A Perfect Brightness of Hope by Genevieve Arnold
I’ve always had hope, not wishes or desires, but hallelujah hope. The kind that thrusts you out of bed in the morning. Since my earliest years, hope has been my companion. She introduced us. At first, she loaned me hers until I found my own. When I did, it became our shared love language and the expectant eyes through which we viewed the world. That’s why it was ok when she died. I wasn’t ready (is anyone?) Death showed up breathless and raring to go like it was late for a very important date. Feeling sick on Sunday; gone on Friday. Not necessarily a surprise. She was sick: leukemia.
Her hopeful voice on the phone years earlier made me believe time was on our side, “I don’t want you to worry. It’s not my time. I have work to do.”
And work she did. No one with cancer worked more than she did. She worked to maintain faith. She worked to maintain sanity. She worked to maintain hope. A juxtaposition of sorts, but her reality nevertheless. Then one day, a kind doctor with sorrowful eyes uttered words that shattered my heart. I would never be the same.
Her faithful words washed over me, “I’m not afraid to die. I have so many friends to see. I just don’t want you to think I gave up.”
Looking into her eyes we had the last, albeit unspoken, conversation we would have in this life. She spoke peace to my broken heart. She passed on her strength. She reminded me how much she loves me. We took her home to say goodbye, and that evening she slipped into a sleep from which she wouldn’t wake. She was loved by so many, which made it easy to hold her hand, kiss her goodbye, and then slip out the back. I knew it wouldn’t be the last time we would meet.
Later that evening the message arrived, “She’s leaving us.” I sat staring at the swirling dots waiting for the next words, “She’s gone.”
The tears began, which didn’t stop for months because I missed her. I thought about a line in A Wrinkle in Time.
Mrs. Whatsit asks the children, “Do you think I would have brought you here if there was no hope?”
I heard her voice whisper the same to me. So I dressed in my white, summery dress and spent the night dancing in the arms of a man who wouldn’t marry me. I found the one who would a few years later, which is a hopeful tale for another time.
She visits me now and then because everyone’s hope needs a boost. I didn’t know how powerful hope was until my mother died and left me something so powerful to hope for. I am bound by this anchor of my soul. The hope that one day I too can say that I’m not afraid because I know she’ll be there waiting.