50 Pages Deep

Ella didn’t know where else to go. She knew she didn’t have to be here. She could be anywhere else. This didn’t change it: she was here yet again.

This lonely strand of beach was gloomy. It was bleak. It was cold; the chill wind and spray crashing into the sand could be felt on her face, in her bones and in her soul.

The debris of winter was washing ashore, too. Beautiful lengths of smooth, ghost-white driftwood lay all around her. The wood was stunning, perfect and worn down to nothing. The wood was elegant and haunted.

The debris of plants, grasses and reeds surrounded Ella as well. No wonder she kept finding herself here. She felt cold inside, haunted, alone. She felt like the debris of life, rather than life itself. Here she could sit, alone with the waves, the debris, the echos and remnants of vibrant, beautiful life.

Ella’s eyes scanned the horizon...but she couldn’t see it. Her eyes looked, but saw nothing. Her eyes could see, but she wasn’t behind them. She was there, her eyes knew what to do, but her will to find interest in the world around her was gone.

Instead of looking for life in the waves, the horizon promised a defined end. A clean cut across the lake and sky. Bold, clear, unaffected by the currents or the winds or the world around it. The horizon was emptiness. Ella was home.

She could see the white-tipped, spraying waves. She could see her life as it had been. She’d been buoyant and alive. She’d felt alive. She was vibrance incarnate, known for her easy and ever-present smile. She used to laugh a lot, and dance, and play. Her life was a flow from one joyous experience to the next.

Ella was climbing in life, but it didn’t feel like a climb. She had felt pure, like she was exactly what she was supposed to be. She was growing. Her art was growing, her connection to her work was the hardline that connected her to something bigger than herself.

She wrote and her words touched people. She wrote because she loved to write...but others had loved it more. She was young and inexperienced, but she already had a reputation as an artist. There was love for her work, and great expectations everywhere around her.

Her smile and her shine hadn’t dimmed. One day they were unceremoniously stamped out. A day like any other; she came home from her work at the firm. She waved at her neighbour and skipped over the step on the way to her front door.

The door opened to silence. There should’ve been paws scraping frantically on the old hardwood, the sound of panting, an electric sensation in the air as her best friend came rushing to the door to greet her. “Ben? Benny!”, she had called, expecting her pup had found his way into trouble.

She found him on the couch. On his couch. His breathing was laboured, his eyes went in and out of consciousness. The cold, clawed hand of terror wrapped around her heart.

Ella had never moved so quickly. The vet said Ben’s little body was full of cancer, though he’d never shown it. A hidden tumour had ruptured. Yesterday he was fine. Today, there was nothing they could do. The only thing she could do for Ben now was say goodbye.

She held him while the injection flowed into his body. Ella had said goodbye to family, friends, but nothing like this. This had been her constant companion...her partner in finding joy every day.

The injection peacefully took Ben’s life as she held him. Ella felt as though the injection had been straight into her heart, as though she’d euthanized who she’d always been.

The part of her that was brightness, laughter and connection to her creative source drew its last breath.

That part was gone. All that remained was the cold, lifeless chasm in her chest. An abyss like the one she imagined beneath the freezing waves on the dark lake.

She shuffled away from the beach, back to her car. Ella couldn’t smile, she couldn’t laugh. Her creativity was gone. She went through the motions at work...just as she went through the motions of returning to her car.

The fog of grief drowns out the sounds of birds and the rustling of leaves in the wind. It mutes the sounds of play and life. The fog of grief turns life into half-life. You were there, but you didn’t see, hear or connect. Not really.

Through the fog, Ella was drawn to the book. It was a small notebook, bound in a simple black cover. It had an elastic closure holding it shut, defying the cold wind. It seemed ancient, worn, but looked untouched and perfectly clean, as though it had always been there but had never been held.

She looked around but saw no one. Her car was the only one in sight. Her mind drew back from the book, telling her not to touch it. She reached for it anyways.

A spark of life erupted into her fingertips as she touched the cover. A current went up her arm, so subtle that she might’ve imagined it. It was the life she used to live, in the form of concentrated energy running through her, into her heart.

The current only strengthened as she turned the notebook over in her hands. Energy coursed through her now. She felt electric. She felt alive. She was terrified and exhilarated. She felt sure that her ears would pop from the pressure and intensity she felt. She felt like her feet barely touched the ground. She’d never felt anything like the charge now coursing through her body.

