The Stranger in the Lifeboat

“This world can be a trying place, Inspector. Sometimes you have to shed who you were to live who you are.”

“When someone passes, Benjamin, people always ask, ‘Why did God take them?’ A better question would be ‘Why did God give them to us?’ What did we do to deserve their love, their joy, the sweet moments we shared? Didn’t you have such moments with Annabelle?”

“Every day,” I rasped.

“Those moments are a gift. But their end is not a punishment. I am never cruel, Benjamin. I know you before you are born. I know you after you die. My plans for you are not defined by this world.

“Beginnings and endings are earthly ideas. I go on. And because I go on, you go on with me. Feeling loss is part of why you are on Earth. Through it, you appreciate the brief gift of human existence, and you learn to cherish the world I created for you. But the human form is not permanent. It was never meant to be. That gift belongs to the soul.

“I know the tears you shed, Benjamin. When people leave this Earth, their loved ones always weep.” She smiled. “But I promise you, those who leave do not.”

“When someone passes, Benjamin, people always ask, ‘Why did God take them?’ A better question would be ‘Why did God give them to us?’ What did we do to deserve their love, their joy, the sweet moments we shared?

Sometimes silent people go unnoticed, as if their lack of words makes them invisible. But being quiet and being invisible are not the same thing.

It takes so much to make you feel big in this world. It only takes an ocean to make you feel tiny.

I am thirty-seven years on this Earth, and I have been a fool for most of them. In the end, I failed you, as I always feared I would.

I am sorry for everything.

We were just kids back then. But I idolized him. And those you idolize as a child can hold sway over you years later, even when you should know better.

“I’m just thinking about things.”

“Your fate,” the Lord said.

“Something like that.”

“Perhaps I can help.”

I actually laughed. “Why? If I were God, I would have given up on me long ago.”

“But you are not,” he said, “and I never will.”

I had never focused on dying before, Annabelle. I pushed the idea away. We all know we are going to die, but deep down, we don’t believe it. We secretly think there will be a late reprieve, a medical advance, a new drug that staves off our mortality. It’s an illusion, of course, something to shield us from our fear of the unknown. But it only works until death presents itself so plainly that you cannot ignore it.

Maybe laughter after someone dies is the way we tell ourselves that they are still alive in some way. Or that we are.