she had pushed in the door and wondered how high to raise her gaze to meet Luc\u2019s.\u00a0 He\u2019d been so much taller than she was.\u00a0 And the times she\u2019d been secretly breathless when she\u2019d seen him.\u00a0 Oh to see him, Sara begged silently.\u00a0 Oh to see him once last time.\u00a0 Here in his house, where he loved to be.\u00a0 Here in his world, that he had specially created for himself.<\/p>\n She shut the door carefully behind her, pushing down the thumb piece to latch it.\u00a0 Careful in her movement.\u00a0 Meticulous.<\/p>\n Could she bear this? she thought.<\/p>\n John was at the sliding doors, looking out over the lake.\u00a0 They hadn\u2019t spoken.<\/p>\n Sara walked over to the fireplace.\u00a0 Cold, now.\u00a0 She wanted more than anything to curl up into a ball, and let her tears overcome her.<\/p>\n And then she saw them.<\/p>\n Among the ornaments on the shelf were the crystal dolphins she had given him ten years earlier.<\/p>\n She remembered the moment, now.\u00a0 When she had given him the gift.\u00a0 A gift of her heart.\u00a0 She had looked hard for that present.\u00a0 Spent the last of her savings on it.\u00a0 She had known she\u2019d wanted dolphins \u2013 there was a special meaning of dolphins for him.\u00a0 It had meant the world to her to find that replica of two dolphins, in crystal, with gold fins.\u00a0 Mounted on a wooden base.\u00a0 She remembered he had seemed touched by the gift.\u00a0 Touched, but not overwhelmed.\u00a0 He was never overwhelmed.\u00a0 Not by her.<\/p>\n She looked at the dolphins now.\u00a0 And then her glance took in the card.\u00a0 The same card that she had given him with the gift ten years earlier.<\/p>\n She was crying uncontrollably now.\u00a0 She had forgotten.<\/p>\n She reached for the card carefully lifting it over the dolphins.\u00a0 She opened\u00a0it,\u00a0and saw her own handwriting.\u00a0 Recognized it through her tears.\u00a0 She wiped her eyes.\u00a0 Now she could remember writing it like it had been yesterday.\u00a0 She knew what it said.\u00a0\u00a0 I\u2019m glad the dolphins saved you<\/em>.<\/p>\n And she remembered how she\u2019d cried when she gave the gift to him.\u00a0 Watched him read the card.\u00a0 She remembered how she\u2019d known this was\u00a0a world\u00a0she was creating, a flight she was agreeing to.\u00a0 How she had loved him with all her heart.<\/p>\n And yet how she had known even in that moment that she never would feel that love in return.\u00a0 And it hadn\u2019t mattered.\u00a0 Her soul had opened.\u00a0 That\u2019s<\/em> what mattered.<\/p>\n She gently ran her finger across the back of the large dolphin.\u00a0 She wondered if he had ever done that.\u00a0 Wondered if he had ever just sat and looked at the dolphins.<\/p>\n She knew they had meant something to him when she\u2019d given them to him, and she knew they had meant something to him all these years.\u00a0 That they had never been moved from the mantle.\u00a0 He\u2019d promised her that, and kept his promise.<\/p>\n She knew he must have thought of her often.\u00a0 And that was all she needed now.<\/p>\n Her crying had stopped.\u00a0 For now.\u00a0 She held the dolphins to her heart and backed up toward the couch.\u00a0 She lay back and rested her head.\u00a0 She touched the dolphins to her heart, clutching the card between the dolphins and her hands.\u00a0 She pressed them tighter to her.\u00a0 She let her chest heave against them.\u00a0 She let her tears flow, first silently.\u00a0 Then she cried out.\u00a0 Cried out loud.\u00a0 Cried for the loss.\u00a0 Cried for the moments they had never shared.\u00a0 Cried for the dream never realized.\u00a0 At that moment she wanted to throw the dolphins onto the table and watch them smash.\u00a0 She stopped herself.\u00a0 Afraid of her responses.<\/p>\n The tears did not stop.\u00a0 But the anger and fear gave way.\u00a0 And, after a while, her tears were off and on.\u00a0 And silent.\u00a0 She sat holding the dolphins to her heart.\u00a0 Still.\u00a0 As tight as before.\u00a0 When the tears came, they fell in little streams from the corners of her eyes down her cheekbones, and onto her neck.\u00a0 She cried a long time like that.\u00a0 Off and on.\u00a0 Realizing new things each moment.\u00a0 And then it all stopped.\u00a0 The tears.\u00a0 The realizations.\u00a0 Inside she was empty.\u00a0 And if we could have seen her soul, we would have seen a carefully drawn phrase\u2026..neatly executed curved letters.\u00a0 It would have said\u2026<\/p>\n I cried for you Luc, because I wanted more for you.\u00a0 I cry now, because I know that in your death, you have given life \u2013 to me, to my dream, to my spun world.\u00a0 To my flight through the rainbow.\u00a0 And, in crying, my soul opens up, exposes its depth and breadth.\u00a0 You knew the meaning of all this.\u00a0 You never spoke it, or wrote it \u2013 you lived it.\u00a0 Quietly.\u00a0 And with every person you knew.\u00a0 This was our story Luc.\u00a0 You were the angel\u00a0 sent to open my soul.\u00a0 I don\u2019t know how to thank you.<\/em><\/p>\n She didn\u2019t know how to thank him.\u00a0 In reality, she could<\/em> not thank him.\u00a0 Because she knew the pain.<\/p>\n The pain of love and loss.\u00a0 Yet the choice had been hers.\u00a0 She\u2019d always known that. And she had chosen to allow her soul to open, to feel to its depth.\u00a0 And for that, she could thank him.\u00a0 For her spun\u00a0world, for her fugue, and for the simple ending.\u00a0 For the gift of her soul.<\/p>\n She took the dolphins and wrapped them carefully.\u00a0 She took the card and placed both in an old box that was at the back door.\u00a0 She went to John and asked him to drive her to the airport.<\/p>\n \u201cI want to catch an earlier flight,\u201d she said quietly. \u201cI have all that Luc could ever give me.\u00a0 I made no mistakes, she said.\u00a0 But now I know something I didn\u2019t before.\u00a0\u00a0 He gave me the gift of love, of my soul.\u00a0 And I\u2019ve never used it.\u201d<\/p>\n John held her.\u00a0 Tightly.\u00a0 A measure of knowing.\u00a0 Of it\u00a0being\u00a0ok that it had taken her this long to understand.<\/p>\n \u201cHe talked about the dolphins a lot, Sara,\u201d he said.\u00a0 \u201cThey meant the world to him.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cI know,\u201d Sara said quietly.\u00a0 I know, she thought.\u00a0 I made a difference.\u00a0 And so did he.\u00a0 And she backed away from John and smiled.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Fugue.\u00a0 noun\u00a0 [from French fugue, an adaptation of the Italian fuga, literally \u201cflight\u201d\u00a0\u00a0 1. a piece of\u00a0 music in which one or more short melodies or phrases are introduced by one part and developed by others from time to time with various contrapuntal devices.\u00a0 2.\u00a0 Psychiatry.\u00a0 A flight from one\u2019s own identity\u2026(Oxford Dictionary) […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":204,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[38],"tags":[61],"class_list":["post-185","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-creative-writing","tag-fiction"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jeannepengelly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/185","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jeannepengelly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jeannepengelly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jeannepengelly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jeannepengelly.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=185"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.jeannepengelly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/185\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jeannepengelly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/204"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jeannepengelly.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=185"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jeannepengelly.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=185"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jeannepengelly.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=185"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}