The Rainbow

Last year around this time my friend Maria came up to Maine to visit before I left for Portland. We sat on the beach. We took pictures with my dog, Macey. We compared our tans and drank a little too much wine. And at the end she gave me a hug. She laughed and said in her flat, sarcastic voice that our friendship would soon be over. Then she gave me a journal the face of a blonde woman, whose head was lined with birds and who had two sparkling tears running down her right cheek. And the binding read: “The soul would have no rainbow if the eyes had no tears.” She said it reminded her of me, because I tend to cry at the drop of a hat.

I’m sitting in my room now and almost everything is packed up. Emily’s bed is neatly made and her drawers are empty. It’s a Tuesday and I’m not at work. The sky is gray and the air is a little cold but I have a feeling that may burn off later. Tomorrow early in the morning I will leave and surprisingly, I’m not crying. I think I’m stuck in disbelief.

The last week of work went well. Not as much going on and I had some time to clean up my desk. Friday came along and everything felt surprisingly normal. I went around the hallways with Tom and knocked on doors. We made our granola bar and juice offerings. We asked how people slept. And then smiled, “see you later on then.” I drove David to his first doctor’s appointment and he told me that he was looking forward to getting his hair cut. He pulled down the passenger mirror and tugged at his beard. We went through the whole process—the parallel parking, the opening of the clinic door (him hopping on his one good foot, leaning on his walker), the standing in line, the five extra minutes while the receptionist made the new chart, the borrowing of the special elevator key, the ride up one floor, and finally, the walk to the waiting room. He said he’d call when he was finished and I told him to have a good appointment. I knew that he probably would, that he had a good doctor who would take good care of him and I would pick him up an hour later and he would feel satisfied with that. And I thought of all of the times I’ve said those words throughout the year. All of the times I’ve pulled up the red van to that sidewalk in 4:30 traffic. All of the names of the people I’ve stood in line with. And how there was one point in my year when I came home and cried and wrote in that journal with the crying woman and asked no one in particular if it was all worth it. And I guess now, that I’m sitting at this desk, and knowing that someone else is doing the driving, the opening of the door, the “call if you need anything,” I can say that it was.

Five o’clock came in a way that was not climactic that day. My supervisor came to the office with a box of new phones. I helped plug a battery in and ate an ice cream cone that my parking lot attendant bought me. I tried to delete unnecessary information of my computer. And then suddenly it was 4:30. Then 4:45. Then 4:53. And then I was giving back my keys and my agency cell phone and realizing that something I’ve been so emotionally distraught over and involved with for one year is no longer mine.

So that’s that. We are now half of our house. We are cleaning our refrigerator and buying food for the next volunteers. We are washing the dish towels that have been sitting in a pile for longer than necessary. We are crying and not crying, staying up late and getting up to early. We are realizing that everything else in the rest of the world is going along as it always has, and I guess we will too. We will move forward. It will be strange. But I guess in the end, that’s just what you do.