Chasing Rainbows A Novel - By Long, Kathleen Page 0,3

I learned they’d laundered everything. Her tiny gown. Her blanket. Her booties. Each item scrubbed clean of any trace of our daughter, when traces were all we’d had left.

I flashed back on the piles of my father’s clothes. Were they gone already? Or could I dash back and grab just one more shirt? A sweater? Something more to hold onto, even though I knew that soon all traces of my dad would vanish just as Emma’s scent had faded away.

The minister had called Dad’s passing a natural part of living, the beginning of the next phase of life. In my head, I knew he was right, but in my heart, I only knew my father was gone forever. Just like Emma.

After she died, I’d cradled my tiny daughter until I realized I couldn’t sit in the neonatal unit forever. Eventually they’d make me go home. They’d make me let go.

So I had.

After Dad died, I’d held my mother tight against my side as we’d made our way back through the emergency room waiting room and out to the parking lot.

“We can’t just leave him,” she’d cried.

But we had.

I’d thought about letting her go back, letting her sit with him a little longer, but then we’d only have to leave again.

The anguish of walking away without him once was enough. No one should have to make that walk twice.

My tears came.

For Emma. For Dad.

I stroked my finger over the tiny bootie, back and forth along the weave, across the tiny bow, the tiny heel, the tiny toes.

Life was fragile. Grief was resilient.

I hadn’t quite figured out which had won during the years since Emma’s death.

I thought of Ryan then and wondered what he was doing, what he was thinking. When he’d first moved out, I’d questioned when it had been that our marriage began to die. But as I sat staring at Emma’s memory box, I knew the answer.

We’d buried our only child on a cold November day, and our carefully constructed world had begun a slow crumble.

Perhaps I shouldn’t have been surprised he walked out. Perhaps I should have been surprised he waited five years.

Life. Death. Marriage.

Each was fleeting. Each was enduring.

In life, you either choose to sing a rainbow, or you don’t.

I gently pressed my lips to Emma’s bootie and placed it inside the box. Then I wiped my damp cheeks and closed the lid.

o0o

As the sunlight slanted through the blinds the next morning, I opened my eyes and forgot. Forgot that Ryan had left me. Forgot that Dad was gone. In that moment of twilight sleep I found myself at peace.

I rolled over and faced Ryan’s pillow, empty except for the book of cryptograms. I’d tossed the journal there after my dismal attempt at the first puzzle. Reality rushed back, bringing with it a flood of memories. The voices. The faces. The loss.

I wondered how long this morning ritual would last. I couldn’t remember how many days it took after Emma died before I woke in the morning remembering, knowing, hurting. I couldn’t remember how long it had been before time had numbed the knife-like pain to a persistent, dull ache.

The alarm clock sounded, meaning only one thing. My bereavement leave had ended. The time had come to return to work and soldier on with the rest of my life.

I jumped into the shower, lathering the latest herbal wonder shampoo into my hair. Maybe this time the cosmetic company’s promise of lustrous, tangle-free waves would come true. It could happen.

I forced my thoughts back to my job--the job I loathed. Yet, there I stayed...year after year after year.

Ryan had told me to branch out, to try something new, but I hadn’t. He’d suggested once that I could dream bigger, but at some point in my life, I’d become the kind of person who embraced the status quo, no questions asked.

I hadn’t had the nerve to do anything about my job. And why would I? Sure, I might not like where I was, but I was safe there. I knew what I was dealing with, and--call me a cynic--I’d take the known over the unknown any day.

Just look at losing Ryan. Look at losing Dad. Look at losing Emma.

I wasn’t sure losing Ryan had hit me yet, but losing Dad? Losing Dad had blindsided me, setting into motion what felt like the unraveling of my little corner of the world.

Poindexter, my border collie wannabe, barked and I realized I’d never let him outside. I quickly rinsed off, wrapped a