A re-telling of the true 12th century love story of Heloise and Abelard. Abelard is a great philosopher and theologian who has taken, like many academics of the time, a vow of celibacy. When he is hired as a tutor for the brilliant and beautiful Hel...
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Someone told me once that life is a series of last times.
You say goodbye to life in degrees, not all at once. There is a last time for everything: there is a last time you eat a cake, the last time you run through a field, the last time you hold your mother's hand, the last time you pluck a rose from a bush... there is a last time for everything we do, but we do not know it. If we knew it, we would always be saying goodbye, for in degrees life is always leaving us.
It is composed of last times and last times and last times - a whole, beautiful pile of them - until there is the last time you walk. The last time you open your eyes. The last clutch of a loved one's hand. The last word. And finally, the last breath.
I stayed by Abelard's bedside for the entire week he was nearing death. Stubbornly, I would not get up save for the odd necessity. I slept right there beside him. I held his hand. We spoke of nothing and everything. We made up stories. We made up poems. We laughed. I read him passages from all the books on my shelf, until he raised his hand to lower the books from my palms. "Do not read to me anymore, Heloise. I am tired of words. Come, look in my eyes."
And there is an agony deep as a canyon when you look into the eyes of someone who is slipping away. You see a life in them still, so wide and brimming, and you cannot believe that soon it will turn vacant.
Abelard did not seem sad, and so I did my best to mirror him. I entangled my hands with his, raising them to my lips and kissing them desperately. "Heloise," he commanded my eyes to his, his voice crackling in its frailty. It was thin as paper. "When I die, bury me with my feet facing to the right. When you die, be buried beside me with your feet facing the same way."
"Why, my love?" I stroked his hair away from his sweat-laden face. His eyes were as blue as ever, magnified beneath his pooling tears.
"So that when Christ comes, we may rise facing the same way. I want to stand beside you, so we may meet Heaven as one."
When you watch the life - the spirit - leaving someone, there is no way you can believe that the soul ends right then and there. A whole life... where does it go? It has to go somewhere. I watched, over the years, Abelard's body become a burdensome, frail container. I watched him struggle to maneuver it. I felt, now, that his soul was being freed - it was being untethered from its chains. And now... it would disperse; he would be unbound from his mortal container. He would be free - coating the leaves, and the branches, and the stones in the walls; the pages of my books, and the stained glass light drifting through the cathedral; he would be everywhere - mixing with the wind itself.
No, he could not fade to nothing; I was sure of it. I was convinced that death did not end a life, it merely changed it.
Perhaps the soul returned home, to live with God in the very rays of the sun that touched all of earth and gave it life. In dying, he was not nowhere; he was everywhere.
Death comes in degrees.
The final raising of two blue eyes to meet yours.
That final understanding between you, swelling bigger than can fit into words.
The final look of a soul brimming behind irises.
The final clutch of your hand, as theirs grows limp.
The final shutting of the eyes, heart pounding to stillness.
The final breath:
"Heloise."
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