A Walk to Remember—Dramatic Interpretation

“People think I’m strange, don’t they?” she finally said, breaking the silence.

“Who do you mean?” I asked, even though I knew the answer.

“People at school.”

“No, they don’t,” I lied. “Are you okay?”

“I’m fine,” she said, regaining her composure and keeping the subject on track. “Will you do me a favor, though?”

“Anything,” I said.

“Will you promise to tell me the trust from now on? I mean always?”

“Sure,” I said.

She stopped me suddenly and looked right at me. “Are you lying to me right now?”

“No,” I said defensively, wondering where this was going. “I promise that from now on, I’ll always tell you the truth.”

“People think I’m strange, don’t they?” she asked again.

My breath was coming out in little puffs.

“Yes,” I finally answered. It hurt me to say it.

“Why?” She looked almost despondent.

I thought about it. “People have different reasons,” I said vaguely, doing my best not to go any further.

“But why, exactly? Is it because of my father? Is it because I try to be nice to people?”

I didn’t want anything to do with this.

“I suppose,” was all I could say. I felt a little queasy.

Jamie seemed disheartened, and we walked a little farther in silence.

“Do you think I’m strange, too?” she asked me.

The way she said it made me ache more than I thought it would.

“You’re a wonderful person, Jamie. You’re beautiful, you’re kind, you’re gentle…you’re everything that I’d like to be. If people don’t like you, or they think you’re strange, then that’s their problem.”

In the grayish glow of a cold winter day, I could see her lower lip begin to tremble. Mine was doing the same thing, and I suddenly realized that my heart was speeding up as well. I looked in her eyes smiling with all the feeling I could muster, knowing that I couldn’t keep the words inside any longer.

“I love you, Jamie,” I said to her. “You’re the best thing that’s ever happened to me.”

It was the first time I’d ever said the words to another person besides a member of my immediate family. When I’d imagined saying it someone else, I’d somehow thought it would be hard, but it wasn’t. I’d never been more sure of anything.

As soon as I said the words, though, Jamie bowed her head and started to cry, leaning her body into mine.

“Please don’t say that to me,” she said to me. “Please…”

“But I do,” I said, thinking she didn’t believe me.

She began to cry even harder. “I’m sorry,” she whispered to me through her ragged sobs. “I’m so, so sorry…”

My throat suddenly went dry.

“Why are you sorry?” I asked, suddenly desperate to understand what was bothering her. “Is it because of my friends and what they’ll say? I don’t care anymore—I really don’t.” I was reaching for anything, confused and, yes—scared.

“You can’t be in love with me, Landon,” she said through red and swollen eyes. “We can be friends, we can see each other…but you can’t love me.”

“Why not?” I shouted hoarsely, not understanding any of this.

“Because,” she finally said softly, “I’m very sick, Landon.”

The concept was so absolutely foreign that I couldn’t comprehend what she was trying to say.

“So what? You’ll take a few days…”

A sad smile crossed her face, and I knew right then what she was trying to tell me. Her eyes never left mine as she finally said the words that numbed my soul.

“I’m dying, Landon.”

She had leukemia; she’d known it since last summer.

The moment she told me, the blood drained from my face, and a sheaf of dizzying images fluttered through my mind. It was as though in that brief moment, time had suddenly stopped and I understood everything that had happened between us. I understood why she’d wanted me to do the play: I understood why, after we’d performed that first night, Hegbert had whispered to her with tears in his eyes, calling her his angel; I understood why he looked so tired all the time and why he fretted that I kept coming by the house. Everything became absolutely clear.

Why she wanted Christmas at the orphanage to be so special…

Why she didn’t think she’d go to college…

Why she’d given me her Bible…

It all made perfect sense, and at the same time, nothing seemed to make any sense at all. Jamie Sullivan had leukemia…

Jamie, sweet Jamie, was dying…

My Jamie…

We cried together on the street for a long time, just a little way down the road from her house. We cried some more when Hegbert opened the door and saw our faces, knowing immediately that their secret was out. We cried when we told my mother later that afternoon, and my mother held us both to her bosom and sobbed so loudly that both the maid and the cook wanted to call the doctor because they thought something had happened to my father. On Sunday, Hegbert made the announcement to his congregation, his face a mask of anguish and fear, and he had to be helped back to his seat before he’d even finished.

