“It doesn’t make you weak, baby,” I tell her, and my fathers’ words are ringing in my head once more. Love and loss, love and loss. “Deciding to become a vampire, taking the risk that you took not knowing how it would turn out. That’s the strongest, bravest thing you can do. And in some ways, I wish you hadn’t done it, because I still don’t know if I’m worthy of such a sacrifice. But in other ways, I’m so fucking thankful.”
“You are more than worthy, Wolf,” she whispers to me, her eyes brimming with love. “Please don’t ever forget that.”
Then she closes her eyes and a tear rolls down her cheek.
“And yet, I keep thinking that she’s still with us,” she continues, wiping the tear away. “That she’s still here, in this world, but that’s she’s just gone away for a bit. That she’ll be back. I keep thinking that she’ll be back. Even when I know the truth, it’s like my heart doesn’t.”
“Because she’s alive in your heart,” I tell her. “That’s why. She always will be. That’s why it feels like she’s still here, even though she’s not.”
“I know. But my heart fools me, you know? And my brain, it knows the truth. And every time I correct myself…it’s like the reality hits. The…the…”
“The enormity,” I say grimly. “The enormity sets in. How big it is. How everything is forever changed.”
“It’s so big,” she says, almost stamping her foot. “Too big that my brain can’t even comprehend it anymore. And now, now that loss feels even bigger, fathomless and stretched on forever. How do I just keep going, day in and day out, knowing she’s really gone?”
“You just do. You just keep going. Day in and day out. Like you’ve done so far, like you have for us to stand here and be at this point. You just keep going because you have to.”
She lets out a shaky breath. “I’m sorry.”
I go over to her and pull her to me, kissing her on the forehead. “Baby, there is never anything to be sorry about. We’re saying goodbye to your mother right now. The final goodbye. This is heavy. This is a lot. We both knew we’d feel so much when this moment came and now we’re here and it’s fucking hard, baby.”
She nods, her chin trembling. She swallows, trying to breathe. “It just feels like everything should have stopped.”
“Do you regret it?” I ask quietly, giving her a cautious glance, afraid of her truth. “Do you regret becoming a vampire?”
She shakes her head. “No, Wolf. I don’t. Not even a little. It was the only choice that made sense for me. But having this gift, having you, doesn’t make the pain of losing my mother go away. It doesn’t fix that. It doesn’t bring her back. It just means I have to live with it for much longer than anyone should.”
“I know. But this won’t be forever, Amethyst. Even vampires don’t live forever. We will eventually die. Somehow. God always sees to that. Death comes for everyone in the end. And you will see your mother again, I promise you that. I will see her too.”
“But I will have to wait for so long.”
“And yet time skips on by. It doesn’t stop. It’s relentless.” I gesture to the waves at our feet. “It’s the undertow and we’re all caught in it, unable to swim against it. Time takes and takes and takes from us and the years, the decades, the centuries. Baby, you’ll see how quickly they still pass. This grief, you’ll have to live with it for longer, but you were going to have to live with it either way. There’s no getting out of it. It is one of life’s true constants. That we live and we die. And if we’re lucky, somewhere in the middle of it, we love.”
She nods and leans her head on my shoulder. “We do love. We love so much.”
“And that’s why we’re here now and that’s why it hurts. All because of love.”
We stand there for a few moments and I listen to her heart rate calm and for the intensity of her grief to pass. Then I wait for my own grief to loosen its grip. It comes for me nearly as often as it does for her.
“We should do it before the sun goes down completely,” I say, the sun close to disappearing. “If you still want to.”
She nods, looking determined. “I want to.”
I take the top off the urn and hold it out over the waves, careful to not let the ashes to fly out. “Do you want to say anything special?”
“I think I just said it all,” she says, wiping away a tear with the heel of her palm. She sniffs. “All there is to say is that, Mom,” she stares at the urn, the heartbreak clear on her face, “I love you and I miss you and I’ll see you again. Please remember me.”