The Promise

By Kim Addison

Can a promise be carried out from beyond the grave?

The Promise is a true story of the love, grief, fate, and tragedy that befell two soul mates during their life here on earth.

The Addison family has lost their beloved brother and son Steve to leukemia. Before Steve passes away, he makes an unusual pact with his sisters and his wife.

After he is gone, his sister, Kim, is obsessed with the promise he made. She needs to know, mainly to restore her faith, that there is more to this life. She reminds Steve, night after night, about his promise.

And he finally responds.

Soon the Addison family is faced with a fate none of them could have imagined, and the puzzle of Steve’s continued presence is understood.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Newman Springs Publishing, Inc.
• Release date: Jan 31, 2020
• ISBN: 9781640965713

Book preview

1

July 2000: Steve and Marianne, a Match Made in Heaven

Steve and Marianne,

a Match Made in Heaven

At the young age of thirty-seven, my big brother Steve passed away in the middle of a sizzling hot summer, when most people have vacations, cottages, and sunscreen foremost on their leisure-laden minds. His heart stopped beating as the warm summer breeze gently tickled exposed skin and freckled, pale noses. While flowers gave birth to sweet scents outside my brother’s window, he took his final breath.

Reality stormed down upon us like a relentless pelting rain the day the doctor sat us down and, with a solemn expression and pursed lips, told us that Steve had two weeks left, that nothing more could be done. Fourteen short and terrifying days extended to five cherished, coveted weeks. Steve’s wife, my mother, father, sister, and I had settled in together for those last weeks of his life, living in the delusive security of his beautiful and serene country house, waiting. Waiting for the dreaded moment when our lives would be forever changed. Our lives without Steve. We couldn’t even imagine what it would be like and never even allowed ourselves to imagine it. Now we knew. The reality was dreadful.

The horrific details of the day he died are deeply embedded in my memory like a malicious computer virus slowly eroding other files of recollections. Frozen in grief, we surrounded his deathbed, touching his arms and holding his hands, speaking words of comfort, watching helplessly as the man who was once bigger than life, stronger than Superman, gasped for air, then lay still, without breath.

After endless moments of stunned silence, we straightened out our bent and broken figures, wiped our faces clean, made the required phone calls, sat down together in the living room, and then, for a while, time stood still.

My soul has never recovered from that day. But the image that is scorched in my memory, like a bleeding tattoo etched for a lifetime upon skin, is the deep and burning pain I saw in the eyes of my parents. I had to look away when they caught my gaze, for the anguish reflected there was too much for my heart to bear. Two good people who raised three good children—a perfect and normal family—broken and bruised like the many crab apples that fell from my brother’s tree beside the porch. They were inconsolable. It is abnormal to lose a child, after all.

When the funeral home employees arrived, we sat in stony silence as they bundled up Steve’s motionless body, wrapped it tightly in a long black bag, solemnly, respectfully, and carefully carried it out to their dark hearse into the humid summer air. Those images, and the sorrow that permeated the room like acrid, suffocating smoke from a burning fire, will haunt me forever.

That summer, my favorite season of all, flew by without my attention. I was blind, deaf, and dumb to the melodic chirps of birds singing outside my windows, or the sound of the soft breeze ruffling the leaves in the tall trees. I unwittingly blocked out these soundtracks of the season because our sobs and cries as Steve took his last ragged breath echoed in my ears louder than the wail of an ambulance siren. My heart was broken. The whole family was dazed, confused, and disjointed. It felt like one of our legs had been cut off, but crutches would have been worthless as we limped and stumbled through our pain.

And our poor Marianne. Steve had a wonderful new wife of barely five years. He considered her his true soul mate. They had a three-year-old child. Nicole didn’t understand what had happened to her daddy. He was sick and weak for so long. She was never allowed to bring her friends over to play. Then all of the sudden he was just gone. What is a three-year-old to think?

We go on, as we all must do. Our anguish fades like the dull roar of distant thunder at the end of a spring storm. But our hearts remain broken.

