When One Door Closes

I have never liked getting the mail. The trek out of my house, down the walkway, across the street to the metal box to retrieve ads and bills has always felt like more work than it is worth. Today, though, my mother called. The check was delivered. I needed to get off my lazy butt and go and fetch it.

Twenty thousand dollars. There it is, clearly made out to me. My name, Thea Ramsey, written on it in bold black ink. My shoulders slump, my head bows. This is what all our lives amount to anymore. Money.

My grandmother was my favorite person. Is my favorite person. When I was young, she lived down the street from my parents, my brother Oliver and me. Instead of coming home after school, I would skip up the street to her house. She was almost always outside. Working in her garden, shelling peas for dinner at the little glass table on the deck next to the barbecue. Curled up in a blanket with a book on the swinging chair on the porch. When I walked up, she’d stop whatever she was doing and open her arms wide.

“My darling, there you are.” She would say and envelope me in her arms.

Twenty thousand dollars is all I have left now.

Her name was Cynthia Ramsey. She grew up on the coast of Oregon, spending her youth galivanting in and around the ocean with her friends. Friends she would keep for the rest of her life. My grandfather was born in the same town, went to the same schools. It took him a long time to warm her heart. She swore she wouldn’t marry before the age of 25, she needed to experience life first. And he waited until her 25th birthday to propose.

Together, they were world travelers. They homeschooled my father in between exploring ancient ruins in Egypt, climbing the whole length of the Great Wall, or boating down the River Seine. The articles and photography my grandparents produced impressed newspaper and magazine publications worldwide.

By the time I arrived, they were settled back into their small beach cottage in the town they grew up in. My grandfather passed away when I was two, but my grandma would tell me stories whenever I begged with puppy dog eyes, pulling out photo albums.

Her death was unexpected. Only a month ago I received a phone call from my father. His voice was low, his breathing shallow.

“Dad, what happened?” My voice took on the same exact small quality. Like he had cast a spell turning me into a mouse.

“I don’t know how to tell you this.” He swallowed thickly, his throat tight.

“Tell me what?”

“Thea… grandma isn’t doing well.”

My heart dropped into my stomach. It churned around with all the acid, sizzling apart. “What happened?”

Cancer. Breast cancer. She had been diagnosed over a year earlier, but hadn’t wanted anyone to worry, so kept it to herself. It was a battle she was quickly losing.

Time came to a standstill. It was amazing how those words took me from a fully functioning adult to a helpless being with no idea how to exist. The days became a blur of packing, airports, and her hospital room. She wouldn’t know I was there; she was no longer coming to full consciousness. That didn’t stop me from sitting at her bedside, holding her hand until the doctor called time of death.

It has been two weeks since then. And here I am, somehow still alive, holding my penance for loving someone so completely that life has lost its color in her absence.

I deposit the check in the bank, spending the next few days thinking about what I should do with the money, what she would want me to do. My house will need a new roof this summer. I could pay off my car. I could renovate my bathroom and finally be rid of the pink tiles and puke green sink.

At the time my father informed me of her passing, I cashed in all my vacation that I had accrued over the years. 8 weeks. 56 days. I was sure I would spend those weeks huddled in my bed or on my couch, caught up in crying jags, watching all her favorite movies. Her favorites were somehow Shirley Temple and Hitchcock.

I’ve always played it safe in my life. Same group of friends all through childhood, same routine. Went to college locally. Didn’t branch out at all until I moved to Portland to take my current job. Maybe its time to stop playing it safe. Grandma was an adventurer. What she would want most is for me to have an adventure of my own. Booking flights only hours or days before you intend to use them is ridiculously expensive, but I do it anyway. First stop, back to the Oregon coast.

I check in at my parents’ house as soon as I arrive in town. My mother stumbles back to find me at their door.

“Cynthia! You should have called!” Worry furrows her brow. Her curly locks coming loose from a messy knot on top of her head. She wears an apron, a mop in one hand. “I don’t like the thought of you boarding an airplane without telling me.”

“Mom, I’m thirty.” I mumble into the warmth of her embrace, the mop jabbing me uncomfortably in the back.

“You will never outgrow having a mother who cares about your safety and wellbeing.”

She ushers me over the threshold and in mere moments, I’m seated at the dining table, a plate of avocado toast and a glass of freshly squeezed orange juice in front of me.

“What are you doing back? Not that I’m unhappy to see you. I didn’t expect to see you again for at least a couple months.” She rambles on without waiting for me to answer her questions, updating me on what’s happened since the funeral. How my father is, how my brother and his family are.

