My Oxford Year

I take his hand gently and kiss it. He tries to speak, but his voice is raw from intubation and sleep. Nothing comes out but a small, endearing squeak. I resist the urge to jump on him. Probably not medically sound. So I whisper, “I love you.”

I watch him smile. Then, by sheer force of will, he slowly pulls me close to him, bringing my ear to his mouth. He takes a shaky breath, mustering all his strength, and I close my eyes, ready to hear those words repeated back to me.

Instead, he whispers, “It’s a good thing I don’t love you, Ella from Ohio.”

Epilogue

And, while she hid all England with a kiss,

Bright over Europe fell her golden hair.

Charles (Tennyson) Turner, “Letty’s Globe,” 1860

I’ll always remember Jamie this way:

Standing in a raging waterfall. We’d hiked up a canyon not far from the Amalfi coast. After a bracing dip in jewel-toned pools, I went to warm myself on the sun-drenched rocks. Jamie refused to get out. He dove in and out of the water like a dolphin, at one point even making the sound to accompany it. He was a boy again. Exploring, playing, having the time of his life. He was healthier, not nearly as thin as he was right after the pneumonia (hard to be when you’re living on pasta, wine, and gelato). I watched him for what felt like an hour as he called out to me, “Watch this, Ella!” and then did some physical feat that would have been impossible months earlier.

The waterfall was a distance away, but that didn’t stop him. He climbed up on the rocky base and stood directly under the pounding water. He cried out in primal tones, so alive. He would not let the waterfall defeat him. If it pushed him down he would fight his way back up. At times he’d stand tall, as if he’d found a place of balance between himself and the rushing water. I couldn’t take my eyes off him. His face would go in and out of focus, now in front of the waterfall, now behind, slipping between the curtain, back and forth, back and forth between the vale, and every time my heart would stutter.

That day, that image, the waterfall as a curtain between life and the after, became my metaphor.

When Jamie woke up in that Glasgow hospital, life as he knew it had changed. He happily accepted the news that the trial might have bought him some time. But when I told him I had decided to stay?

He balked.

We fought.

He banished me from his room for a whole day. I overheard him telling Antonia that he felt guilty that I was giving up my dream for him, what if I regretted it, what if I grew to resent him for it, what if—until finally Antonia had drawled, “She’s clever, she’ll always be clever, she can do anything she wants with her life, so, impossible though it seems, have the grace to consider, gorgeous boy, that her decision might not have been entirely about you.”

That is why I love her.

Six weeks later, after journeying back to Oxford and physical therapy and countless tests and gallons of Smithy’s frozen broth, we seized our moment, our window of health, and slipped, like thieves in the night, out into the world. Into its cities and villages, its mountains and valleys, its waterfalls.

Today, as I sip my coffee, a kiss lands whisper-soft on my shoulder.

Oh, good.

Jamie’s awake.

His kisses continue up my neck and I offer my cup to him, never taking my eyes off the morning light on the rolling vineyards. He takes the coffee and sits next to me on the veranda. Absently twirling the ring around my finger, I calculate distances in my head. We have a full day of driving ahead of us. We’re aiming to be in Switzerland by nightfall. Of course, we’ll stop and do some tastings on the way. There’s also a house in Annecy where Tennyson once stayed, which Jamie wants to check out. Maybe we’ll grab lunch there. I’ve grown addicted to saucissons aux pommes and have to make sure I get at least one more helping before we leave the Rhône Valley.

Jamie tips his face up to the morning sun.

I came to Oxford looking for a Once-in-a-Lifetime Experience. I chose to experience a lifetime.

I know that one day he will lose to the waterfall, slip behind its turbulent curtain forever, lost to me like something out of a fairy tale. But in our story, there’s no villain, no witch, no fairy godmother, no moral imperative or cautionary conclusion. No happily-ever-after.

It just is. It’s life.

The water keeps flowing as we come and go.

We were never forever, Jamie and I. Nothing is in this life. But if you love someone, and are loved by someone, you might find forever after.

Whatever and wherever that is.

Afterword

To know and love one other human being is the root of all wisdom.

—Evelyn Waugh, Brideshead Revisited