I wrote it eighteen months ago. During my annual writing in November, when I participate in National Novel Writing Month, I wrote my second children’s chapter book. James listened as I struggled to get words typed each night. He asked regularly about my current word count and he even helped me map out the storyline one night at our kitchen counter, so that I could see my way through to the ending that already existed in my mind. When the very rough draft was completed, he asked for his own copy and he took it to work in a binder to read on his own.

For one reason or another, not all ones I can articulate well, I decided to read this draft to my class this spring. What started with instructional intentions – a desire at least to show revision and editing once again with my own work – has become a favorite part of the day for author and audience alike. Reading my words out loud to an actual audience of children has been heartwarming and rewarding in ways I didn’t even expect. Just yesterday, while reading a particularly harrowing chapter of events, a student sitting on the floor to my right kept gasping. It was an appropriate reaction to the text, but it took my own breath away knowing she felt that moved by my roughed-in words and descriptions. The students, for their part, are a very enthusiastic set of guinea pigs, willing to listen and give advice and ask questions. They have caught inconsistencies, they have recommended changes and they have showered me with more praise for the storyline than I fear is earned on its own merits.

The story itself includes bits of me in some ways and bits of who I wanted to be as a child in others. With parallel storylines of a ten year old girl and a sea turtle, I tried to share how we all navigate ourselves through some rather cliché rites of passage – the loss of a parent, the weight of decisions and the challenges of friendship.

This morning, as a mostly brain-free activity after finishing standardized testing, we gathered on the rug at the front of the room to once again dive into my story. I named the paired parallel chapters with what my students have come to refer to as, “VCW’s” or “Very Cool Words.” (One of the class’ very astute suggestions was that I provide a kid-friendly definition for each chapter title as some words are beyond the scope of fourth-grade vocabulary.) Today’s chapter was the second in the pairing, with the sea turtle’s side of a situation titled, “Opportunity.” The sea turtle, named Finn, had weathered a storm with her best friend in the previous chapter, coming out on the other side of the tumultuous weather event to find that her friend, a fish named Bumper, was now missing.

It has amazed and surprised the students that despite the fact that I authored this text, I have forgotten portions of it. It was, afterall, a draft- written all in one month, with absolutely no consideration to revision or fixes as I went. And I haven’t picked it up since. So as I read today’s chapter, the words caught me as much by surprise as my first-time listeners poised at my feet.

Eighteen months ago, James and I were blissfully unaware of the cancer that had spread throughout his body. We were months away from knowing how limited our time together was; we were months away from knowing we weren’t in remission. It’s been nearly five months since the cancer took him and I am still falling to my knees, weeping from depths of sorrow I’ve never known, collapsing in the anguish of a life without him more often than I even admit to my therapist. Just this past week I have raged with grief and sobbed in my loneliness more days than not.

So today, as I began reading the chapter where my sea turtle is faced with the realization that her best friend might be gone for good, I heard the words on a far more intimate level. They were my words, not in that I had authored them, but in that today, they were meant for me to hear.

One day, while trying to nap in the sand at the bottom, a sea anemone spoke up.  “You should really try something new,” she said.  

“Are you talking to me?” I asked, looking around.

“Yes.  You are the saddest creature in this whole ocean, at least as far as I have seen.  I’ve seen you down here day after day just moping about.  I think you should try something new.  You’re in a rut.”

“A rut?  I’m in a rut?!  No, I’m at a loss!  I’ve lost my best friend, my only friend and I have no one else!  I don’t know where to find him!  I don’t know where to go or what to do!”

“It can be really horrible to lose someone we love,” she continued.  “I understand how you feel, but we can’t be sad forever.  There’s a whole huge ocean to explore!  There are more creatures to meet and new things to discover!”

“But I don’t want to do any of that without my friend!  What if he came back?  What if he returned and I wasn’t here waiting for him?”

“Do you think your friend would want to return to find out that you’ve been here, miserable this whole time?”

“Yes!  I mean, wait.  No. Was that a trick question?” I asked.

“It's not a trick.  Wherever your friend is, do you want him to be miserable?”

“No!  I would never want him to be miserable!  I would want him to be happy!”

“So,” she said calmly, “if your friend is someplace without you right now and you don’t want him to be miserable just because you aren’t there with him, don’t you think he would want the same for you?”

“Well, I guess so, but…”

“There is no ‘but’.  If he cares about you at all, like you care about him, he would never want you to be upset or moping about!  He would want you to be happy and enjoying your life!”

I sat there in the sand thinking about what she was saying.  In my mind, I could understand her point, but my heart still hurt so bad.  All I wanted was to be with Bumper!

“Have you known this friend your whole life?” she asked me.

“Yes, well, no.  I mean, I met him after I came to the ocean.”

“Were you happy before you met him?  Did you find any joy at all in the ocean before you knew this friend?”

“Yes," I answered somewhat reluctantly.  "I remember floating in the sun and loving how it felt on my back.  I liked to swim with the other hatchlings.  We used to have these races where we’d…”

“See?” she interrupted.  “You can be happy without your friend being right beside you.”

“But, but...but what if my friend is gone forever?” I asked hesitantly.  It was a truth I had been scared to admit, and one I had never uttered out loud until this moment.

“Ever the more reason to start finding some joy, don’t you think?”

The sea anemone didn’t say another word and neither did I.  I stayed at the bottom, only going up to take a breath or two, but for the rest of the afternoon and all through the night the words of the creature rang through my heart.  Wherever Bumper was, I would certainly want him to be happy, of that I was certain.  And if Bumper was, gone - gone forever gone - well, then he would always be gone and there was nothing I could do about that.

The next morning, I decided to set out and try exploring a new place.  Before I left, I thanked the sea anemone.  “Thank you, I am going to go explore for awhile.  I will probably come back just to check and see if Bumper returns, but I think I will take your advice and go.  Maybe he will be here when I get back.”

“Wherever you go,” she said, “your friend will always be with you, in your heart.”

It took every ounce of everything I had to not completely fall apart in front of my student audience. They knew I was struggling, and I admitted to them that it felt like these were words I needed to hear today.

I’m not ready, yet, to face this world without James. I am still so very deeply angry. It is going to take more than just encouraging words from a sea anemone to get me out the door on my path to finding joy. But, I heard him today. I heard my beloved talking to me. Neither of us had any idea when I wrote these words or when he read them that they would reverberate on such a deeply personal level for me a year and a half later. I pray, I beg more than pray, but I pray that he is someplace full of unimaginable joy. I know he would want the same for me, I do. But I wish, more than I have any reasonable, sane right to, that my story could turn out like the sea turtle’s. My class doesn’t yet know, but Finn and her best friend Bumper will be reunited before the end of this story.

I hope James and I are one day, too.