“You know Stefan would do anything to take your pain away. But that’s impossible. How could he and I help…？”
“I don’t really know,” Jill admitted. She had recently heard from an old friend, a pastor who had been at seminary with her late husband and was now, like our Merry Betancourt, a part-time prison chaplain. He encouraged her to come to one of the meetings he was brokering with a family in the process of forgiving a man who’d shot a grandfather of five in a home invasion. She did, and left both moved and confused. “It really didn’t have that much to do with the person who did it and everything to do with the victims. It really gives the victims a feeling of power over their own lives. And, Thea, I need that. I really feel like a pebble that’s getting kicked around on the ground.”
I was surprised. I said so. “You founded an organization, Jill, a good one. It’s changing young women’s lives. I don’t agree with it in the case of my own family, but its intentions are really good, Jill.”
“But me, personally. I still feel lost in the world.” Which made heartbreaking sense, but which was something I would never have suspected. There was nothing I could say, so I just waited and listened. “Now as for the perpetrators. A lot of them feel new hope when they’re forgiven. But other ones, they apparently actually feel pretty awful when they’re forgiven, worse than before. I guess they’re the sensitive ones, right? I guess even some of them feel better after some time passes, like they’re more able to go on, like a burden is off their shoulders.”
“Stefan told us all about that. There was a guy he knew who, well, he killed himself. And for Stefan, his regret just got worse for him when he was free. That’s why he wanted to try to do something like what he’s doing.”
“Do you think I should explore forgiveness more?”
Why was she asking this of me, of all the beings in the known universe? In concept, it sounded like the absolute pinnacle of civilization, the best humanity could hope for. How would it work out in reality? The more I thought about it, the more I thought that it might be a gesture that could free Stefan from the endless cycle of genuflection, something he could point to—at least privately: If she of all people can forgive me, so can you, and maybe even so can I.
“Does it feel like time for that?” I said.
“I think so. I don’t want to be held back emotionally. It keeps you from other chances in life.”
“Are you getting married again?”
Jill shook her head, startled. “No,” she said, almost with a snort. “I’m not seeing anybody. I think about it sometimes, though. I think about it more than I used to.”
“I thought maybe that was why you wanted to see me. Although now that I say it, there’s probably no reason on earth you’d want to share that information with me, of all people.”
“Well, no, it’s not.” She turned her face to the failing sun, and I saw how beautiful she was, how like Belinda, clearly something I didn’t want to think about every day. “But it’s kind of like that. I wanted you to know that I’m thinking of adopting a child.”
“You are?”
“Yes. This prison chaplain I met, he said something that really got to me. I was talking about how all the love that I had for Belinda, I poured love into Belinda, and that it was all gone now. And he told me not to think that way. He said no love is ever wasted. No love is ever wasted. I didn’t ever really think of it like that.”
She shrugged her shoulders and walked a few paces away from me, looking toward the dappling light around the trees. She told me about some of the research she had done, looking into adopting from Uganda or Jamaica, a slightly older child, five or six years old maybe, a girl or maybe even a boy. It was difficult for her to think about learning to love another child, but the adoption social worker she’d spoken to said some initial fear was normal, especially for someone who had suffered the kind of losses Jill had suffered. It would be strange, in fact, if she didn’t feel some worry.
“That’s probably true,” I said, still wondering why this particular chat was something she felt moved to share with me, although it might once have been something she would have brought up, on those occasions when we would sit on her porch and drink coffee, when we were friends. Perhaps it was part of her attempt to open her spirit to forgiveness. I asked her then, “Are you still a golf pro?”
“I took two years off, but yes, now I’m doing that again,” she said. “Why?”