Page 84 of Next Time Will Be Our Turn
The beach is deserted at this time of year. The Bay Area’s beaches are pretty poor year-round, actually. The water is cold and gray, and the sand is rocky. Still, Nainai said in her will that she just wants to be spread in Californian waters—doesn’t matter which end of California—so here we are.
I stand with my feet in the freezing waves and stare out at the vast ocean. The waves crash and roar, and I hug the urn tomy chest, thinking of the time that Nainai waited outside of my window in the dark so that she could tell me about the love of her life, all because she wanted me to be true to myself. I think about where I am, her alma mater, and I think about who I’m with, and I smile through my tears, because I have never felt so free in my life. She made this possible. I open the urn and tip its contents into the water. The ashes tumble out and fly into the wind, whipping away from the shore as though they couldn’t wait to fly. I watch them until the last speck is gone.
“Hey,” Kate says, placing an arm around my shoulders. “You okay?”
“Yeah, actually.”
And I am. I let my head rest on Kate’s shoulder, and I know she’s wondering if I’m really okay, but it’s so hard to explain to her what I know. In the end, I decide to keep it to myself. I don’t even really know how to describe it. A dream? A memory? A glimpse?
But here it is.
The day that Nainai passed away, peacefully in her bed back in Jakarta, I knew she was gone before my mom even called me. Because that same night, as I slept, I had the most vivid dream of my life, so real and richly detailed it feels wrong to call it a dream. More like a vision.
In it, I saw Nainai as a young woman in her twenties, beautiful and shining with vitality and life. She smiled at me before walking across a bridge made of magnolia flowers. A voice said, “Magnolia Chen. She’s been waiting for you.”
A beatific smile lit up Nainai’s face. “She has?” Then she spotted the tall figure in the distance and started to run toward her. When she was a couple of paces away, she lunged, and thefigure caught her and swung her. She said, breathless with wonderment, “You waited for me.”
And Ellery, her blond hair wild around her face, her eyes the same incandescent blue I’d imagined, replied, “Always, Tulip.”
Arms around each other’s waists, they faded into the air. After a lifetime of waiting, Nainai is finally reunited with Ellery, together the way they have always wanted to be.
And that is why I do not grieve Nainai’s death. That is why, as I bury my face in Kate’s neck, I’m smiling through my tears. I don’t know if Kate is the love of my life. As Nainai said, it’s a tragedy to meet the love of your life too young. It doesn’t matter, because whoever I fall in love with, I know I’ll fight like hell to be with them. Nainai and Grandma have paved the way for me to have the life I want to have, and I won’t let their sacrifice go to waste.
As Kate and I walk back to the car, I turn and give the ocean one last look. Maybe it’s just my imagination, but I swear I catch a glimpse of two figures in the water in a tight embrace, right before the ocean swallows them from sight.