You Take It From Here (36 page)

I don’t know if Henry ever tried to get you back to my side. We both knew you had waited a very long time to start
to grieve, and I can assume he didn’t want anything to get in your way, either.

We will do anything to get away from our own pain. We will change our lives, rip people out, swallow a bottle of life-ending pills. When we hurt more than we can bear, when our lives get that dark, it’s shocking what we will do to protect ourselves.

I never blamed you for hating me. And I never stopped loving you for all these years. I hope you found peace. I know peace is basically the opposite of your mother, but at least it would be something.

THIRTY-SIX

W
e’ve come to the part where I need to get to the point of all this. If you have, indeed, read this whole thing. If you kept yourself from lighting that match.

Henry called me today, for the first time in years, to let me know what’s happening. To tell me about your good news. All your good news.

Jennifer Cooperton, a young, beautiful twenty-five-year-old woman, well on her way to becoming a successful oncologist, is getting married tomorrow. I have a lot of thoughts about that.

I hope this man you have found is kind, sweet, funny, and patient. I hope he wants to have babies with you. I hope he understands the importance of your tears, and will never make you feel small. I really hope he’s Southern. I hope he’s ready to grow old with you, find antique credenzas for you, and I hope he knows to leave the house when your best friend shows up with a bottle of wine.

As for that best friend, I have thoughts on her, too. If I could do only one last thing on this planet before I am sent to
that place where your mother now reigns supreme, I wish you your own Smidge, your own tyrant in a tiny dress. I wish you that kind of love, because it’s harder to find than what you’ve got right now with that man about to become your husband.

I’ll be thinking of you tomorrow. Please promise me one thing. If you have found your own Smidge, and if she’s by your side when you stand up there in front of all those people, make sure she knows Henry is the
only
one who is giving you away. Not her. Find a way to tell her she had you before you were in love and she’ll always have you, no matter what people try to put between you.

Keep that girl in your heart and protect her. Because once she’s gone, you will be thrown to the ground in awe of how that pain never lets up.

I’m getting better at knowing when the hurt is coming. Sometimes two notes of a song or a glimpse of a stranger’s face will knock the wind right out of me, sending me back to a time when she was alive and only as far away as my cell phone, my computer, your kitchen.

Sometimes the memories of Smidge hit so strongly I will lose the ability to stand. I reach for the lowest point in the room, stretch myself out on the ground, and weep. It’s like a ghost flew in and sucked out my breath. I know that’s when Smidge has found me and is demanding I acknowledge her, that the pain I might have tricked myself into thinking has dissipated or dissolved is very much
here
and
now
and it is time to deal with it again.

This is when she’s haunting me, just like she promised she would. Not when I don’t follow her wishes; but when I forget for a moment that she’s not here.

During those moments, memories of your mother flood my head in ways I cannot control, nor comprehend. A hodgepodge of our life together, superimposed sometimes. I see us on our way to our high school graduation, when we got pulled over for speeding because we were late finding her cap and gown that had somehow fallen behind the couch. She talked the police officer out of giving us a ticket by kissing his cheek and telling him that a smooch from a graduate was good luck. He then hit his lights and escorted us the rest of the way, at speeds way over anything I’d ever dared to drive.

Then the memories stack upon themselves, faster and faster. Smidge pretending she’s British and works in PR so she can get backstage at a concert of a band I can’t remember anymore. The time she was almost deported trying to smuggle Kahlúa back into the States using a fake ID. The time she got a flystrip stuck to her face and screamed until I pulled it off her. The day of my wedding, when she gave me my something borrowed, and told me she was my something blue. “Because you aren’t just mine anymore,” she said, as she held back a secret that could have destroyed me in order to keep my life perfect that day.

The freckles on her shoulder formed an extended middle finger. The pinkie toe of her right foot looked exactly like a comma. She once won a call-in radio contest by reciting all of REM’s “It’s the End of the World as We Know It (And I Feel Fine)” from memory. She knew all the states’ capitals, flowers, and birds. She hated pistachios. She thought Chardonnay was for quitters. She never met a joke she couldn’t tell, a punch line she couldn’t hit. In Barcelona, she stopped a pickpocket who was trying to rob a lady on a subway by hitting him on
the back of the head with her own purse and then told him to go home to his mother and apologize. In Puerto Rico, she unsuccessfully tried to steal a blue cobblestone from the street in broad daylight. She celebrated my birthday by wrapping one candy bar for each year of my life. In a couple of years I will be fifty. I know she would have stuffed me with such evil glee.

I do not know how I will make it through another birthday without her. This still all makes no sense. It will never feel real. It will never be okay.

I wrote this not only to tell you the entire truth, not just to let you know how much you will always mean to me, but to tell you something important. I wanted you to know that no matter what she said, no matter what you heard, no matter where she went or whom she met, no matter what you might have thought she said and no matter what she did actually say, she absolutely loved you the mostest, and her greatest achievement in life was you.