Everyone in the congregation stared in silent disbelief at the words they’d just heard, as if they were waiting for a punch line to some horrible joke that none of them could believe had been told. Then all at once, the wailing began.

We sat with Hegbert the day she told me, and Jamie patiently answered my questions. She told me that seven months had passed since she’d been diagnosed. The doctors had given her a year, maybe less. No, there wasn’t anything the doctors could do. It was a rare form of the disease, they’d said, one that didn’t respond to available treatment. Yes, when the school year had started, she’d felt fine. It wasn’t until the last few weeks that she’d started to feel its effects.

These days it might have been different. These days they could have treated her.

These days Jamie would probably live. But this was happening forty years ago, and I knew what that meant.

Only a miracle could save her.

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

“I’d made a decision,” she explained to me, “that it would be better if I didn’t tell anybody, and I asked my father to do the same. You saw how people were after the services today. No one would even look me in the eyes. If you had only a few months to live, is that what you would want?”

I knew she was right, but it didn’t make it any easier. I was, for the first time in my life, completely and utterly at a loss.

No one in my family or my circle of friends had ever had to confront something like this. Jamie was seventeen, a child on the verge of womanhood, dying and still very much alive at the same time. I was afraid, more afraid than I’d ever been, not only for her, but for me as well. I lived in fear of doing something wrong, of doing something that would offend her. Was it okay to ever get angry in her presence? Was it okay to talk about the future anymore? My fear made talking to her difficult, though she was patient with me.

My fear, however, made me realize something else, something that made it all worse. I realized I’d never even known her when she’d been healthy. I had started to spend time with her only a few months earlier, and I’d been in love with her for only eighteen days. Those eighteen days seemed like my entire life, but now, when I looked at her, all I could do was wonder how many more days there would be.

I was running out of time, and my heart was still telling me that there was something more I could do.

On February 14, Valentine’s Day, Jamie picked out a passage from Corinthians that meant a lot to her. She told me that if she’d ever had the chance, it was the passage she’d wanted read at her wedding. This is what it said:

Love is always patient and kind. It is never jealous. Love is never boastful or conceited. It is never rude or selfish. It does not take offense and is not resentful. Love takes no pleasure in other people’s sins, but delights in the truth. It is always ready to excuse, to trust, to hope, and to endure whatever comes.

Jamie was the truest essence of that very description. She told me she was happy with her life, that she can look back and know that she couldn’t have tried to help other people any more than she did. Jamie said she’d even fallen in love and had someone love her back.

Days later, I ran to her house after asking her father about something I wanted and had to do. When I reached her place, I rushed in the door without knocking, and the nurse who’d been in her bedroom came out to see what had

caused the racket. Seeing me, she told me that Jamie was wondering where I was when she woke up.

I apologized for my disheveled appearance and thanked her, then asked if she wouldn’t mind leaving us alone. I walked into Jamie’s room, partially closing the door behind me. She was pale, so very pale, but her smile let me know she was still fighting.

“Hello, Landon,” she said, her voice faint, “thank you for coming back.”

“I was here earlier, but you were asleep,” I said.

“I know…I’m sorry. I just can’t seem to help it anymore.”

“Do you love me?” I asked her.

She smiled. “Yes.”

“Do you want me to be happy?” As I asked this, I felt my heart beginning to race.

“Of course I do.”

“Will you do anything for me, then?”

She looked away, sadness crossing her features. “I don’t know if I can anymore,” she said.

“But if you could, would you?”

“Yes,” she finally said, her voice weak yet somehow still full of promise. “I would.”

“Will you marry me?”

I know that some of you may wonder if I was doing it out of pity. Some of the more cynical may even wonder if I did it because she’d be gone soon anyway and I wasn’t committing much. The answer to both questions is no. I would have married Jamie Sullivan if the miracle I was praying for had suddenly come true—and although all I have left are memories, Jamie still received her dream wedding.

She was surrounded by her friends and family, and even though it was the most difficult walk anyone ever had to make while walking down the aisle, in every way, it was a walk to remember.

Forty years later, I’ve never removed my ring and I’ve never felt the desire to do so.

I smile slightly, knowing that there’s one thing I still haven’t told you: I now believe, by the way, that miracles can happen.