There are lots of leftovers to remind us of our lost brother, son, husband, and father. We can still lounge on the deck at the summer cottage and gaze admiringly at Steve’s handiwork, memories silently licking the corners of our mind. He was a builder, an architect, and designer, and he left behind legacies of his work including the wraparound deck where we spent most summers sitting, reading, eating, talking, and enjoying time with family and friends. The deck is no ordinary structure. It originated from the mind of a creative and artistic designer, resembling a structure from a Hansel and Gretel fairy tale, adorned with swirly decorative wooden curlicues and arched entrances at the top of the wooden staircases. Mom and Dad lovingly stain and sand that deck every few years, preserving it as we delicately preserve our love and memories.

The house that Steve built in Hillsburgh, Ontario, was equally as unique. Nestled beside a pond on twenty-seven acres of wood and fields, Steve had designed his dream home from the ground up. High, open-concept ceilings adorned the front hallway leading into the sunken living room with a cedar-clad cathedral roof. His dining room ceiling, fastidiously hand sculpted, was in the form of concentric circles. His kitchen, southwestern style, clad in a pale peachy-orange Mexican ceramic, had all the modern gadgets and amenities of a millionaire’s house while maintaining a quaint and conservative country style. He had constructed the largest deck I’d ever seen at the back of his house. The long cedar structure always reminded me of an old railway station. Black wrought-iron benches, waiting for the next train, lined the perimeter, interspersed with tall antiqued black lanterns and flower boxes filled with red geraniums in the summer.

I left a note in Steve and Marianne’s house years later when our family had to sell it. After the house had been emptied and Steve and Marianne’s belongings packed up in the moving truck, I secretly buried the note deep at the very back of one of the kitchen drawers so that no one would find it before we abandoned the house forever. I wanted to tell the owners about the man who built the house, so lovingly, so skillfully. They needed to know how special it was, how exceptional the people who lived in it were, and about the love that overflowed the space. I often try to imagine their surprise when they found it as they unpacked their silverware or their kitchen utensils. I wonder whether my descriptions of the two star-crossed lovers invited tears to their eyes as they read their solemn story, or whether they just threw it away, willy-nilly.

As I turned to leave, I looked back into the kitchen, empty and hollow without their belongings, and recalled the past…

*****

When we were invited to Steve and Marianne’s house, our entire family and friends gathered on the deck, for it could fit many. Our nonstop chatter survived for hours overlooking the pond, its water wrinkling in the breeze, drinking Marianne’s expertly made spicy caesars. We’d laugh at the plastic ducks that bounced merrily in the ripples of the pond. For a while we believed they were alive, and Steve and Marianne admitted nothing. Then we noticed that they barely moved or flew away no matter how loud we yelled or how boisterously we waved our arms. My brother’s trick was revealed when someone finally walked over, reached down, and touched a shiny plastic wing. Steve never tired of tomfoolery. I knew this, for his odd sense of humor had accompanied me, entertained me, and at times even tortured me my entire life.

After enjoying a tasty lunch, the women gathered in the kitchen with glasses of the frozen green Margaritas that came in a big bag from Costco. We chattered away the rumors and events of the month while the men puttered around outside sporting toolbelts, discussing Steve’s next project, the fierce drone of their electric tools sputtering in and out of the stillness of the peaceful countryside.

Marianne appeared in Steve’s life during the initial planning stages of his house, while Steve was still sleeping half the time in the tiny makeshift loft he had built on his acreage, the other half in my parents’ guest room back in Oakville. Always the tomboy, Marianne took to his plans like a hammer to nail, and she worked capably and contentedly by his side. To be in their presence was like hanging around with two people who’d known and loved each other throughout many lifetimes, so trouble-free and natural. They were comfortable and easy to be around, often smiling at one of Steve’s silly, endless jokes or admiring a pretty tree, sunset, or sometimes even just an unusual multicolored bug that one of them would pluck from a blade of grass. They possessed the wonder and excitement of two children discovering new toys of nature. Their common understanding of each other’s needs was intuitive, compassionate, and completely in accord. I remember asking them, Do you guys ever argue? They had looked at each other fondly from