died giving birth to our son, Atlas. She had a blood clot in her brain that burst. They kept her on life support and waited for me to make a decision. As I sat there grieving her, the doctors came to me and said she was an organ donor. I didn’t know she was an organ donor. And honestly, I didn’t care at the time. I was angry that I lost her and refused to see the bigger picture. Athena wanted to live on. Maybe not herself, but she wanted to give life any way she could. So she did. She gave her caring heart to you, her perfectly healthy lungs to another, and her skin to a burn victim. Everything about her lives on in others, and more importantly, in you. Thank you for giving her heart another chance to give life.
More than you know, you belong.
I know it’s been six years, but please give us a chance to get to know you.
Forgive me, please. Forgive me for wasting precious seconds when we could have known you sooner.
May your heart be filled with so much love and fierceness that you believe you are worth surviving it, because you are.
Love,
Lincoln and Atlas
Crying. Again. Since my transplant, there has been an aching deep inside me. Soul deep even. It’s like I had been pulled toward a current that led me toward these two.
It’s not every day someone dies for you. It took me a while to understand it, comprehend the magic in it, but I had to live my life with her in mind. I wanted to make her proud. And if that meant having Lincoln and Atlas in my life, there’s nothing wrong with that. To be honest, there’s beauty in it.
Isn’t love like that? It flows through us, filling cracks we didn’t know existed in the first place, and eventually, we find ourselves whole again.
Have you ever heard the saying, no one is responsible for your healing but you?
It’s true.
It’s never too late to realize the path you’re walking isn’t where you want to be. It’s okay to chart a new course and discover an island you didn’t think existed until he took your hand and led you to love with smoke-filled lies.
I do not exist to live out her life. I exist for me. We are put on this earth to love freely, and I think I just began.
“What’s wrong?” Atlas asks, watching me with curiosity. “Are you still sad?”
With a deep breath, I swipe my tears aside and tuck my phone away. “What do you say we go back to your house and finish decorating those cookies we made for your dad and Bear?”
He nods eagerly, quickly dumping all his crayons and markers into the bag he brought them in. “Can I at least have one of them? If I put in all that work rolling the dough, I deserve a dang cookie.”
I smile. “We could just make a dozen for us, and then like two for them.”
He tucks his marker bag inside his backpack. “I like the way you think.”
Lincoln found me, but Athena, she gave me Atlas because she knew he was my star. My guiding light to see me through my darkest days.
I think about the letter once more. Part of me would have always wondered if I had Athena’s heart for sure. That letter had been Lincoln’s subtle way of confirming it, and that he wanted to be in my life no matter what. Accepting that did not mean convincing myself that he wanted me because of her. It meant giving him the chance to show me.
There’s a tiny flutter in my chest, a reminder of just how tied to this man I am, and soon to be even more. I’ve learned to live in the space between here and the sea of light, constantly tethered to the two. Because there, I can feel him, like the rain on my face.
Smiling, I tuck my hands inside my hoodie, over the smallest bump forming, a tender touch for the one who knows what my heartbeat sounds like from the inside.
Blind Cast - A tactic used for prospecting, often in unfamiliar water, where the angler simply casts in different directions.
“Are you nervous?”
I eye Bear suspiciously. “Why?”
“Because you don’t know if she’s waiting for you or not.”
I try to blow off the question, or his expansion on it, but I can’t deny it completely. I’ve spoken to her twice in two months, and both times there