Leaving room for what comes next

I have nev­er had much of a fond­ness for grammar. 

Brooke did. She loved words, lan­guages, def­i­n­i­tions and all the rules I most­ly treat­ed as sug­ges­tions, so there is some­thing almost fun­ny about the fact that los­ing her has made me think so much about punctuation. 

A peri­od is a tiny thing, but it car­ries a lot of cer­tain­ty. It says the sen­tence is fin­ished. Whatever was being said has reached its end. An ellip­sis is dif­fer­ent. It is those three lit­tle dots — . . . — that can tell us some­thing has been left unsaid, a thought is still hang­ing there, or there may be more to come. For most of my life, I would not have cared much about the dif­fer­ence. Now I do.

I have had peri­ods placed in my life that I did not ask for. Some came qui­et­ly and oth­ers land­ed with enough force to divide every­thing into before and after. I can­not change those end­ings, nor do I want to pre­tend they did not hap­pen. But I am begin­ning to under­stand that just because some­thing receives a peri­od does not mean every­thing con­nect­ed to it must end there too. 

Sometimes the next thing we need is an ellip­sis, a lit­tle room between what was and what­ev­er is still wait­ing to be written.

One of the last things Brooke said to me was, “Keep all our good mem­o­ries alive. You’re in charge of them now.” 

Even at the end, she was still direct­ing, which was fit­ting because Brooke had been direct­ing some­thing for most of our lives. She was usu­al­ly the direc­tor, writer, pro­duc­er, lead actress, cast­ing depart­ment and cos­tume design­er of what­ev­er pro­duc­tion we had invent­ed that day. Apparently, dying did not relieve her of man­age­ment respon­si­bil­i­ties. She sim­ply gave me my next assign­ment: Keeper of the Good Memories. It was a siz­able assign­ment, con­sid­er­ing we had been col­lect­ing them for more than forty years.

There is no first mem­o­ry of Brooke. There was no intro­duc­tion, no first play­date and no moment when two lit­tle girls con­scious­ly decid­ed they would become best friends. She was sim­ply there, and so was I. As far as either of us knew, there had always been a Brooke and Jill.

The Penningtons and Hamlins lived at the end of a grav­el road in Kentucky, and some­where along the way we decid­ed that both hous­es, the road, the woods and near­ly every­thing around them belonged equal­ly to both of us. We did not knock on each other’s doors because there seemed lit­tle rea­son to knock on the door of what was basi­cal­ly your oth­er house. 

We called each other’s par­ents Mom and Dad, wan­dered back and forth all day, and if one of us dis­ap­peared, nobody pan­icked. One par­ent sim­ply called the oth­er house. 

“Is Jill there?” 

“Yep.”

“Send her home.” 

Or the oth­er way around.

Between our hous­es was a worn path through the woods that we named Hampton Trail, a com­bi­na­tion of Hamlin and Pennington. Apparently, we under­stood brand­ing before we could rec­og­nize Poison Ivy. At the end of that path was a lit­tle patch of woods we called Misty Meadows. It could not have been more than fifty feet or so, but acreage is irrel­e­vant when you are a child. 

Misty Meadows was enor­mous because our imag­i­na­tions were.

There were uni­corns there, nat­u­ral­ly. The neighbor’s pool turned us into mer­maids. We made movies and designed clothes. Toothbrushes from my father’s den­tal office became bracelets, lam­i­nat­ed cat­a­logue stamps became a skirt, and what­ev­er objects hap­pened to be near­by were imme­di­ate­ly reas­signed more glam­orous purposes. 

Brooke did not sim­ply enter the world as it was; she trans­formed it. 

A pool became an ocean. A few trees became a king­dom. An ordi­nary after­noon could become a sto­ry we were still telling forty years later. 

Long before either of us had lan­guage for it, Brooke taught me some­thing about won­der: you do not always have to trav­el very far to find it. Sometimes fifty feet of trees can con­tain an entire world, when the right per­son is stand­ing beside you.

We were both adopt­ed, and I under­stand now that this prob­a­bly shaped the way we under­stood fam­i­ly more than we real­ized. We had each already been cho­sen into a fam­i­ly, and then we chose each other. 

Of course, as chil­dren, “best friends” did not seem legal­ly bind­ing enough, so we decid­ed to become blood sis­ters after see­ing an old Western with a blood-broth­er cer­e­mo­ny. Brooke pro­duced a Swiss Army knife that was so dull it was near­ly dec­o­ra­tive, and after con­sid­er­able effort and tru­ly ter­ri­ble judg­ment, we man­aged to draw enough blood to make the arrange­ment official.