“I’m actually only back for a couple days. I was hoping I could spend a little time at her house.”

She folds her arms over her chest, her lips pressing together, thinning out. “Are you sure you want to do that?”

I nod. “I don’t want to wallow in the misery of her passing. I want to deal with things the way she dealt with things.”

“And how’s that?”

“By finding the light in the darkness. Seeing the beauty of life.” My cheeks redden.

Her eyes soften and she smiles. “You’re a good kid, Thea.”

“Still thirty, mom.”

She hugs me again.

I find my father in the den, sunk into his favorite chair watching The Princess Bride. A box of tissues sits on his lap alongside a heavily sweating water bottle. He looks up when I enter.

“Baby girl.” His smile doesn’t reach his eyes. “Come sit with me.”

I lower into the overstuffed sofa next to the chair and watch the movie with him. We don’t say a single word to each other until the credits roll.

“Mama loved that movie.” He says quietly, clutching the tissues as if simply holding them helps wipe away his tears.

“The first time I saw it was sleeping over at her house. She said, “have you ever seen The Princess Bride?” And I told her I hadn’t. Her whole face lit up. “My darling,” she said, “you haven’t lived yet.”” A grin tugs at the corners of my mouth from the memory.

“What brings you here? Miss your old man?”

The grin settles in. “I always do.”

He reaches across to where my hand rests on the couch and folds it into his own. “I’m glad you’re back.”

After dinner, my mom presses the key to grandma’s beach house into my palm. She gathers a few things from the kitchen while I grab my luggage. The sun is setting as we walk over, watching the ocean rumble in the distance.

“We haven’t done anything yet.” She tells me as I unlock the door.

“That’s prefect.”

She puts some food away in the kitchen while I drag in my luggage. We meet back at the door. She hugs me once again.

“If you need to come back to our house during the night, just use your key and try to be somewhat quiet.”

“Thanks mom, but I’ll be fine. I’ve slept here many times.”

The lines around her eyes and forehead deepen. “I know. But she was always here.”

That night, I sleep in her bed. It still smells like her, despite the fact that I washed all the bedding before slipping under the duvet. I sleep deeply, my dreams empty of all but the ocean waves crashing a short distance away. When I wake in the morning, I feel more human. I make a cup of cold brew with almond milk, applying peanut butter to a poppyseed bagel. Out on the patio, I sit at the little glass table and eat my breakfast, like I had as a child. The sky is heavy with cloud cover, the sun a pink lining over the horizon.

I take my plate and cup to the sink and quickly wash them up. Tugging on a coat over my sweats and lacing up my sneakers, I lock the door behind me and walk the short distance to the beach. It smells like rain. The air tastes like salt. I spend some time sitting on the sand, throwing stray rocks into the water with a nearly drowned out plunk.

The whole day is spent in this slow manner. Reading through the books on her shelves, the DVDs in her cabinet. Studying old photo albums and memorizing the colors and lines of paintings she created. Poking through her little black notebooks of secrets. I want to breathe her in and never exhale.

I wind up back at my parents’ house for dinner. My mother has a place set and a bowl dished up for me before I knock. As we eat, I talk them through my plans for the next six weeks and beyond, my plans for my inheritance. They aren’t thrilled but understanding. I show them all my plane tickets and my mother busts out a notepad to write down dates, times, locations and flight numbers.

“It isn’t safe to travel by yourself.”

“Nothing is safe.” I respond, looking her in the eye so she can feel how serious I am. “I could go to sleep in my bed, have some kind of gas leak in my house and simply never wake up again.”

“Well-“

“I will be careful.” I promise them. “I will call and send postcards and keep you updated the whole time.”

For the first time in a couple days, my eyes fill with tears and I can’t hold them back. The three of us stand there and hug for what feels like hours. When I get back to grandma’s cottage, I go straight to bed, too tired to do anything else.

I spend the next morning with my parents. We eat and talk, walk down to the beach together and breathe in the smell of earth after a rainstorm. It was grandma’s favorite. They drop me off at the airport with my suitcase and carry on.

“What will happen to your house while you are away?” My mom asks, always practical.

I shrug. “Hopefully, nothing. I’m still paying the mortgage and I didn’t leave any food to go bad or anything.”

By the time I’m seated on the airplane, my stomach is in knots and breakfast sits in the back of my throat. I flip through my remaining plane tickets. Beijing. Paris. Cairo. This would be the adventure of a lifetime. The first of what would hopefully be many. The first tribute to the amazing life of Cynthia Ramsey.