I wait.

I do not live but I am not yet dead. If I were dead, I would be with her. Every night, I dream of her smile, such a beautiful smile. She tells me, “Not long, not long, my Ruthie,” and I know I can wait one more day.

Sometimes, I think this must be what the old priests meant by Purgatory; longing for both worlds but unable to leave one or step into the other. If God came to me now and said, “My child, it is time to make your choice,” I would joyfully take His hand and leave the living world forever.

Don’t think me ungrateful for this long year I have lived on since Ana died. I know that God would not have parted us without purpose. My nephew, Jonathan, comes to me every day and I see God in his smile and feel my Ana’s touch in his hands. I wake every day for him.

When I am alone, I can feel something of life, washing over me in waves of memory. Mainly I swim in my childhood, floating on the boisterous laughs of my sisters. I was the youngest of four girls, the baby of the family, so I was always last. Last to sit at the dinner table, last to school, last to leave home and now, last to die. It seems right that I am last at the end of life.

Ana and I were always best friends. We were so inseparable that Betty and Elsa, our elder sisters, joked that we were really twins; I just arrived two years late. When Ana married, we saw each other as often as her husband would allow. I comforted her through the birth of six children and the death of three. When her husband bruised her cheek and took her smile, I dried her tears and together we ran to safety, cradling her children in our arms like shepherds saving their lambs from the wolves.

When Betty died, Ana, Elsa and I held hands and wept. When Elsa died, Ana and I felt the deep ache of loss but we also rejoiced for she was reunited with Betty. We didn’t think we would be left behind so long. Time calcified our bones and wore our skin to paper but we still thanked God everyday that we were alive, together. We both fell sick at various times but each bore through it for the sake of the other; neither of us could leave her sister alone, no matter how great the pain of living.

But then Ana’s final illness came. She began to dream of those who waited for us at God’s side. She only talked of times past, places and people long gone. I pretended that she would get better but I knew that 85 years of combined life was coming to an end.

On Ana’s last night, Jonathan and I sat by her side, each of us holding one of her cold and shrunken hands.

“Oh, Ruthie,” she said, her eyes screwed up with pain, “I want to go home.”

“But Ana, you are home,” I pleaded.

“No, no, no,” she cried, “Home. I want to see my family, my poor children.”

“But Ana, your family are here with you now. I am here and your son is here. See?”

She did not open her eyes to see, she was looking ahead to the only world that mattered to her now. My heart swelled and every drop of blood in my body shook. I knew what she meant but I was not ready to let her go.

Her slow breathing continued for many hours. Occasionally she would murmur a name from our past. I watched her face, so expressive and beautiful, until the sun rose and she went on to meet her family.

For months, I wandered lost. I talked to Ana every day, as I had done when she was alive, only now there was no answer. When I was not talking to Ana, I prayed to God to help me understand. Gradually, a calm seeped into my heart and gently pulled me away from my life.

Now, as I lie here in this dark room with Jonathan at my side, my hand in his, I understand what she meant that night. I see Mother and Father, Betty and Elsa, but most of all I see Ana, surrounded by her lost children, her smile lighting up my heart. Soon, my body will lie still and cold next to hers but my soul will take her hand in mine and walk forever in the warmth of the sun.