Promise Me Sunshine

“I’m worried. Ugh. It’s my weak spot. I hate making other people worry about me. It’s why I’ve avoided my parents. Because then they’d see how I’m actually doing and everything would get so much worse.”

Lenny thinks this after Miles mentions that he is worried about her. Her fear of letting others worry about her is a significant character trait, one she must overcome as she learns The Importance of Seeking and Accepting Help. Rather than hurting others, Lenny would rather keep her grief to herself, even if it doesn’t help her.

“‘Look, I’ll spare you the suspense […] I used to live with my best friend in that apartment. And a couple months ago…she died.’ The words make my adrenaline start coursing through me. They don’t feel real. I feel like I’m doing a play. A really shitty play. ‘And saying “my friend died” doesn’t convey what really—she was my sister. No. My A-team. My other half. And I’m so fucking stupid because I didn’t realize she was my whole life until she was gone.’ The words are a waterfall and there’s no stopping it. I can’t look at him. ‘And I’m not…I’m not doing so well.’ A sob sneaks out. ‘And I can’t be at home because all her stuff is in the same place it was since—’”

This is what Lenny tells Miles when she finally admits the full truth to him about her grief. As she continues to speak about losing Lou, Lenny breaks down further, as evidenced by the sentences that get shorter and choppier as she continues. This quote also reveals how hard it is for Lenny to face her grief and even talk about Lou at this point in the novel.

“‘I know I’m not good with people. I’m not…gentle. But I don’t think you need someone gentle.’ ‘Oh, is that right?’ Now he knows what I need. How cute. ‘Yeah, that’s right. You need strong. You need someone who can stop you from fighting large men on the street. You need someone who can wade in and pull you out of the swamp if you need me to. And I can be that person […] I’m stubborn. If you need to cross things off your list to survive, I’ll do that. I can carry someone on my back if I have to. […] If we do this, I will not let you drown.’”

This exchange between Miles and Lenny occurs after he offers her help, and she doesn’t think he can make anything better for her. Miles is characterized by his tough attitude, which often makes him seem off-putting to others, but it works in Lenny’s favor in this circumstance. This quote also shows Miles’s conviction in his ideas: He knows that he can help Lenny because he has gone through the same grief and come out on the other side.

“Believe it or not, it gets easier to talk about after a while. A long while. But I’ve been there, Lenny. Right where you are. Where you lose control of your life and nothing makes sense anymore. When you can’t remember how basic things function. Like when to eat or shower. Grief…it’s not like any other emotion. It is utterly discombobulating. Among many other things.”

Miles tells this to Lenny when she breaks down about Lou again. His sentiments echo the first quote, where Lenny mentioned how even mundane tasks feel impossible. Throughout the novel, Miles constantly reassures Lenny with quotes like this about learning to live with grief, until eventually she learns this lesson for herself.

“‘I have to apologize, Lenny,’ she replies, immediately humbling me beyond what I’d thought possible. Because, of course, she’s the one who’s sick, and that’s her burden. I’m the one who’s not sick and my burden is figuring out exactly how much I can carry for her. And her regret, sorrow, apologies, those are things I can carry for her.”

This excerpt comes from a flashback when Lenny remembers Lou apologizing after Lenny made her a meal she had no appetite for. This shows how much of a burden Lenny took on for Lou and how she was ready to do anything for her best friend. Yet this also highlights just how much Lenny’s life has changed without Lou and why she feels empty without her best friend.

“Comrade. ‘I never thought about it that way, but…’ She was. It’s the perfect word to describe her. She was the one at my side. Had my back. No words necessary. I had one person on this earth who would have died for me, and I would have died for her if possible. But it wasn’t possible. There was nothing I could do. ‘There was nothing I could do.’ The words are broken, sliced, aching with fresh blood. ‘You’re doing it right now,’ Miles says quietly. ‘There’s never anything we can do to keep someone alive, Lenny. There’s no bargain you can make. It’s an illusion. A terrible illusion. The only thing you ever could have done is what you’re doing right now. Sending her off.’”

