A Walk to Remember (20 page)

“Do you think we have a purpose in life?” I asked.

It was the first time I’d asked her such a question, but these were unusual times.

“I’m not sure I understand what you’re asking,” she said, frowning.

“I mean—how do you know what you’re supposed to do?”

“Are you asking me about spending time with Jamie?”

I nodded, though I was still confused.
“Sort of.
I know I’m doing the right thing, but . . . something’s missing. I spend time with her and we talk and read the Bible, but . . .”

I paused, and my mother finished my thought for me.

“You think you should be doing more?”

I nodded.

“I don’t know that there’s anything more you
can
do, sweetheart,” she said gently.

“Then why do I feel the way I do?”

She moved a little closer on the sofa, and we watched the flames together.

“I think it’s because you’re frightened and you feel helpless, and even though you’re trying, things continue to get harder and harder—for the both of you. And the more you try, the more hopeless things seem.”

“Is there any way to stop feeling this way?”

She put her arm around me and pulled me closer. “No,” she said softly, “there isn’t.”

The next day Jamie couldn’t get out of bed. Because she was too weak now to walk even with support, we read the Bible in her room.

She fell asleep within minutes.

Another week went by and Jamie grew steadily worse, her body weakening. Bedridden, she looked smaller, almost like a little girl again.

“Jamie,” I pleaded, “what can I do for you?”

Jamie, my sweet Jamie, was sleeping for hours at a time now, even as I talked to her. She didn’t move at the sound of my voice; her breaths were rapid and weak.

I sat beside the bed and watched her for a long time, thinking how much I loved her. I held her hand close to my heart, feeling the boniness of her fingers. Part of me wanted to cry right then, but instead I laid her hand back down and turned to face the window.

Why, I wondered
,
had my world suddenly
unraveled
as it had? Why had all this happened to someone like her? I wondered if there was a greater lesson in what was happening. Was it all, as Jamie would say, simply part of the Lord’s plan? Did the Lord want me to fall in love with her? Or was that something of my own volition? The longer Jamie slept, the more I felt her presence beside me, yet the answers to these questions were no clearer than they had been before.

Outside, the last of the morning rain had
passed. It had been a gloomy day, but now the late afternoon sunlight was breaking through the clouds. In the cool spring air I saw the first signs of nature coming back to life. The trees outside were budding, the leaves waiting for just the right moment to uncoil and open themselves to yet another summer season.

On the nightstand by her bed I saw the collection of items that Jamie held close to her heart. There were photographs of her father, holding Jamie as a young child and standing outside of school on her first day of kindergarten; there was a collection of cards that children of the orphanage had sent. Sighing, I reached for them and opened the card on top of the stack.

Written in crayon, it said simply:

Please get better soon. I miss you.

It was signed by Lydia, the girl who’d fallen asleep in Jamie’s lap on Christmas Eve. The second card expressed the same sentiments, but what really caught my eye was the picture that the child, Roger, had drawn. He’d drawn a bird, soaring above a rainbow.

Choking up, I closed the card. I couldn’t bear to look any further, and as I put the stack
back where it had been before, I noticed a newspaper clipping, next to her water glass. I reached for the article and saw that it was about the play, published in the Sunday paper the day after we’d finished. In the photograph above the text, I saw the only picture that had ever been taken of the two of us.

It seemed so long ago. I brought the article nearer to my face. As I stared, I remembered the way I felt when I had seen her that night. Peering closely at her image, I searched for any sign that she suspected what would come to pass. I knew she did, but her expression that night betrayed none of it. Instead, I saw only a radiant happiness. In time I sighed and set aside the clipping.

The Bible still lay open where I’d left off, and although Jamie was sleeping, I felt the need to read some more. Eventually I came across another passage. This is what it said:

I am not commanding you, but I want to test the sincerity of your love by comparing it to the earnestness of others.

The words made me choke up again, and just as I was about to cry, the meaning of it suddenly became clear.

God had finally answered me, and I suddenly knew what I had to do.

I couldn’t have made it to the church any faster, even if I’d had a car. I took every shortcut I could, racing through people’s backyards, jumping fences, and in one case cutting through someone’s garage and out the side door. Everything I’d learned about the town growing up came into play, and although I was never a particularly good athlete, on this day I was unstoppable, propelled by what I had to do.

I didn’t care how I looked when I arrived because I suspected Hegbert wouldn’t care, either. When I finally entered the church, I slowed to a walk, trying to catch my breath as I made my way to the back, toward his office.

Hegbert looked up when he saw me, and I knew why he was here. He didn’t invite me
in,
he simply looked away, back toward the window again. At home he’d been dealing with her illness by cleaning the house almost obsessively. Here, though, papers were scattered across the desk, and books were strewn about
the room as if no one had straightened up for weeks. I knew that this was the place he thought about Jamie; this was the place where Hegbert came to cry.

“Reverend?”
I said softly.

He didn’t answer, but I went in anyway.

“I’d like to be alone,” he croaked.

