I filed into our pew behind Mom, Dad, and Jace. Riley went to the back of the church with her laptop. She’d put a slideshow together, about me and Megs, and she’d worked on it for the past few months. She’d wanted my input, but I couldn’t handle seeing the pictures. Remembering was like a knife to the gut.
It felt so wrong that we were here at the church for my wife. The bouquets of flowers and eucalyptus wreaths with the same baby’s breath she had in her hair at our wedding slayed me. Her voice was a whisper from the past, the excitement in her tone as we picked out wedding decorations crawling like fire across my skin. Yeah, the flowers slayed me, but the massive photo of her at the front of the church was the nail in my coffin, and I was positive everyone knew it.
The place was packed full of everyone from our past life, and if they hadn’t noticed me when I’d walked through the big oak doors, they were staring at me now. Probably thinking how weak I was. What a failure I was. That it was my fault she was dead in the first place. My body tensed. Mom set a hand on my arm as I sat beside her in the pew. I pulled it away and leaned forward, resting my elbows on my knees.
“Carter,” Mom whispered a few minutes later, “Megs’ parents are here.”
Looking at them was a struggle, but I forced myself, watching as they walked into the building dressed in all black. Megs’ mom was dabbing her eyes with a weathered tissue, taking everything in. Her dad was just the shell of the boisterous man he used to be. I glanced around to see if Matty was following, but the door closed behind them. Was he really not gonna show?
Clenching my teeth, I stood to greet them. I could at least be polite.
“Oh, Carter,” Megs’ mom said, opening her arms and resting her face against my chest. She sobbed into my shirt, her tears soaking through to my skin, burning through to my heart, straight shredding whatever dignity I had left.
“I’m so sorry, Mrs. Harris.” I sobbed with her.
She nodded, peeling back to wipe her nose. She folded her tissue and Mr. Harris stepped toward me with an outstretched hand. “Nice to see you, son,” he said, patting my shoulder as I squeezed his hand.
“I’m sorry,” I rasped. What else was I supposed to say?
He grunted in response and steered his wife to a pew.
The Pastor opened with a quick greeting and delivered a short message on the promise of eternal life. The hope for a future for all who believe Jesus really is who He said He was.
My muscles tightened worse.
Jace patted my shoulder as Megs’ face hit the screen at the front of the chapel—full of light and laughter, and every bit of life I’d been missing over the past year.
Piano notes poured out of the speakers, and a sharp pain shot straight through my heart. “I’m Alive Because You Live” was playing—Megs’ favorite worship song, the same one she’d played at our wedding. Then pictures started rolling. From her birth, to her toothy-grinned third grade picture, to the picture of her praying with her parents before our wedding, and then a video.
The time she played at her first major piano recital. It felt like I was still in the room, cheering for her at the end just as loud as I was in the video. A complete barbarian in the midst of the world’s best finery.
She didn’t care. Neither did I.
I couldn’t get over her being gone.
I white-knuckled it through the rest of the slideshow. After the slideshow, a bunch of people got up to speak about Megan. As much as I loved hearing about her, I hated it at the same time. Every story was like a punch to the gut and I wished they’d just put an end to me already.
I got up to say my piece, unfolding the note in my pocket, like the page I’d kept my wedding vows on the day I pledged my life to her.
“Megan was my everything.”
I stared at the page, where my tears from last night had stained the words, making them too blurry to read in places.
“She was sunlight in a dark room. Warmth when the world got cold. Peace when chaos broke out in our lives. She was my best cheerleader, my best friend, and my first love. She could laugh for days, even at her own expense.
“She’d do anything to make a sad person happy. A weak person strong. A poor person rich. She was the definition of joy. Even in her worst pain, she held out hope. Hope in God. Hope in life. Hope in the future. Hope in me. She believed in me like no one else.”
I glanced at Mom, because if belief in someone could hold the world together, Mom’s belief in me was holding the universe in place, but Megs’ belief was what kept me grounded to God, the church, my faith—and now it was shattered. Blown away by her death. I was so disoriented without her.
“Megan was brilliant. Beautiful. Simple. Elegant. And the closest thing to holy I’ve ever seen.” I swallowed, that familiar lump back in my throat, but I had to get through this. For her. “They say that time helps heal wounds, but it hasn’t happened for me yet. Not when it comes to Megs.
“I’m forever grateful that I got the chance to call her mine. Not a day passes that I don’t think of her, and no day ever will. I may not be in the military anymore, but I still vow my service to her. To keep watch over her legacy. And to hold her memory in perfect form, just like her. I miss you, Megan. I’ll