This excerpt comes after Miles describes Lou as Lenny’s comrade, a word that strikes her with its accuracy. Her thoughts at this moment again show how big of a hole Lou has left in Lenny’s life and just how much Lenny wanted to protect her. Miles’s constant reassurance that Lenny is doing the right thing in mourning Lou helps her keep things in perspective and recognize that she did all she could to help Lou.

“I don’t know. Just thinking about all the experiences other people have. Through all the, you know, grief, I’ve kinda forgotten that the entire world is filled with all these other realities…possibilities…that I’ve never even considered before. […] I think when you’re depressed sometimes it’s easy to think that everyone is depressed? But right this very second, there are billions of people having happy moments. I kind of forgot about those people. I thought I knew how everything worked. And that all of it was terrible.”

Lenny thinks this after a rare happy moment she shares with Miles. This quote highlights how much of Lenny’s life has been consumed by her grief for Lou. As the novel continues, Lenny has more realizations like this, even about her own life, which help her understand that things will eventually get easier for her.

“The thing about bodies is that some of us, even when we don’t know how to live, just keep right on living, no matter how poorly we feed and water ourselves. And then some of us, like Lou, don’t get to keep on living. Our bodies just give way and the world rushes right past. And I’m here, sitting on the curb in front of the noodle shop, forehead pressed to my knees, dripping tears onto my jeans. Time heals all wounds, they say. Well, I can picture myself in ten years. It’s crystal clear. I’m still sitting on this curb, utterly disoriented that I’m the one still alive and she’s still gone.”

This quote highlights the irony of Lenny’s existence after Lou’s death from her perspective. Though Lenny can’t see things from another angle, Lou would likely have thought the same thing if Lenny had died, leaving one person always feeling guilty for being alive. This quote also shows Lenny’s bleak outlook on the future and highlights how her grief prevents her from doing even simple things.

“Consider it like you just had a heart transplant. When Lou died, your entire heart went with her. But you have to live, right? So now you’ve got this new heart. And you’re getting used to it. No one would expect you to run up a hill right after a heart transplant. Go slow. Go easy on yourself.”

Miles tells this to Lenny to reassure her that she is doing all she can in her grieving process. As he helps her, Miles merely tries to help Lenny survive, not expecting her to make any big steps in her life. This helps Lenny recognize that she needs to take care of herself in order to grieve Lou properly and continue with her life.

“‘If I run up this hill…I want…an afternoon beer. And…sunshine. And…a basket of fried shrimp. And…a view of the ocean.’ He blinks at me. And then at the cloudy sky. It’s been a full day since my trip to the Met and the clouds haven’t let up yet. ‘Well, I can’t promise the sunshine. But I can do everything else.’”

This exchange between Lenny and Miles comes after he convinces her to exercise to make her feel better. This quote is also where the title of the novel comes from, though it is ironic because Miles can’t promise her sunshine. The idea of sunshine after a cloudy day symbolizes grief and Lenny’s journey with it. Miles can’t promise Lenny sunshine just like he can’t promise that she will get over her grief, but he can help her while it is still cloudy.

“Miles has his hands in his pockets and he’s standing a few feet back, like he doesn’t want to get in the way of this beautiful moment. How silly. Doesn’t he know that he’s one quarter of this beautiful moment? I elbow him forward.”

Lenny observes Miles’s behavior after they make and deliver a birthday cake to Reese at Ainsley’s suggestion. This shows how insecure Miles is about his relationship with his family, as he doesn’t expect that anything he could do would make Reese happy. Just as Miles can understand Lenny’s grief from an outsider’s perspective, Lenny can understand things about Miles that he doesn’t yet see in himself.

“You keep saying it’s for my own good, you pushing me. Through the list, to make friends. And still I end up like this! Hyperventilating and sick to my stomach. Guess what! None of this is making me miss her less! I’m sick of trying so hard to do this right. So just…just let me do something I’ll regret. I can’t be healthy for you. That’s not fair. It’s too hard.”

