This chapter relies on context provided by the first chapter of Beyond Gravesen, so I waited to post it until now. I wanted to hammer home some more heartbreak :)

The Wall:

Sarah gazed at the expanse of blank wall in their new home. She and Joseph had finished unpacking everything: the kitchen, the bedroom, two bathrooms, the soon-to-be-nursery. But this wall remained blank. "Joseph," she called.

"Yes?" He walked over and wrapped his arms around her waist from behind.

She leaned into his embrace and announced, "I want this to be a family photo wall."

"I love that idea. What photo do you want to put up there first?"

"Let's start with one of our wedding photos. And we'll build it up from there, as we build up our family." She grabbed his hand and ran it over her belly.

"That sounds amazing."

~0~

The first picture to join their wedding photo was a sonogram of the baby. Sarah even got a pink frame with the initials ALR burned into the wood. Every morning, she'd stand in front of that photo and take her prenatal vitamins, longing for the day when she'd get to add a real-life baby picture.

Weeks later, she smashed that pink frame against the hardwood floor of the kitchen and didn't even pick up the shards until the next day. Their wedding photo sat alone on the wall for years.

~0~

Sarah didn't put up a sonogram of this baby. It was too confident a move, and she didn't want to jinx it. The first picture of Steven Grant Rogers to grace the wall was taken in the NICU after the surgery. Despite his harrowing first hours in the outside world, his blue eyes shone bright. She didn't actually stare at the picture all that often. Why would she, when the real thing was right there in front of her.

Something else joined the wall that July. When Sarah and Joseph received Steve's diagnosis, with it they got a referral for a support group. Sarah didn't go again after the first time, too busy working and caring for a sick infant, but the group's leader offered her these words of advice, a poem for parents of children with illnesses or disabilities entitled "Welcome to Holland:"

When you're going to have a baby, it's like planning a fabulous vacation trip - to Italy. You buy a bunch of guide books and make your wonderful plans. The Coliseum. The Michelangelo David. The gondolas in Venice. You may learn some handy phrases in Italian. It's all very exciting.

After months of eager anticipation, the day finally arrives. You pack your bags and off you go. Several hours later, the plane lands. The stewardess comes in and says, "Welcome to Holland."

"Holland?!" you say. "What do you mean Holland? I signed up for Italy! I'm supposed to be in Italy. All my life I've dreamed of going to Italy."

But there's been a change in the flight plan. They've landed in Holland and there you must stay.

The important thing is that they haven't taken you to a horrible, disgusting, filthy place, full of pestilence, famine and disease. It's just a different place.

So you must go out and buy new guide books. And you must learn a whole new language. And you will meet a whole new group of people you would never have met.

It's just a different place. It's slower-paced than Italy, less flashy than Italy. But after you've been there for a while and you catch your breath, you look around... and you begin to notice that Holland has windmills...and Holland has tulips. Holland even has Rembrandts.

But everyone you know is busy coming and going from Italy... and they're all bragging about what a wonderful time they had there. And for the rest of your life, you will say "Yes, that's where I was supposed to go. That's what I had planned."

And the pain of that will never, ever, ever, ever go away... because the loss of that dream is a very very significant loss.

But... if you spend your life mourning the fact that you didn't get to Italy, you may never be free to enjoy the very special, the very lovely things ... about Holland.

Sarah used to dream of Italy. But Steve was here in Holland, and there was no place she'd rather be than with him.

~0~

The wall expanded rapidly after that. Sarah often had to restrain herself from framing and hanging every single picture she ever took. Those that didn't make the wall ended up in her ever-growing collection of scrapbooks and photo albums. Steve's first birthday, him on Joseph's shoulders during a Fourth of July parade, a drawing he made of their family, his Chase from PAW Patrol Halloween costume, and him cradling Rosie the baby doll made the cut.

When they started hunting for a place in Brooklyn so Gravesen could be their home hospital, a large, empty wall was on Sarah's must-have list. The first addition to the wall in the new apartment was the picture of Steve and Bucky on their first day of kindergarten.

~0~

The frequency of new pictures dipped as Steve got older and reached the age where he hated his mother taking pictures of him. Still, Sarah would take what she could get. Especially after the fall of his senior year of high school, when she almost lost him, she clung to every physical relic of her son she could possibly get her hands on. Luckily, he and his friends were amenable to having photos taken before prom. Steve and Bucky wore complementary ties, gold and purple, and Sarah couldn't help but think of their conspicuous lack of dates.

Steve, she knew, had little interest in finding a girlfriend at this stage of his life, especially after what happened with Jennifer Walters, but Bucky she figured would have every girl in school clamoring for him. He was the miracle comeback kid, a star athlete, and as handsome as any boy his age. Sarah'd had her suspicions ever since the boys were little, but watching them together that evening was the first time she actually imagined them as a couple.

