Read Online Where The Boys Are by William J. Mann - Free Book Online Page B

in a hospital bed by then, so it was difficult to comfort him. In his own bed, I could crawl in beside him and take him in my arms. But now there were those horrible aluminum guardrails separating us. I slid one down and managed to get in as close as I could. Outside, the wind slammed against the house. The shutters that I thought had been nailed down securely came loose and slapped madly against the windows. I worried the glass might break. We lost power. I lit candles and told Javitz not to be afraid.”
    I can’t continue. Eva squeezes my hands. “I’m right here,” she whispers.
    I find my voice. “We had morphine. I knew I could put a few drops in his mouth and that it would calm him, but I also knew it would hasten his death. I told him what I was doing. We’d had so many talks over the years, I knew he’d want me to. I gave him the morphine and then sat down beside him again.
    “And he did calm down. He was looking at me. All of a sudden, I remembered something he’d once said. ‘Be with me at the end and tell me about the wind.’ See, Javitz loved the wind. It was so perfect that he should die during a hurricane. So I took his hand and described the wind, how fierce it was, how powerful, and I told him that he was like that wind, just as strong, and that all he needed to do was become one with the wind and he’d be free.”
    My throat tightens but I continue. “I told him that I loved him, and he mouthed the words back to me. He hadn’t been able to communicate in days, but he died saying those words. At that moment, I saw the life just disappear in his eyes, like a light switch turned off. I sat there staring at him, his lips still wrapped around his final words, his eyes still open. And suddenly there was such a wind outside, so tremendous that I thought the roof would come off. Tables fell over and a vase in the living room flew from the mantel and shattered against the floor. I thought the house was collapsing inwards, but it was only Javitz, finally released from this world.” I pause, smiling. “Leave it to him to go out with a bang.”
    Eva’s crying softly. So am I. “How I wish I had known him,” she says. “Thank you for sharing that story with me. It means so much every time I hear it.”
    You need to understand how important it is to tell it. For three years I’d kept that story bottled inside. Jeff couldn’t bear it, and neither could other friends. But it felt good to speak it. It felt empowering to remember it. Javitz would want me to remember it, and to tell it often. And with passion, with him as the star. I smile. Javitz always loved being the star.
    And it took Eva, a woman he had never known, to become his most eager fan.
    She seemed to sense, right from the start, my need to talk about Javitz, and she’s continued to encourage me to do so. Even when I might not be thinking about him at the moment, she’ll bring up his name, ask me to tell her something about Javitz. It’s been the way to my heart. In the past three months, Eva’s become the closest person to me on earth.
    We met cute, as they say in the movies. At a seminar on psychic healing at New York’s Open Center, I tripped over her purse and sent a row of metal chairs clanging down like dominoes. Horrified that everyone turned to glare, including the speaker, I sat down beside Eva with my cheeks burning. She offered me a Tic Tac, and a friendship was born.
    I accompanied her that night for the first time to meet Alex. He’d wanted to attend the lecture himself, but had felt too weak. Eva bought a cassette for him and set it up where he could listen to it. When she inquired how he felt, Alex told her he was “taking baby steps back to life.” She seemed to love that line, and repeated it to me on the way out for coffee later.
    “That’s me, too.” she said. “My volunteering, going to the seminar—they’re my own baby steps back to life.”
    Me, too, I realized. We talked for hours that night about grief,