He looked old and beaten, as weary as the Israelites described in David’s Psalms. His face was drawn, and his hair had grown thinner since December. Even more than I, perhaps, he had to keep up his spirits around Jamie, and the stress of doing so was wearing him down.

I marched right up to his desk, and he glanced at me before turning back to the window.

“Please,” he said to me. His tone was defeated, as though he didn’t have the strength to confront even me.

“I’d like to talk to you,” I said firmly. “I wouldn’t ask unless it was very important.”

Hegbert sighed, and I sat in the chair I had sat in before, when I’d asked him if he would let me take Jamie out for New Year’s Eve.

He listened as I told him what was on my mind.

When I was finished, Hegbert turned to me.
I don’t know what he was thinking, but thankfully, he didn’t say no. Instead he wiped his eyes with his fingers and turned toward the window.

Even he, I think, was too shocked to speak.

Again I ran, again I didn’t tire, my purpose giving me the strength I needed to go on. When I reached Jamie’s house, I rushed in the door without knocking, and the nurse who’d been in her bedroom came out to see what had caused the racket. Before she could speak, I did.

“Is she awake?” I asked, euphoric and terrified at the same time.

“Yes,” the nurse said cautiously. “When she woke up, she wondered where you were.”

I apologized for my
disheveled
appearance and thanked her, then asked if she wouldn’t mind leaving us alone. I walked into Jamie’s room, partially closing the door behind me. She was pale, so very pale, but her smile let me know she was still fighting.

“Hello, Landon,” she said, her voice faint, “thank you for coming back.”

I pulled up a chair and sat next to her, taking her hand in mine. Seeing her lying there
made something tighten deep in my stomach, making me almost want to cry.

“I was here earlier, but you were asleep,” I said.

“I know . . . I’m sorry. I just can’t seem to help it anymore.”

“It’s okay, really.”

She lifted her hand slightly off the bed, and I kissed it, then leaned forward and kissed her cheek as well.

“Do you love me?” I asked her.

She smiled. “Yes.”

“Do you want me to be happy?” As I asked her this, I felt my heart beginning to race.

“Of course I do.”

“Will you do something for me, then?”

She looked away, sadness crossing her features. “I don’t know if I can anymore,” she said.

“But if you could, would you?”

I cannot adequately describe the intensity of what I was feeling at that moment. Love, anger, sadness, hope, and fear, whirling together, sharpened by the nervousness I was feeling. Jamie looked at me curiously, and my breaths became shallower. Suddenly I knew that I’d never felt as strongly for another person as I did at that moment. As I returned her
gaze, this simple realization made me wish for the millionth time that I could make all this go away. Had it been possible, I would have traded my life for hers. I wanted to tell her my thoughts, but the sound of her voice suddenly silenced the emotions inside me.

“Yes,” she finally said, her voice weak yet somehow still full of promise. “I would.”

Finally getting control of myself, I kissed her again,
then
brought my hand to her face, gently running my fingers over her cheek. I
marveled
at the softness of her skin, the gentleness I saw in her eyes. Even now she was perfect.

My throat began to tighten again, but as I said, I knew what I had to do. Since I had to accept that it was not within my power to cure her, what I wanted to do was give her something that she’d always wanted.

It was what my heart had been telling me to do all along.

Jamie, I understood then, had already given me the answer I’d been searching for, the one my heart had needed to find. She’d told me the answer as we’d sat outside Mr. Jenkins’s office, the night we’d asked him about doing the play.

I smiled softly, and she returned my
affection with a slight squeeze of my hand, as if trusting me in what I was about to do. Encouraged, I leaned closer and took a deep breath. When I exhaled, these were the words that flowed with my breath.

“Will you marry me?”

W
hen I was seventeen, my life changed forever.

As I walk the streets of Beaufort forty years later, thinking back on that year of my life, I remember everything as clearly as if it were all still unfolding before my very eyes.

I remember Jamie saying yes to my breathless question and how we both began to cry together. I remember talking to both Hegbert and my parents, explaining to them what I needed to do. They thought I was doing it only for Jamie, and all three of them tried to talk me out of it, especially when they realized that Jamie had said yes. What they didn’t
understand, and I had to make clear to them, was that I needed to do it for me.

I was in love with her, so deeply in love that I didn’t care if she was sick. I didn’t care that we wouldn’t have long together. None of those things mattered to me. All I cared about was doing something that my heart had told me was the right thing to do. In my mind it was the first time God had ever spoken directly to me, and I knew with certainty that I wasn’t going to disobey.

I know that some of you may wonder if I was doing it out of pity. Some of the more cynical may even wonder if I did it because she’d be gone soon anyway and I wasn’t committing much. The answer to both questions is no. I would have married Jamie Sullivan no matter what happened in the future. I would have married Jamie Sullivan if the miracle I was praying for had suddenly come true. I knew it at the moment I asked her, and I still know it today.

Jamie was more than just the woman I loved. In that year Jamie helped me become the man I am today. With her steady hand she showed me how important it was to help others; with her patience and kindness she showed me what life is really all about. Her
cheerfulness and optimism, even in times of sickness, was the most amazing thing I have ever witnessed.