it's the ending gets you

There was a chill in the air.

Wispy masses of grey had hidden the sun since dawn, and so there was no reprieve from the cold that seemed to take root deep in the bones of the small throng of mourners who had gathered to pay their respects. They stood bundled up and huddled together on a sloping hill, their respectful silence forming the backdrop for the clergyman’s solemn intonations.

At the back of the crowd, a young woman approached, face almost completely hidden under a wooly hat pulled down low and scarf wrapped up high. Quiet sniffles around her, she slowed her steps as the minister’s voice became clearer and stopped at the back of the somber gathering, just enough to keep a short distance from the others.

Her eyes drifted quickly past the wooden casket and landed up towards the headstone above it.

James “Jimmy” Finir

December 12, 1927-January 2, 2021

He Ended Well

Although she had seen him a few days before he passed, the finality of those words seemed to settle the truth in her mind that he was, indeed, gone.

A sharp gust suddenly picked up, and she hid her hands in her pockets as an extra layer of protection against the wind’s bite. In one pocket, her hand settled lightly on a small rectangle. As her hand ran over its sleek front, it was a light comfort, and yet it sat heavily with all the weight of an unfulfilled promise.

“You will, won’t y−” A sudden spasm of coughing shuddered through Jimmy’s wiry frame and caused him to double over. He reached for the flimsy oxygen mask pooled in his lap and adjust it over his face for a few moments.

“James…”

She was cut off by his waving hands. The only sounds in the hospital room for a few moments were the rhythmic beeping of his heart monitor and Jimmy’s heavy inhales. He removed the mask and took several more labored breaths, before continuing. “Use it, all the way to the end.”

He held out a small black notebook for her to take.

Her insides trembled with a burning despair, yet she knew she wouldn’t argue with him on this. And still…why should she even agree? How would it even matter, if he was going to be gone in only…what had they said? A few weeks? Months, at best? He would be gone.

She’d only just met Jimmy at the weekly writers’ group she had finally started going to a few years before, and so far, he’d been the only person in her life who had remained constant. Her parents had abandoned her when she was just a teenager, and with no brothers or sisters, she had been making her way through the world the only way she knew: alone.

Just looking at him at the time, she never would have thought an elderly white man who loved to tell jokes about animals would become such a staunch ally, not just of her literary vision, but her life. But even when he’d started going in and out of the hospital, he made it a point to still call her and check on her.

More than just another aspiring writer at a group, he had become a friend. Family.

Now faced with losing him, life was already seeming to lose its point. Writing was losing its point. Why should she be the one forced to stay around with nothing in this godforsaken, screwed up, unfai−

“Janna.”

Called out of her cloudy thoughts, Janna focused back on the man in front of her and saw his eyes trained on her clenched fists, bunched up at her sides and shaking. With a strained exhale, she willed them to release and let them hang limply at her sides.

“Janna,” Jimmy said again. “Promise me.”

Clods of frozen earth falling heavily on wood broke her out of the unwanted reverie, and she turned to walk back down the hill before anyone else could notice her. The clergyman’s voice drifted over the wind, “Ashes to ashes, dust to dust…”

Her feet stepped faster.

***

74 days.

Janna sat on a bench in what had become one of their favorite parks in the city, and it had been 74 days since they put him in the ground.

But it had been 85 days since she had last seen him alive, accepted that notebook from him, and promised.

It had been 85 days since she had last written anything.

Leaning over with a huff, she thumbed the black notebook out of her back pocket and stared at it blankly. What did he expect? Had Jimmy really thought his death would be the spur to some great revelation in her life that would propel her to write a breakout book or something? She didn’t want anything to do what could remind her of him, and as much as she had respected him, she was tired.

Use it. All the way to the end. Promise me.

This promise hurt.

But, well. Maybe the sooner she started, the sooner she could be rid of the whole thing. The notebook. The promise. The memory of Jimmy’s crinkled, kind eyes. The absence of his jokes on her voicemail. The constant reminder that she was really alone again.

Right.

Pulling a pen out of the same pocket, she flipped the book open and began to scratch out her thoughts.

***

Daylight turned into dusk, and still Janna sat on the park bench. After the first few hesitant pages, she found herself slowly beginning to loosen. Maybe Jimmy had known her more than she thought. The more she wrote, it was like an ice block that had formed inside her was gradually melting, one slow drip at a time.

The block of pages underneath her palm had grown smaller and smaller until finally, she realized she was at the last page. While she hadn't anticipated reaching the end so soon in one day, since she had made it this far, Janna decided she would end it out. Today would be the day she fulfilled her promise.

She filled in the front of the last page and flipped it over. Before she could put her pen to paper, her eyes were drawn to two clear pieces of tape holding a thin folded piece of paper in place on the back cover of the notebook.

Janna dropped her pen and gently pulled the paper and tape away from the cover to reveal Jimmy’s handwriting.

Janna,

Glad to see you made it all the way to the end. Here’s some pocket change…make sure you buy another notebook before you do anything else, will ya?

Jimmy

Janna let out a quiet, disbelieving laugh as she unfolded the square, a laugh that quickly turned into a sputtering choke when she saw the one followed by seven zeros in his crisp handwriting.

On the memo line, he had scratched out: for reaching the end.