You felt it at the same time I did. We knew it was coming. All of us knew it was coming, really. For months now we had all sat in our lawns at night, like little ants in solemn silence: I made you sandwiches, and you traced the dark contours of those empty seas. Our neighbors did the same. The newspapers did the same. The president did the same. But there was no helping it, and there was no smile that could betray that truth anymore. “It’s incredible what the mind can do, when it can’t think of a way out.” That’s what you told me that day, and it was true. It really was incredible.
It was raining on that last day. It was a quiet rain, almost knowing, as if it carried the tears of some poor lonely soul a couple states away. You laughed because I was wearing sunglasses at night, and I didn’t have the heart to tell you that it wasn’t funny anymore. We talked about our families as we set down our lawn chairs for the last time. We both wanted to say goodbye, but the roads were just as jammed as they had been two weeks ago, if not more, and the airport wasn’t even an option. I wanted to cry, but I had already spent all my tears. “No use crying over spilled milk,” you said, and it was true. I cried anyways.
I know you thought about all the time we wasted, because I thought about it too. We could have gone to that beach in France. We could have parachuted off that plane, if I only had the courage to do so then. We could have ditched our jobs, and given in to the good life at that cheap motel in Greece that was full of orange trees and grape vines. It didn’t make sense now why we didn’t, but then again, not much made sense now. It was so close now, so blinding in both light and glory, that all those worries seemed to melt away. You used to say the stars made you feel insignificant. Here were the stars, I thought. Maybe it made you feel better.
You started floating before I did. A couple seconds. At first I really thought I was dead. Its gravity against the Earth’s, in a legendary battle, had finally claimed victory. As I saw you float away, as I saw you engulfed by that heavenly light, I finally figured out what to think. I thought you looked pretty. I thought you looked pretty when my feet left the grass, and I thought you looked pretty as I heard distant rumbles worm their way into my heart. The light made you glow, and the heat would have melted off my skin if it hadn’t been your warm smile that did so first. You opened your arms, and it was then that I knew it truly was a fine death. If I really was to die like this, I thought, then what luck it was to be met with an angel.