I am not cer­tain what legal juris­dic­tion Misty Meadows oper­at­ed under, but as far as we were con­cerned, it was bind­ing. Looking back, though, we nev­er need­ed the blood. Two adopt­ed lit­tle girls were try­ing to put a cer­e­mo­ny around some­thing they already under­stood. We had each been cho­sen into our fam­i­lies, and then we chose each other.

Over time, our shared his­to­ry became its own lan­guage. A fish stick, page eleven, a four-wheel­er, a movie line, a tour guide or a path through the woods could car­ry an entire mem­o­ry inside it. That is the strange archi­tec­ture of know­ing some­one for most of your life. Whole rooms of mem­o­ry begin hid­ing inside very small things, and the right word can open the door.

The fish stick, for exam­ple, belonged to one of our child­hood movie pro­duc­tions. We had wine glass­es filled with col­ored water, Heiner’s bread and fish sticks. Brooke’s moth­er had been cast as a maître d’ with a white tow­el over her arm. At some point I announced — with what I am sure was Oscar-wor­thy sophis­ti­ca­tion — “Aren’t these hors d’oeuvres divine?” Brooke bit into what she believed was a fish stick and dis­cov­ered it was, in fact, a veg­etable stick. Brooke had been promised fish. Brooke had received veg­e­ta­tion. It was a culi­nary betray­al of the high­est order.

There was gag­ging, spit­ting, gen­er­al chaos and some­how a bro­ken cam­era, for which I was unfair­ly blamed. For years we joked that the truth would even­tu­al­ly be estab­lished. Since Brooke lat­er appoint­ed me Keeper of the Good Memories, I would like the record to reflect that I was inno­cent. She real­ly should have con­sid­ered that pos­si­bil­i­ty before giv­ing me archival authority.

When Hampton Trail got longer

Eventually the grav­el road became a much larg­er world. We grew up, trav­eled, lived in dif­fer­ent places and some­times found our­selves sep­a­rat­ed by states or oceans. Once I called Brooke and she answered by telling me she was in Switzerland, at a dance club, and had walked out­side because she saw me call­ing. She remind­ed me that the phone call was going to cost a for­tune and then imme­di­ate­ly asked, “Are you okay?” 

That was Brooke. The cost could wait.

When I lived in Belfast, she called me and we talked for hours dur­ing the era when an inter­na­tion­al phone call could become a legit­i­mate house­hold finan­cial event. When my par­ents lat­er saw the bill and asked who I had been talk­ing to, I said, “Brooke.”

There was a pause, and then came the only ques­tion that real­ly mat­tered; “How is she?” No lec­ture fol­lowed because no expla­na­tion was nec­es­sary. It was Brooke. Of course we had talked for hours.

When we were lit­tle, our par­ents called down the grav­el road look­ing for us. As adults, one of us could be in Kentucky and the oth­er across the Atlantic, and some­how the arrange­ment still felt much the same. Hampton Trail had sim­ply got­ten longer. Perhaps that is part of why trav­el came to mat­ter so much to me. Not because I want­ed to col­lect des­ti­na­tions, but because leav­ing the famil­iar changes the way we see both the world and our­selves. We meet peo­ple who were nev­er on our maps and arrive in places that mean noth­ing to us at first, only to dis­cov­er lat­er that they have some­how become part of our under­stand­ing of home.

Roads that reshape the map

My own life has rarely fol­lowed the map I once imag­ined. Some roads I chose delib­er­ate­ly. Others appeared with­out invi­ta­tion. Some led to joy, some to heart­break, and some took me to places I nev­er expect­ed to love. 

One of those roads led me to Winchester, Kentucky.

I went to Winchester because of work, but the job was nev­er the whole sto­ry. I found friend­ships there, peo­ple who became cho­sen fam­i­ly, work that mat­tered to me, laugh­ter, cel­e­bra­tions, long con­ver­sa­tions and a sense of belong­ing I could not have drawn on any map beforehand. 

My pro­fes­sion­al chap­ter there end­ed dif­fer­ent­ly than I had hoped, and I will not pre­tend oth­er­wise. But a hard final bend in the road does not get own­er­ship of the whole jour­ney. The friend­ships are still real. The peo­ple I love there are still peo­ple I love. A place can stop being where you work and remain part of who you are.