She went through the motions, looking for a name on the book, as though she ought to return it to its owner. There was no name. She opened the book as a blast of cold wind drove her back onto her heels. It was empty. Nothing on the inside cover, nothing on the pages.

Just as she was about to close it and climb into her car, she nicked her finger on the first page. The cut was tiny but surprisingly painful, and the book dropped to the ground. The wind blew the book’s pages around until it settled on page one. Which was now covered in text.

Black ink was scrawled along the page under a bold header: SAY GOODBYE. Ella’s eyes read half of the page before she could even pick the book up again. The current running through her intensified. She was breathing hard like she’d just run a race. Her eyes were wide.

The page told her she had to say goodbye to Ben. The page that had been empty a moment ago was telling her about the love she’d felt. The neat and elegant handwriting was telling her about Ben, about herself, about the life they’d had...and what she still had to do for him.

She should’ve been terrified. She should’ve thrown the book as far as she could before driving off. All of this she knew in the back of her mind, but her mind was busy. The page told her exactly what she knew in the depths of her heart...what she knew but was afraid to admit.

It had been three months since Ben had passed. She hadn’t lived a day since. She’d ignored everyone in her life. She’d ignored everything that had made her life what it was. She withdrew from her life. This page was telling her how to go back and how to move forward, and that it was right to move forward. For Ben. And for her.

Ella read the page three times, each time flipping it over, desperate to find more wisdom and instruction. She found none. The book was empty apart from the first page. She was terrified but she felt alive. She felt purpose.

After driving home as fast as she could, Ella turned around and came back to the beach. The sun was setting. An orange glow enveloped the barren sands. She took Ben’s ashes and, just as the book had instructed, she spoke the words. She felt exactly what she was supposed to feel. Then she let the wind carry Ben out into the lake as the last rays of crimson sunlight collapsed into the horizon.

That night Ella slept like the dead. She awoke to the sight of the notebook on her bedside table; it hadn’t been a dream. She scrambled over to it and flipped it open, unsure whether she wanted to see blank pages or even more writing than she remembered.

Page one was still there. Page two was now full of the same black handwriting. WRITE IT ALL. Beneath the bold heading was exactly what she knew to be true. The page told her to use her gift, to connect to her creative source, to put everything she knew and felt into words as only she could do.

Ella pulled her laptop out of the closet. She hadn’t written a single word since Ben had died. She couldn’t. She would stare at an empty page for hours. The words that had come so easily to her were nowhere to be found.

Today was different. The document grew, page after page. Ella didn’t slow down, she didn’t edit, she didn’t think. The words poured out of her and they felt right. They were right. Her phone vibrated itself off of the bedside table as her office tried to call her into work. She didn’t notice or care, nor did she didn’t stop.

She wrote about Ben, about the life they’d had together. She wrote about small everyday joys and about major themes...how Ben had been a reminder of the playfulness of life. She wrote what she’d learned and about what needed to happen for everyone to live that life. She wrote until she collapsed next to the laptop and slept like the dead.

Ella awoke to another new page in the notebook. Then another. Every day an invisible hand wrote to her. The book held her hand firmly, walking her through the steps she needed to take. Sometimes it told her to go for a run, or to edit her story.

Fifty pages, fifty days. Ella was sitting across from the head of the publishing house. His lined, serious face was wet with tears. Ella was radiant. She did as the book had told her. She was upright, strong, calm, beautiful...she was herself. She smiled as the man told her what her story had done to him.

He had tried to tell Ella that they would print her story. He tried to tell her about the $20,000 cheque he slid across the desk as an advance payment. He tried to tell her about the generous backend percentage she would earn. He couldn’t tell her any of these things without the story breaking him open again.

Ella thanked him, smiled, and took the cheque. She drove home to the little black notebook. The book still sat on her bedside table. She took it downstairs without opening it. Ella didn’t need to open it to know the pages were empty.

The book still stands on her fireplace mantle today. She doesn’t tell anyone why it’s there. She still doesn’t know what it is, or where it came from.

The empty notebook sits atop the mantle: a reminder of the magic in her life, in all life. The magic animating her early life had disappeared...but now she could find it again. She laughed, smiled and shined. Ben was gone, but he’d live on with her as joy in her heart.

Life would never be the same, but that’s okay. Ella returned to her life, to living, to her creative source...to who and what she was. That was more than enough.