Lenny tells this to Miles when she wants to cut off her hair so that she can feel regret rather than grief. Lenny hasn’t yet learned that she will never stop missing Lou, and she lashes out at Miles for making her try to build a better life for herself. Though Miles knows that this outburst comes from her grief, he agrees that Lenny should do something that she will regret, which leads them to get matching tattoos instead.

“I toss my head back and absorb the sunshine. […] New friends shriek. Everyone loves one another in a new and special way. I’m falling but for the first time in a long time I’m not terrified of the concrete. Maybe there is no concrete. Maybe there’s just all this brilliant color in messy strokes. Leaves and sky and air and water water water, rushing by. Maybe I’ve been wrong this whole time and the entire world is not through my eyes. Maybe I’ve been trapped in a painting all along. Smeared and brilliantly applied. Every color is from the eye of someone who knows exactly what the hell they’re doing. I’m uncontainable. I’ve just cracked the code. How to live a perfect existence: just embrace it all, every lovely/excruciating color. I’m so glad Miles is here.”

Lenny thinks this when she is on her camping trip with Miles and their new friends. Here, much like in Quote 8, Lenny makes progress toward learning to live with grief, as she begins to recognize that grief can coexist with other emotions. Lenny starts to understand that she doesn’t need to “get over” her grief; instead, she can be happy alongside her grief.

“‘Meaning I think I’m used to feeling one feeling at a time. If I’m happy, I’m happy. If I’m lonely, I’m totally lonely. If I’m bored, well, you get it. I get one feeling and just feel the absolute crap out of it…But these days…’ He nods. ‘All the feelings?’ ‘At once! I didn’t know anyone could ever be this confused. How do other people handle feeling so many things at the same time?’”

This exchange between Lenny and Miles shows another angle of Lenny’s grief and how it has changed her fundamentally. Her final question highlights the universality of grief, yet it also emphasizes the lesson she still has to learn about living with it. Regardless of whatever happiness she has in her life, Lenny will always feel grief, though her feelings will change again just as they have changed before.

“I laugh, because cute. But then I get serious. Because what genre problem is this? This is a love-life problem. An ache-in-my-heart problem. A hysterical terror at the thought of loving someone wholeheartedly. And maybe it’s also me realizing that I simply can’t love someone wholeheartedly. The love-maker in my chest is too injured. When it creates love, it creates dread in equal measure.”

Lenny’s interior monologue reveals how grief has fundamentally altered her life and emotions, as she feels that she is incapable of loving now that the love of her life is gone. With love comes the fear of loss. This quote also shows the emotional complexities of Lenny and Miles’s relationship and how intertwined love and grief are for them.

“‘Grief is a relationship,’ he continues. ‘It’s the way we figure out how to keep loving them even though they’re gone. And in order to do that we have to keep on going. And going and going. […] You are not betraying her by healing,’ he whispers directly into my ear. ‘You are honoring her. You are learning to love her exactly as she is. As someone who isn’t here anymore…That’s who she is now. And this journey through grief…It’s what we do for the great loves of our lives.’”

Miles tells this to Lenny when she continues to express guilt for being happy and moving into her future. She feels that she must stay in the past to remember Lou properly, but Miles shows how accepting Lou as part of her past is actually helpful for her grief, as it shows how Lenny is “learning to love her exactly as she is.” The idea that grief is a relationship that changes and shifts over time is one of the main things that Miles wants Lenny to learn, as it is what he, too, has come to understand about grief and its persistence in life.

“It strikes me that all the hardest stuff in my life—spiraling out from grief, abandonment of my former loved ones, retreat from my entire life—that somewhere along the line the hardest stuff might have become…the easiest thing to do. And now the hardest stuff in my life is no longer the plummet into despair. Now it’s trying to pull myself up out of it.”

This quote comes from Lenny as she starts to take care of herself and comes back to her old life again. Though she has been trying to do this throughout the novel, she only begins really doing the hardest things when she realizes that Miles wants her to be able to stand on her own if they are to have a relationship. Though Lenny avoided her normal life and let it slip away from her in the early months of her grief, she now begins to reclaim a life that includes more than grief.