Brooke had already taught me that dis­tance did not can­cel love. Switzerland did not. Massachusetts did not. Time did not. Near the end of her life, I was with Brooke and her part­ner, John, when she looked at me and said, “This is not how we planned to spend our 40s.” 

She was right. Well, some­what right. We had imag­ined plen­ty of ver­sions of our lives, but not that room, not that ill­ness, not that end­ing. I told her, “Of course it is. We’re together.” 

The set­ting was wrong, and the cir­cum­stances were unbear­able, but we were togeth­er. After all the places we had been, all the dis­tance between us and all the unex­pect­ed turns in the sto­ry, that had always been the main point of our plot.

I think about that exchange often because as humas, we spend so much of our lives draw­ing maps and then being sur­prised when life refus­es to fol­low them. We make plans for careers, rela­tion­ships, homes, bod­ies and futures, and some­where along the way we begin to con­fuse the plan with the life itself. Then a road bends. A door clos­es. A body changes. A career ends. Suddenly we are stand­ing some­where we nev­er intend­ed to be, hold­ing a map that no longer match­es the landscape.

I do not believe every painful thing hap­pens for a rea­son, nor do I believe every loss needs to become a bless­ing or every wound a les­son. Some things sim­ply hurt, and some roads are ones we would nev­er choose. What I do believe is that a road can take a dif­fi­cult turn and still have been worth trav­el­ing. The des­ti­na­tion does not get to decide the val­ue of every­thing we saw, loved and became along the way.

Maybe that is why grief has made me more aware of ordi­nary things. Nobody announces that a mem­o­ry is begin­ning. Nobody stops an after­noon halfway through and says, “Pay atten­tion. You will miss this someday.” 

We assume there will be anoth­er din­ner, anoth­er Christmas, anoth­er swim, anoth­er phone call, anoth­er dri­ve down the same road. Familiar things become almost invis­i­ble sim­ply because they are always there.

Then some­thing changes, and sud­den­ly a fish stick can hold an entire after­noon. Page eleven can hold a friend­ship. A worn path through the woods can hold a child­hood. A phone call can cross an ocean and make the dis­tance dis­ap­pear. We dis­cov­er too late that what we thought was ordi­nary was our life, and it was extraordinary.

Page eleven and the pause

Brooke owned a tiny book called The World’s Smallest Dictionary, which feels exact­ly right for some­one who loved words as much as she did. 

For years, one of the only French sen­tences I retained from Frech class years ago, was Ouvrez vos livres s’il vous plaît à la page onze: open your books, please, to page eleven.” 

Why page eleven lodged itself per­ma­nent­ly in my brain when so much use­ful French escaped is one of life’s less­er mys­ter­ies, but Brooke and I laughed about it for years.

When I sat down to write the words I would speak at Brooke’s cel­e­bra­tion of life, the same words that have found their way into parts of this reflec­tion; I opened her lit­tle dic­tio­nary to page eleven. There were words that imme­di­ate­ly sound­ed like her: acu­men, adamant, actor, actress. Then I came to ada­gio; slow­ly.

That was the word I want­ed. I want­ed every­thing to slow down. I want­ed one more after­noon in Misty Meadows, one more swim, one more ter­ri­ble movie, one more phone call, one more walk through the woods. I want­ed anoth­er ordi­nary day I had not known to trea­sure because I had always believed there would be anoth­er one. 

For the first time in my life, I did not want to reach the end of the sen­tence. I want­ed paus­es. I want­ed more time. I want­ed some­thing left unfin­ished because unfin­ished meant there was still some­thing to come. I craved ellipses . . . but life had giv­en me a period.

There would not be anoth­er ordi­nary day with Brooke, and no amount of wish­ing could change that. This is where the peri­od mat­ters, because grief deserves the truth: Brooke died. Period. An ellip­sis can­not change that, and I would nev­er ask it to. What I have strug­gled with is the idea that the peri­od must also be placed after every­thing she was to me. Brooke was my sis­ter, my child­hood, my co-con­spir­a­tor, my keep­er of more than forty years of mem­o­ries and one of the peo­ple who taught me what home feels like. 

Her life end­ed. Her place in mine did not. That, I think, is where my ellip­sis belongs.

