The Truth about Past Lives

Three weeks before my best friend, Patrick, died, he asked me if I had any regrets. He did, he said, a deep regret about a man he once crossed in business. Patrick wrote the man a letter asking forgiveness, tucked a check inside the envelop, gave it to me to mail.

"Now I can die in peace." His words were serious but he said it like a joke, as if balancing business books from some old charade couldn't possibly ease his transition across the river Styx.

"Well," I said, "I have a regret, too. You probably already know what it is. You know. Mark." I dropped my eyes to the floor, tried not to tear up at bad memories of a man I loved too much, a man I let drive out of my life in his camper van. The love of my life, I thought, stupid but true. The love of my life."

"I figured as much. But Birdie, I hated him." Patrick laughed at my discomfort, and I started laughing too, at the way they hated each other, danced around my emotions, how in some ways I chose my friendship with Patrick over a marriage with Mark. Damn men, I thought. Damn stubborn intelligent men. Damn them all to Hades. "And Birdie," Patrick added as he gasped between laughs, "your real regret should be putting everyone and everything above yourself your entire life. Dammit girl, you never do anything fun for yourself and let the rest of the world suffer your absence. You'll come to regret that more than that fucking asshole who didn't deserve you."

I thought of Patrick's words as I packed for my trip. I stuck my photo of him holding Cracky, the Avon cracker server, in my purse. I figured I could talk to his spirit during my long flight. Do something for myself or I'll regret it, I repeated these words to cover the guilt of leaving my boys for two weeks, kept them circling through my mind as I drove to Los Angeles with one shoulder bag and a rolling suitcase stuffed with clothes I thought would look cosmopolitan, international. I even said them out-loud to the check-in attendant at Virgin Atlantic.

"I'm taking my very first solo vacation! And my first overseas vacation! And I feel so damn guilty, but if I don't do something for myself now, I will always regret it." I stared the young girl down, dared her to defy me, but she clicked her keyboard, merely asked if I wanted isle or window (window, natch!) and if I still wanted the vegetarian meal.

"Oh, wait. I see you're traveling with someone. I'll put you two together." She continued hitting the keys, and I raised my eyebrows in confusion.

"No, I'm alone." I looked at the line behind me, half expecting to see the ghost of Patrick dragging his black leather luggage, but only saw strangers with arms crossed, cell phones to ears, iPod wires hanging across their chests.

"Sorry, my mistake then," the woman answered, and handed me my passport and boarding card.

I took the confusion as a positive sign that my best friend still lived and haunted my life in some mysterious way, but the moment I passed through the security gate, I understood. I stood shaking, felt my face turn pink to white to red hot in some kind of new fear, face to face with my biggest regret, Mark.

"Patrick told me you would be on this flight. He told me if I wanted you back this was my big chance. He told me he hated me, but I already knew that. I'm sorry he died, Birdie. I know how much you loved him. I'm here. I want you back. Please say I can travel with you."

My arms continued shaking, and I noticed a small group of people watching us from the sidelines, waiting for me to take him in my arms, waiting for me to say Yes. I saw a small black box in Mark's hand, a ring box, knew it was the engagement ring I threw in his face during our last fight. He looked exactly the same. Short red hair, tall, thin, strong arms, piercing gray eyes, the look of some ancient Scottish lord, unapologetic, rip smart, and I felt the harsh flood of love and desire I thought I lost fly from the earth through my feet, through my legs and heart and hair. I can picture this now as if it happened five seconds ago, it's frozen in my mind like nothing else this lifetime, a perfect mental photograph with smell and touch and heat, Mark looking uncertain and hopeful. I only have the memory, though. I left him there, once again, flew alone to London, empty isle seat beside me.

I cursed Patrick those ten hours of the plane, cursed him as I walked the streets of London that first afternoon, cursed him as I visited the mummies at the British Museum, cursed him as I listened to a new age Irish woman with coal hair and a red sweater tell her companion she must have been Cleopatra in her distant past. "Cleopatra, I was." I turned to watch her sweep her arms in blessing over statues and obelisks, a blessing learned eons ago in some dirty hot pyramid, and I cursed Patrick once again.

It wasn't until my long flight home that I realized he left me the best gift of my life. The chance to affirm a decision, to lose a deep regret, to be reborn as a woman beholding to nothing and no one, no man. And somehow I know he knew exactly what decision I would make.