And so it comes to this

Welcome to the The Shape of Mercy Blog. Unlike most blogs, this is where this one ends, not where it begins. If you are finding your way here for the first visit, your first order of business is to scroll down the archives to the very beginning. You will totally ruin it for yourself if you continue to read this post or any other from 2010 or 2009. Start from the beginning and work your way back to this spot. . .

If you are a regular visitor you can keep reading. . . Yes, I left you all dangling with Abigail's last post. Yes, it was her last. Yes, she left this Earth for brighter places. You knew it was coming. We all did. It comes for all of us, that invitation to the brighter place.

I know the most reasonable thing I could've done - perhaps should have done - was to continue with a post by Esperanza, perhaps sharing a recipe - in her grief - of something she served at the after-funeral reception. Or a post by Clarissa on how lovely the opening day was at Mercy's Gallery, despite her grief. Or an email from Lauren to Raul on how the diary is changing the lives of the people who read it, and that even though she grieves for Abigail, she knows that she, too, has a changed life because she met Abigail in the flesh and met Mercy in the pages of the diary.

But each time I would begin one of those posts, I would realize that I too was grieving the loss of this character and that nothing would be same after this. Then why did you kill her off, you might say. Because this is how life is scripted for us: we are born, we learn to love and be loved, and at some point after that, we die.

If you itch to know what becomes of Lauren, Clarissa and Esperanza, well I can certainly imagine a future for them, can't you? Lauren marries Raul. He becomes a heart surgeon, she teaches history at UCSB and lectures on the diary and what it teaches us. In time they are blessed with a son they name Michael and a daughter they name Abby. Clarissa marries John, she becomes the director of Mercy's Gallery, and they have twin girls: Chloe and Cara. Esperanza and her husband become the house parents for UCSB girls - scholarship girls on a very tight budget - who come to live at Abigail's House while they attend college. Graham meets a woman in rehab. He finally figures out what it means to love someone and be loved. (But not to worry. He is not killed off. . .)

And they all live realistically ever after - until the far-off day when the Brighter Place beckons. . .

It's not such a bad place to leave off. I can see it all. . . Can you?