“Both of these lists are about me taking care of myself again. I finally understand what Miles is waiting for. Because, sure, who would want to date me if I can’t even take care of myself. But mostly, why would I want to date anyone if I can’t even take care of myself. He’s been my lifeboat for months. And that comes with a very specific job description. I wonder if he’s reluctant to change his position in my life until he’s sure I can float on my own.”

This quote comes after Lenny tells Miles that he needs to take care of himself in order to take care of others, touching on a major theme in the novel. Just as Miles must live his own life in order to be there for Ainsley and Reese, Lenny must be able to stand on her own before she can be in a relationship with Miles. This shows how sincerely Miles cares about Lenny and how he knows that her healing has to come before their relationship.

“Miles survived his own hell and learned that lesson. It’s the hard way or bust for him. There’s no discomfort he won’t push through to just keep on living and living well.”

Lenny thinks this when she sees Miles dancing with Ainsley at her school recital, risking his own embarrassment for his niece’s happiness. Though this gesture may seem lighthearted and insignificant, Lenny knows that it is a representation of Miles and how he pushes himself to do difficult things to come out better on the other side. Miles never takes the easy way out, and Lenny realizes that she must do the same with her grief, facing it head-on rather than ignoring it.

“I consider this. How much of my personality is grief and how much is me? I am who I am because of Lou, but am I also who I am because Lou died? Is it possible that I’m here both because I’m grieving and experiencing a near-perfect happiness?”

Lenny thinks this after Miles finds her on the Staten Island ferry and asks her why she is there if she feels okay. The Staten Island ferry is a symbol that represents liminal spaces, including the one that Lenny finds here between grief and happiness. Lenny notices that two disparate things can exist at once, helping her understand that she can continue to mourn Lou while also enjoying her new life.

“I think that even in all your worst moments of grief, you’ve wished for companionship. I think you’re always, secretly, hoping for happy endings, even when they don’t seem possible. You say compulsive but I think they’re actually kind of just…tenacious. Like daisies popping up out of the snow. Grief has been sort of, I don’t know, it sounds sappy, but like winter for you. And I think that the part of you that can’t help but manufacture happiness, because that’s who you are, it’s been sending up these little flowers to pop up and keep you company.”

Miles tells this to Lenny when they are discussing her tendency to create romantic fantasies about strangers. Lenny has only been doing this since Lou died, and she views this as a coping mechanism, but Miles sees this habit instead as a reflection of her optimistic personality.

“Len, when I met you…I sort of feel like I met myself. […] Not that I didn’t know myself before…it’s more like, after my mom and Anders died I was just so injured that I couldn’t do anything but survive. It got better little by little, but I was still the guy with the tragic backstory. Everyone was always very careful. And then I moved here and met you. And you…let me help you. I got to remember what it feels like to give. And you’re not in the least bit careful with me. Which…yeah. Feels good. You helped me remember how to feel strong. Healthy. Needed. I didn’t know I could feel like that anymore.”

This quote from Miles emphasizes the commonalities between his experience of grief and hers. Like her, he felt consumed by grief and feared having to depend on others. Yet this also shows how he was able to move on to a new future after the sadness of his past and how helping Lenny with her grief brought him to new understandings about his own.

“And there, written in her artsy handwriting, with a pencil she’d surely just been sketching with, are Lou’s last words to me. Get over it already, loser. And her best gift to me, always, is that there is genuine laughter mixed in with the jagged, heart-torn tears. […] ‘She knew, Miles, […] She knew that there isn’t actually a checklist for learning to live again. She knew that some days you do it and some days you don’t.’ Today, all I can do is bring Miles to a place where I feel Lou. And the rest is for another tomorrow.”

This quote comes when Lenny recognizes that there is another item on a folded-up part of the “Live Again” list. Lou’s final words to Lenny help her accept what she has been learning throughout the novel: Her grief will not end, but it will get easier to live her life again. This shows how Lenny must learn to take things day by day but can have the happiness she deserves.