The Lady Or the Beauty

Epilouge

2 Years Later

Meg's POV

        "Push!" The doctors urge me on. I give one final, big push and baby cries fill the air. Nadir squeezes my hand. "It's a boy!" They exclaim. They clean the child up and hand him to me. He is so tiny and red.

        "Time to pick a name," I tell Nadir. After a few minutes we have a name. Our child's name will be Ramin. Oh we have such an adventure in front of us. Ramin gives out tiny gurgles. He wraps his tiny fingers around Nadir's large finger. I smile. We were now a family.

Erik's POV

It's been two years since Christine's death, and it still feels like it happened a minute ago. Every chance I get I visit her grave and sing for her. I bring her roses and write her love letters. I'm sure she is watching over us. I still hear her voice in my ears. Such heavenly melodies she sings for me. Sierra and Hadley are already walking and are loud and playful. I love spending every second with them. Both are very musically talented at such a young age. Sierra reminds me the most of Christine. Her childish, defient ways. Her eyes are Christine's eyes. Hadley is a lot more quiet, like me. He is still playful, but in a more reserved way. He has my eyes. I love them both dearly.

At the moment I was cleaning the room and I went to clean under the bed. That's when I saw something in the shadows under the bed. It was a letter. It was a letter to our child. (She must have not known she was going to have twins and she was certain she was going to have a daughter)

My dear child,

There is hurt, here,that cannot be fixed by bandages or hugs, and I will never be struck by lightning like the first day you were heartbroken, when those indignant tears roll thunder down the rigid walls of your face. I will trace their trajectory with watercolor fingertips, but baby, I will not wipe them away.  You will learn to love the taste of salt, the crystalline proof that wrong has loitered in your doorway like singing a guestbook you will say, and nothing about your childhood will be storybook.  There will be no fairytale endings to sugar dust your night sky.  Everything about your childhood will be road map.  You will learn to connect the dots of each question mark, So the first time you realize help isn't coming, I'll make sure you know you don't have to wear the pain all by yourself because no matter how wide you stretch your fingers, your hands will always be too small to catch all the pain you want to heal. Believe me, I've tried. "And, baby, don't keep your nose up in the air like that. I know that trick; I've done it a million times. You're just smelling for smoke so you can follow the trail back to a burning house, so you can find the boy who lost everything in the fire to see if you can save him. Or else find the boy who lit the fire in the first place, to see if you can change him." But I know you will anyway, so instead I'll always keep an extra supply of chocolate and rain boots nearby, because there is no heartbreak that chocolate can't fix. Okay, there's a few heartbreaks that chocolate can't fix. But that's what the rain boots are for, because rain will wash away everything, if you let it. I want you to look at the world through the underside of a glass-bottom boat, to look through a microscope at the galaxies that exist on the pinpoint of a human mind, because that's the way my Angel taught me.I can only hope that on the first day you approach Atlas you ask for your turn to feel the world pulse and churn between your shoulder blades, lions’ manes sewn into each sinew of your skin, pump your lungs full of fire and fog.  Breathe dragon smoke, inspire tender spark in others That there'll be days like this. When you open your hands to catch and wind up with only blisters and bruises; when you step out of the phone booth and try to fly and the very people you want to save are the ones standing on your cape; when your boots will fill with rain, and you'll be up to your knees in disappointment. And those are the very days you have all the more reason to say thank you. Because there's nothing more beautiful than the way the ocean refuses to stop kissing the shoreline, no matter how many times it's sent away. You will put the wind in winsome, lose some. You will put the star in starting over, and over. And no matter how many land mines erupt in a minute, be sure your mind lands on the beauty of this funny place called life. And yes, on a scale from one to over-trusting, I am pretty damn naive. But I want her to know that this world is made out of sugar. It can crumble so easily, but don't be afraid to stick your tongue out and taste it. Baby, remember, your momma is a worrier, and your papa is a warrior, and you are the girl with small hands and big eyes who never stops asking for more."I apologize not being there. Please know, it is only because I once caught a glimpse of that shimmering sliver of heaven God wedged in your sternum, heights in your shoulders, like cliffs scaled up your spine, you are a globe untrodden, ecosystems hammocked between your eye lashes, solar systems strung across your palm, planets turn pearls in your hands. Daughter, I will never see a sunset more marvelous than the one spattered across your iris.  Remember that good things come in threes and so do bad things. And always apologize when you've done something wrong, but don't you ever apologize for the way your eyes refuse to stop shining. Your voice is small, but don't ever stop singing.And when they finally hand you heartache, when they slip war and hatred under your door and offer you handouts on street-corners of cynicism and defeat, you tell them that they really ought to meet your father. So far, my life has been a staircase of glass bottles and blurry photographs, blessings dressed in wolves, disguises, and the quiet indignance of a spring turned backwards, but I will wish on all sorts of stars for you:  shooting stars, paper stars, asterisks, even I will be the parable of every bleeding mother who crawled her way to Christ, mumbling nonsensical metaphors.  I am an encyclopedia with only the entries for ‘W’:  like willing, wanting, waiting. There are whole microcosms strumming in your dreams, girl.  There are violins in the shadow of your instep.  Daughter, you will be the heaviest thing I ever have to hold, but the most beautiful thing I will ever, ever own. Be careful, be careless,be what you wish to be.

I love you. I love you my daughter.

Mom

I was crying by the time I finished my wife's letter. If only she could see our children now. I'm sure she could from Heaven. She had given her children wisdom that will change their lives. When they are old enough, I will read this letter to them... If only only she was here to tell it to them herself with moving lips and warm hugs...I dusted off the letter and pocketed it. A piece of Christine in my pocket.

19 Years Later:

Erik's POV

My children were all grown up and gone and I felt weary and old. I did not have much longer. It was time to finish the opera. To put down the baton and cut off the music. I lay in bed, waiting for the minute that would reunite me with my wife. My breathing got shallower and I started fading from this world. I'm here, Christine. I thought. I breathed my last and opened my eyes to Paradise. Standing there, waiting to guide me was Christine. She was angelic. She smiled and took my hand. Hand in hand we entered Paradise together for an eternity, and no longer would we ever be separated. Death was destroyed. Forever would we make music in Paradise. Two melodies, entwined forever...

THE END

Hello Dear Readers, I've just started reading your comments and how you loved the letter Christine wrote. It is taken from a friend of mine, who did a poetry piece for Forensics. It is mostly hers, with a few parts changed here and there and I give her full credit for it. Sorry for the confusion. She is the real mastermind behind the letter, and I apologize again for confusing you. (I can't write that good to save my life)