Oct 02, 2006 04:25
it's 4:25 am on monday morning and i just finished reading the most beautiful and sad book i have ever read. it's called never change and it's by elizabeth berg who is maybe my favorite author of all time. i think everybody should read it but in the off chance that no one does, i'll tell you what it's about:
it's about a woman named myra, who is 51 years old and lives by herself with her dog, frank. she's a nurse who goes to people's homes and takes care of them and at the beginning of the book she explains that it sounds like she wouldn't be happy but she is rarely unhappy, even though it's just her and frank. and then myra gets a new patient, and it's a man named chip who, when he was a boy, was the boy who myra was in love with in high school. and he's dying from a brain tumor and only has very little time left to live. she's so nervous to work with him but he's so happy to be around her and for a little while his ex girlfriend from high school comes and stays with her and myra is so jealous at first but then gets to really like this girl, whose name is diann and even though she is still very jealous of her they get to be friends. then diann leaves because she says she can't do it, but really it's because she knows--and she tells myra this but myra doesn't believe her--that chip doesn't want her anymore, he really wants myra, and isn't that funny. and the best part is, diann is right and myra and chip fall in love--he's very quickly getting worse, i think the book only takes place across the month of august, he only has like 6 weeks to live by the time they find each other again--but they fall in love and they have these amazing talks and he is so wonderful to her and he goes so far out of his way to make sure she knows that he is not the only person who loves her, that her patients love her and she has wonderful friends who love her and once he has made her realize this, he tells her that he is going to kill himself. when she realizes that he's serious, she tells him that she's going to kill herself, too, because they've only been together for a very short time but she's certain that she cannot be without him ever again.
i guess i won't even tell you what happens after that, it's not a lot but it's too good to tell. but this is how the book ends:
"i come to a tree rich with autumn's golds and reds. i lie down under it, close my eyes, and let my mind wander. i think of all that is happening elsewhere, as i lie here. nearby, i can hear the sounds of a road crew. somewhere else, monkeys chatter in trees. a male seahorse becomes pregnant, a diamond forms, a bee dances out directions, a windshield shatters. somewhere a mother spreads peanut butter for her son's lunch, a lover sighs, a knitter binds off the edge of a sleeve. clouds gather to make rain, corn ripens on the stalk, a cancer cell divides, a little league team scores. somewhere blossoms open, a man pushes a knife in deeper, a painter darkens her blue. a cashier pours new dimes into an outstreched hand, rainbows form and fade, plates in the earth shift and settle. a woman opens a velvet box, male spiders pluck gently on female's webs, falcons fall from the sky. abstracts are real and time is a lie, it cannot be measured when one moment can expand to hold everything. you can want to live and end up choosing death; and you can want to die and end up living. what keeps us here, really? a thread that breaks in a breeze. and yet a thread that cannot be broken.
i open my eyes, look up at leaf-framed pieces of the sky. i do hope danny knew. i hope chip knew, too. i hope for everything, now."
it just makes me think about so many people and so many things when i read that. i'd write it all down but now it's 10 to 5 in the morning and i have to be up for breakfast with dillon in about 2 hours, so i really should go to sleep.
i guess i'll leave you with the few things that i simply cannot get out of my head before i sign off:
raking leaves in my old backyard with kristen wilkos. ben kent's smile. sean thompson's laugh. maggie brown. zack rademacher as "grandpa" in "you can't take it with you." running in the rain with nikki. giggling silently in the middle of the night with alyssa. hugging andrew borstein goodbye the last night he came over to study for math. making out with mike mathieu on the couch in my living room, the last night things were really, truly good between us. hugging dave coffin good-night in the middle of his dark apartment. the face josh gaccione makes when he laughs. the first time i met andrew mcmahon. the first time i met gavin castleton. the first time i hugged alanna green--i don't even remember the first time we met. watching kurt drive away from coddington this summer. tyler taking care of me when i was sick, the morning he was leaving to fly back to scotland after winter break. frank breau. big country. katie holden.
i could go on forever, but i'm really going to stop, now.
--s*
depressing,
random,
memories,
books