Everything Bleeds: Love is Dawning

Today I took a train ride. It went from the Bell District, a Polish community outside of Chicago, around the city and to the south, then back again. Through the countryside, away from the city, away from the grimy streets, the druggies, the drunks, and away from County General Hospital.

Away from Abby.

I was sitting in the window seat beside a middle-aged man and his daughter. She kept leaning over me, looking out the window, pointing at things and asking what they were. Her father told her to sit down, to stop bothering me. I only smiled, shrugged my shoulders and said it didn't bother me at all, and that, in fact, I didn't really mind. The daughter, of course, obeyed, but would manage to inch her way back to the same leaning position, pointing and fussing over her curiousity.

At one point, her father got up to go and used the restrooms. The little girl looked up at me with these huge, brown eyes and examined my face with them.

"You talk funny," she said, tugging on a piece of her brown hair.

"It's an accent." I said, smiling at her.

She was, of course, blatantly confused by what I had told her. "What's an accent?" she asked me, her foot kicking me in the knee before she readjusted herself in the seat.

"Well..." I said, rubbing my knee from the tiny impact of patten leather. "It's... it's the way people talk where I come from."

"Where do you come from?"

She certainly had many questions. "Croatia. It's very far away from here."

The little girl looked up at me then, suddenly, her large, brown eyes shining with enthusiasm. "My mommy went far away," she said, an intense grin on her face. "Did she go to Crowyata?"

"Croatia?" I asked, trying to hide my smile. "Did your mother go on a trip?"

"To the hospital." The little girl said, poking my ear with one of her fingers as she spoke. "Daddy said she went far away. He said I couldn't see her anymore."

I watched her, not knowing what to say. "Did your mother go to Heaven?"

She let go of my ear, slowly settling down and slumping back into her chair. "I think so," she said confidently. "But I still see her."

I didn't know what she meant, or what she was talking about. "You still see her?"

The little girl nodded, swinging her legs back and forth as the train moved along. "She sings me to sleep at night, cause I don't like the dark."

I just stared at her, unable to speak a word.

That night I thought about what that girl had said. I lay awake, staring at the ceiling, wondering about everything. I thought about the priest and the time I had spent with him, and I thought about Croatia, and Abby... but I couldn't help connecting everything together. My whole life was lined up in a series of events, all of them landing each other hand in hand. I couldn't help but think about it...

I don't plan on getting married again. Sometimes I think deep down that Abby knew I would never love her the way I loved my wife. I think she knew that I would never let go, that I would live the rest of my life with the memory of the way her hair smelled, the way she walked, the way she whispered when the children were still sleeping.

So I don't need anyone else's love now. There is too much evidence to disprove any agnostic's religion of no God. There's too much proof to say Heaven is just something we say to make us feel better. My whole life is proof. And I don't need anyone else's love, because if the priest and that little girl are right, then I'll always have my wife's love. And I'll see her again someday.