All my love and a million Odd Hugs,

A.D.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Everything happens because of Alexis Hurley, who continues to be the calm center of all my literary storms and the champion of my what-happens-next. This story went through many capable hands from outline to manuscript to novel, and I’m thankful for Karen Kosztolnyik (a name I will always type s-l-o-w-l-y), Jennifer Heddle (who left me for Darth Vader), Emilia Pisani, Kate Dresser, and Heather Hunt for their thoughts and guidance. Thank you to Lisa Litwack and Regina Starace for the cover art. Special thanks to Anne Cherry for copyediting with an impressive balance of skill and humor that allowed for jokes in the margin (including pointing out when I was unable to count to seven).

While every cancer story is different, I wanted Smidge’s to ring true, warts and all. Thank you to Stephanie Markham, cancer survivor and the friendliest of warriors, who should teach classes on how to be good. Warm, big, happy thanks to Jennifer Saltmarsh Manullang, who got me started by swapping sad stories before helpfully guiding me through her website—where she hilariously and honestly chronicles kicking cancer’s butt (
http://jmanullang.blogspot.com
).

The rest of my research I did anonymously, so I wanted to thank a few people for their passion and tireless energy in the fight against cancer, and their superhero boldness to share their lives with the public. Mary Beth Williams writes of her battle with melanoma with admirable wit, grace, and bravery (
http://www.maryelizabethwilliams.net/
). Jennifer Windrum is fighting to gain advances in lung cancer research while letting us in on her mother’s struggle at “Where’s the Funding for Lung Cancer?” (
http://www.wtflungcancer.com
).

In researching assisted suicide and the Death with Dignity movement, I spent countless hours (and cried thousands of tears) watching personal accounts shared via YouTube, and pretty much blew out a tear duct over the moving documentary
How to Die in Oregon
(
http://www.howtodieinoregon.com/
). I am forever humbled by the courage people can muster when faced with their most final of decisions.

Thank you to Allison “Husalin’” Lowe-Huff and Jason “Cane Pole” Upton for their patience, insight, and encouragement (and for being so lovingly Southern).

Finally, thank you to all my Southern and/or bossy friends and family who have found a way to comment one way or another on the state of my hair, shoes, nails, love life, career, family, and then back to my hair again. You know who you are. Without your voices in my head, I’d have nothing. Well, maybe a little more self-esteem. But other than that, nothing.

PS: Bailiff Ray of the LA County Superior Court, Stanley Mosk Courthouse (Dept 34)—here’s your shout-out. I told you they weren’t going to let me serve on that jury.

GALLERY READERS GROUP GUIDE

you take it from here

PAMELA RIBON

INTRODUCTION

How far would you go to be there for a friend in need? In Pamela Ribon’s
You Take It from Here,
thirty-five-year-old, newly divorced Danielle Meyers is forced to answer this question when her best friend, Smidge Cooperton, makes a very complicated dying request that Danielle isn’t sure she can take on.

On one of Danielle and Smidge’s yearly trips together, Smidge reveals that her cancer has returned. Still feeling remorse and guilt for the way she acted the first time Smidge was diagnosed, Danielle promises to be supportive in every way possible. But Smidge’s request—for Danielle to take over her home when she dies, caring for her husband and raising her teenage daughter, Jenny, until she leaves for college—is more than Danielle ever expected. Written as a letter from Danielle to Jenny many years after Smidge’s final breaths,
You Take It from Here
gives voice to the journey traveled by those who loved Smidge most. It is a story of friendship, sacrifice, and ultimately, of love.

QUESTIONS AND TOPICS FOR DISCUSSION

    1. Though Smidge and Danielle appear to be complete opposites at first glance—Danielle, the more introverted, practical, and patient one, and Smidge, the loud-mouthed leader who always attracts the spotlight—which traits do they have in common? Do you think it’s their similarities or their differences that keep their friendship strong? Does their relationship remind you of any such ones in your life?

    2. “
It’s a lot like having a lion for a best friend—everything is really fun and exciting until the lion is unhappy
”. Do you think Smidge would have agreed with Danielle’s comparison? If not, which animal do you think Smidge would think she is most like? Which animals do you think Smidge and Danielle represent?

    3. “
When I die, I want you to take over my life.
” What was your reaction when you first learned of Smidge’s proposition to Danielle? Do you think it is fair to make this kind of request to a friend?

    4. Throughout the novel, Danielle mentions the regret she feels for not having been there for Smidge during her first battle with cancer. In what ways do you think Danielle’s guilt affects the way she reacts and responds to Smidge the second time around?

    5. At the start of the novel, Danielle refers to Tucker Collier as a superhero. In what ways throughout the novel does he come to Danielle’s rescue?

    6. In what specific ways does Jenny grow up from the beginning of the novel to the end? As she makes the transition from girl to woman, in what ways do Smidge and Danielle view and treat her differently?

    
7. Danielle goes into detail about both her and Smidge’s family lives when they were younger. How do you think their respective experiences growing up shaped the women they became?

    8. How would you describe Smidge and Henry Cooperton’s marriage? What role does each of them play in the relationship? Danielle says she’s never seen “
two people ever fall more instantly in love
” before. What do you think it is about Smidge and Henry that instantly drew them together?