She said nothing to either of them, of course, but whenever she looked at their prom picture on the wall after that day, it reminded her of that possibility. Sarah laughed imagining her and Winnifred becoming mothers-in-law at the same time.

Not long after, Steve's graduation photos joined the collage. Making it to graduation had never been a guarantee, especially after the rocky start to the year—rocky being a gross understatement—so that picture grew to represent Steve's resilience and determination more than any other.

~0~

There weren't any pictures added to the wall in the year after that. Actually, there weren't any taken at all. Steve was too sick to do anything worth documenting, and Sarah refused to build a visual record of his decline. She knew that she wouldn't want to remember him like this if no lung transplant happened and the worst came to pass. So, she stuck to gazing at the old pictures already on the wall, taken during much healthier days, when she needed a pick-me-up.

Then August nineteenth came around.

Steve came home two weeks later minus one pair of destroyed lungs, and plus about a thousand other abilities he'd previously lost. Sarah had to stop herself from watching him brush his teeth or shave or sketch the view outside his bedroom window, because those were all things that he hadn't done with such carefree ease in nearly a year.

A new testament to his resilience was added to the wall: a side-by-side of him right after the surgery, swollen and inundated with tubes and wires, and him walking out the doors of Gravesen, free of it all and looking practically drunk on the fresh air.

~0~

"Hey Joseph, did you order something?" Sarah asked as she carried the box through the front door.

"No. Why?"

"This package came for us."

"Did you open it?"

"If I had opened it, then I would know what it was, wouldn't I?"

He met her in the kitchen as she set the mystery box on the table and fetched a knife. Glancing at the return address, she recognized Steve and Bucky's house. But what would they have mailed her? Curious, she slid the knife across the tape sealing the box and opened it up. Joseph watched over her shoulder. Atop the layers of bubble wrap sat a card addressed to them. She recognized the stationery she'd gifted to them for their wedding to use to write thank-you notes. It had a border of royal purple with swirling gold leaf accents, and as soon as she'd laid eyes on it, she knew it was perfect for her boys.

She read through the note before handing it off to Joseph and peeling back the bubble wrap.

"Dear Sarah and Joseph,

Congratulations, you're in-laws! Thank you for this gorgeous stationery. As you can see, we're getting lots of good use out of it. You'll have to let us know where you got it so we can get more in the future. Secondly, thank you for your undying support of this relationship. We are very fortunate to be surrounded by people who accept us for who we are, and we look forward to spending time together as the family we've pretty much always been since the beginning. But it's official now. Please enjoy this little gift as a thank you, and know that we never would have made it here without you.

With love,

Steve and Bucky

"What a nice note," Joseph remarked when he finished reading it.

"Ten bucks says Steve wrote the entire thing and Bucky just signed his name," Sarah said.

"I'll take that bet, because I think you're wrong. They co-write everything."

"Oh Joseph, would you look at this," she said, heart swelling with joy as she laid eyes on the object contained within. It was a framed photo of the two of them side by side in their wedding tuxes, Steve grinning like he just made an inappropriate joke and Bucky just at the onset of cracking up. Their eyes glowed with love and joy. If Sarah could choose only one photo to save if a fire or flood threatened to destroy all the rest, it would be this one.

~0~

Sarah added a few more pictures to the wall after that. Steve with the motorcycle she failed to convince him not to get, Steve and Bucky holding the first printed copy of their book, hot off the press, the two of them and all their friends gathered in the yard of their little house. They weren't images from her life anymore, but from her son's. From Steve's independent, amazing life that he'd carved out with the people he loved the most, those who had been there for him through some of the most trying times a person could live. He was still hers, and he always would be, but she now shared him with so many other incredible people. It was the greatest honor of her life.

~0~

One Monday morning, the family photo wall became a memorial.

Liz Howlett gifted Sarah three things in the wake of that worst day of her life. First, her physical presence and comfort, reassuring her that a bereaved mother could still live a life, even if that life would always bear a child-sized hole. Second, the card that Steve had made for them after Logan's passing, reminding her of that magical way he was able to make a lasting impact on people, even if he only met them once. And third, another poem, welcoming her, not to Holland, where she'd dwelled for the past twenty-seven years of her life, but to the world of grief where she'd live out the rest of her days. Sarah framed the card and added it to the wall, along with the new poem. The first poem she'd placed directly beneath Steve's baby picture—his first picture, and this one she hung above his last, the image of him holding baby Carol May Weaver.

I forgot to read the fine print

When I signed up to be your mom

I thought it would be hugs and

Smiles and quite a lot of fun

I didn't see the bit that read

Of pain, loss, grief, despair

I didn't know that you'd be gone

And life would be unfair

But I am still your mother

I will be everyday

If I had read the fine print

I would have signed up anyway.