Choose your ending

If you want a happy ending, that depends, of course, on where you stop your story.

- Orson Welles

It's July 2009. We've parked our car in Mukilteo and gone to Whidbey Island on our bikes, loaded down with clothing, books, and food for our getaway. I'm four months past surgery, and we're both feeling strong on the bikes. We've come through a few hard years, but things are looking up now as we enjoy each other's company and explore parts of the island we haven't played in before. If the credits start rolling at that point, the audience is left with a story of triumph over adversity and can imagine us living happily ever after.

But if that's just the end of Act I or Act XVII — if the story continues, the message changes. Two years later, Sandy dies, and we know by then that the cancer had probably returned even during that time of relief and optimism. If the camera fades as Sandy's body is carried out of the hospice, what message does the audience take home then? Life is fleeting? Hope is a farce? Love doesn't conquer all?

Sandy's story didn't end in July 2009 or July 2011. So where does a human story end? I was pondering that this morning, imagining the movie of her life. Just as the scenes might start before her birth, with some background on her family or the world at the time, the movie would probably extend beyond her death. Though she may not be here in physical form any longer, there are things she set in motion that continue.

Were I to direct that film, I'd want something about her donating her body to science and the knowledge that came out of that gift. Her soon-to-come bench and the people who rest there, who read the plaque, who wonder about her life. I'd show her flowers coming back year after year, and the trees she planted as they grow taller and stronger over time. Her stories entertaining people far into the future, and the communities she helped to nurture continuing to evolve, sometimes in ways that she planted the seeds for. I'd film the people who knew and loved her, thinking about her and finding inspiration in their own lives, making choices they might not have made without her influence.

We affect the world around us. I don't know whether a butterfly flapping its wings actually causes a hurricane. But I do know that our words and actions cause changes we don't see. Sometimes we're fortunate enough to learn about them later, but often we have no idea. Sandy was such a strong presence that I believe her effect was greater than average, and that ripples she started will continue for decades, maybe centuries, into the future.

So I think I might modify Welles's wisdom just a bit to recognize that the happiest ending occurs when the story doesn't stop.