“I swear it, Sweetheart. I wouldn‘t have it any other way.”
“Thank you,” He answered softly, “And, please, Love, I don’t want anybody trying to save me, either. No great lengths to prolong what can’t be avoided. My name’s been written down and when it’s called, let me go as I was meant. In my time.”
“I will. It’ll be the hardest thing I ever did, but I will.”
We were quiet for what seemed forever. “It has to be right,” Oliver wasn’t looking at me when he finally spoke, “Even though it doesn’t seem it, it has to be. The universe has its way and we don’t always understand it, but we have to trust that all natural things are as they should be. We have to have faith in our time.”
“I wish I knew how much time we had.”
“We have forever, Love,” He drew me close, “We have forever.”
Alexander and Lucy came out to the wood the next evening. Alex seemed peaceful as he embraced his brother, but Lucy obviously was not. Alex must have only told her recently because she looked like she’d just seen an accident.
“Oliver, I…” Lucy began to speak, but immediately choked up. Instead of words, she threw her arms around him and held him as if he were slipping away. “Oh, Ollie!”
“Now, now, Lucy,” Ollie rocked her and patted her back, “No tears. Not right now, yeah? I’m still here. It’s all right.”
“It’s not all right!” She sobbed, “Nothing about it is all right!”
“It is what it is. I take it in moments. This moment, I’m all right and I really need you to be, too. I can‘t take you falling apart on me right now. Can I ask you not to?”
“I’m sorry,” She wiped her eyes.
“Don’t be sorry. Just be all right. For me.”
“OK. I’ll try.”
He looked lovingly down at her and kissed her lips, “Thank you.”
“I love you, Oliver.”
“I love you, too, Lucy. My sweet little sister. Little Lucy Cotton. I‘m so bleeding lucky!” He hugged her again, “I am! I am really the luckiest bloke who ever lived!”
Oliver had already discussed his wishes with his brother. It was obvious since they sat us down in the garden and positioned themselves side by side so Lucy and I were in a circle with them. They were going to tell us something important and they wanted us looking at them when they did it. Lucy and I listened while our husbands finished each other’s thoughts and sentences.
“This was the happiest place ever,” Alexander’s voice was mild, “When we were boys we’d come here every chance we got. It felt more like home than our house Welshpool ever did.”
“You may not believe that my brother and I spoke about things that were serious when we were boys,” Oliver’s tone was the same as Alex’s, something like vanilla would sound blending into a warm cup of coffee if it carried a tone, “But from time to time we did. We didn’t know anything about death until our grandparents died, but when they did we decided that we wanted to be buried there,” He pointed at a clearing between two trees, “Because we thought the trees were twins like us.”
“But Oliver hid in an old travelling trunk when we were nine and it locked on him. He was in there kicking and screaming until Mum pulled him out. After that he had this horrible fear of being shut inside of anything, so when we got to talking about dying, he’d have nothing of being locked in a box and set under the earth.”
“Oh, hell no!” Oliver shuddered, “To be asleep and wake up inside a box buried all that way under the dirt! I’ll have none of that and take no chances with it, either.”
“It’s always been difficult for either of us to imagine being without the other,” The night was casting an odd shadow across Alexander’s face so that I couldn’t diagnose his expression, “Mum used to say we were the same soul split in two and walking around on four legs. It seems unnatural being born together and then dying apart.”
“We were lucky, Alex, you and me. Having a twin brother for a best mate doesn’t happen every time,” Oliver was pensive for a moment before he spoke, “But we have always known that the chances of us both dropping dead on the same day at the same moment were slim.”
“So we decided that we’d be cremated instead of buried.”
“Whoever went first would go into an urn and the other one’d keep him. When the second twin died, he’d be turned to ash and somebody’d mix us up together.”
“Then take us back here to the wood and scatter us about in the place we loved best of all.” Alexander motioned around us.
“But what we didn’t take into consideration was the two of you,” Oliver finished quietly.
Lucy shifted, “What do you mean?”
Alexander took his wife’s hand, “You two became a part of us.”
“And a part of this place, too.” Oliver added.
“When we made the promise we had no idea that you two would show up one day and change everything. We had no idea that two sisters would become just as essential to our lives as we had always been to each other.”
Oliver smiled, “I’ve said it a million times. There’s magic in this wood and you, Silvia, and you, Lucy, are part of it. Alex and I spent the happiest days of our boyhood here. Silvia and I spent our whole life here. And it was here where Lucy and Alex were able to fall in love without bother. We are all part of the magic in this place and the magic in this place is part of us.”
“When Oliver dies, there’ll be no burial,” Alexander’s voice was like a whisper, “He’ll be turned to ash.”
“And I’ll wait. I’ll wait for the next one, be it you, Alex, or my Silvia or Sweet Lucy.”
“If it’s me, I’ll become ash as well and be mixed with my brother.”
“We’d like to ask you both to do the same.”
“We’ll mingle the ashes each at a time until we’re all mixed together in an urn…” Alex shifted himself on the grass.
“And then we’ll ask the children to scatter the four of us here all around the wood, so we can always be part of this place,” Oliver squeezed my hand.
“So we never have to leave it.”
“Or each other.”
I could see the tears on Lucy’s face even in the dark. “Oh, Alexander! I want to stay with you forever!”
I moved to my husband and sat myself on to his lap. I lay my head against his shoulder and wrapped my arms around him. The thought of what they’d suggested thrilled me. “That’s a beautiful idea! Return us to the earth in the place we love most and we’ll never have to leave it. We’ll become part of the trees, Oliver!”
“We’ll become the whispers, Love,” Oliver kissed me gently.
“Yes, Sweetheart, we will. I love it and I love you.”
The days passed. Long, difficult days, but we filled them with laughter as much as we were able. Oliver grew weaker, more and more pale and more and more tired. “I’ll stay as long as I can," He promised me over and over through strangled breaths as he pushed himself on, “I’m not done yet. I’m not done!“
And he really wasn’t. Oliver had lived his entire life at a pace that most people couldn’t have maintained for a week, but he took his time finishing up his stay. He struggled to breathe, he coughed until he bled, he had horrible pain throughout his body and headaches to the point where he was not even like himself at all. He was nasty to people and sometimes he’d lie on the bed and cry. Finally, one horrible Saturday morning he had a seizure. I was home alone with him at the time. I thought he’d be dead by the time the ambulance arrived, but he came round on the way to hospital. When we got there, he refused to stay. I begged him to for just one night, just until I could hire a nurse and bring him home.