It belongs in the space between what I have lost and what I con­tin­ue to car­ry. Brooke can­not walk Hampton Trail with me again, but Hampton Trail still exists inside the per­son I became walk­ing it beside her. 

I can­not call her and her ran­dom­ly answer in Switzerland or spend anoth­er after­noon with her in Misty Meadows, but those mem­o­ries still make me laugh, still shape the sto­ries I tell and still remind me to look for mag­ic in ordi­nary places.

I have come to under­stand places this way, too. My work in Winchester end­ed, but Winchester did not dis­ap­pear from my map. The friend­ships, cho­sen fam­i­ly, laugh­ter, work that mat­tered and sense of belong­ing I found there remain part of me. 

The peri­od belongs after what actu­al­ly end­ed; I do not have to keep adding peri­ods until I have erased every­thing beau­ti­ful that grew around it.

Maybe all of us need to become more care­ful about where we put our peri­ods. Some things real­ly do end. Grieve them. Tell the truth about them. But do not auto­mat­i­cal­ly put a peri­od after every­thing that came with them and espe­cial­ly not after your­self. Leave an ellip­sis for what you car­ry for­ward, but leave one for what you can­not see yet, too. Somewhere beyond the part of the road vis­i­ble from where you are stand­ing may be a stranger who becomes fam­i­ly, a place that becomes home, an ordi­nary after­noon that becomes one of your favorite mem­o­ries or a ver­sion of your­self you have not met yet. 

There is won­der in not know­ing the rest of the sentence.

I hope you rec­og­nize your Misty Meadows while you are still stand­ing in it. I hope you notice the ordi­nary Tuesday after­noon before it becomes the one you would give any­thing to have again. Take the trip when you can. Sit a lit­tle longer at the table. Listen to the sto­ry one more time. Let peo­ple sur­prise you. Let places sur­prise you. When life sends you down a road you nev­er planned to trav­el, do not be so fright­ened by the unfa­mil­iar land­scape that you for­get to look around.

Leaving room beyond the trees

Someday my own peri­od will come, and when it does, I already know the way I want to imag­ine what fol­lows. I will take the grav­el road, find that worn path through the woods and fol­low Hampton Trail. Around the bend, Brooke will be there in bright red lip­stick, already direct­ing, and almost cer­tain­ly pre­pared to cor­rect my gram­mar. I will remind her that gram­mar was always her depart­ment, and I imag­ine we will pick up wher­ev­er we left off.

But I am not there yet, and there is some­thing beau­ti­ful in final­ly being able to say that with­out need­ing to know exact­ly where I am going. There is still road in front of me, and some­where along it are peo­ple whose names I do not know, places I have nev­er seen, laugh­ter I have not heard and ordi­nary days I do not yet know will become pre­cious. There may be heart­break there too. Life has taught me enough not to pre­tend oth­er­wise. But I do not want fear of what might end to make me afraid of what might begin.

Maybe that is what Brooke’s last assign­ment was real­ly ask­ing of me. Keeping the good mem­o­ries alive can­not mean liv­ing only inside them. It has to mean car­ry­ing them with me while I make new ones. The lit­tle girls who built Misty Meadows out of fifty feet of woods did not know about Switzerland, Massachusetts or Belfast. They did not know Winchester was wait­ing some­where beyond that grav­el road. They did not know the peo­ple they would love, the lives they would build, the things they would lose or how far Hampton Trail would even­tu­al­ly stretch. They only knew there was more world beyond the trees, and they want­ed to see it.

I want to remem­ber how to live that way, and per­haps that is what I hope for you, too. When you come to a peri­od you did not choose, grieve what end­ed, but be care­ful not to place that peri­od after yourself.

Notice the mag­ic before it becomes a mem­o­ry. Take roads whose end­ings you can­not see. Leave room at the table for peo­ple you have not met yet. Carry the peo­ple and places you have loved with­out allow­ing their end­ings to erase what they gave you and leave enough space in your life to be sur­prised by what may still be wait­ing beyond the trees.

As for me, I know there are peri­ods I can­not change. Brooke died. My time in Winchester changed. Roads I loved have end­ed or turned in direc­tions I nev­er expected. 

But the grav­el road is still behind me, Hampton Trail is still part of the map I car­ry, and some­where ahead is a stretch of road I have nev­er seen. I don’t know where it goes, and for once, I don’t think I need to. Brooke would prob­a­bly tell me there is punc­tu­a­tion for that.

I think I’ll use an ellipsis . . .