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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y0mp-vn3jS4

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Previously

I sighed in the midst of maybe the second or third most blessed moment in my life as we both hugged as ferociously as two lovers can do even as we began to fade.

Now you're here, now I know just where I'm going
No more doubt or fears I've found my way
For love came just in time
You found me just in time
And changed my lonely life that lucky day

At the end of the rainbow there's happiness,
And to find it often I've tried,
But my life is a race, just a wild goose chase,
And my dreams have all been denied.
Why have I always been a failure?
What can the reason be?

London, 1918...

"Anne? Are you okay?" Of course, she wasn't okay. Four years of working in a hospital attending to the maimed cannon fodder of yet another pointless war. Young men whose lives were destroyed with only lines on redrawn maps reflecting the cruelty without care or hope.

"It's..." She tried with no success to hold back the cascade of tears. If anyone wore her heart on her sleeve it was Sister Nurse Annie McDougal. I felt completely helpless and worse. Her sacrifice and the lives of her charges shamed me.

"They will never be the same," I opined. No one would be the same. My lack of sacrifice was magnified as I stood next to her compassion. And of course, like some of us who managed to take refuge against the horror by...by pretending to be whom and what I wasn't? I took all I could to keep from breaking down. So what? In an alleyway behind our row of flats attending to laundry. Was that really all I was good for? She touched my arm.

"I...I just learned that my cousin..." She looked off as if she could see all the way to France. Of course, that only fueled the shame I felt.

"No, don't," she said, touching my cheek.

"My brothers, thank heavens, were too young. What if you did go? We would never... " She eyed me up and down, bringing even further rebuke to what I had become.

"I...I am so sorry." I bowed my head.

"Why? Because in two lifetimes we met and found each other? All the way around the world instead of just across the channel? Another time, but with the same horrific result? Losing mates and kin in two lifetimes? No!"

"I am such a fool...and a coward!" I lowered my countenance once again.

"No coward would have borne the shame and hurt you did for others. Didn't your sister tell you there was no need for an apology?" She shook her head and balled her left fist in anger.

"For naught." No one believed us. At this ethereal turn of the century and decades later in the real world. But Annie understood because she bore the same shame in her own life. We looked up, seeking some sense of it all. I breathed out. No Belleau Wood or Amiens. But neither were the two of us touched by Danang and Tet.

"We survived our own lives." she shrugged and chuckled nervously. Like we never saw the rainbows that were just over the hill. But we survived.

"I do not deserve you!" I choked back a sob, evoking even more laughter.

"Silly girl. No! You don't deserve me. That's what my name means...Grace. And grace is bestowed...not earned."

"But.." She placed her right index finger, quieting me.

"But neither do I deserve you. that's what makes this so special." Even as she spoke, our garb changed. No longer two spinsters in War-torn London decades before we were born, but two souls standing in a living room in a bungalow not so many years ago.

"Hold me?" And even as we embraced, things faded further. She smiled at me; anticipating my frown.

"In a lifetime, my dear!"

Some look and find the sunshine,
I always look and find the rain.
Some make a winning sometime,
But I never even make a gain, believe me,
I'm always chasing rainbows,
Waiting to find a little bluebird in vain.

Finally: I'll Be Seeing You

I'm Always Chasing Rainbows
words and music by
Joseph McCarthy and Harry Carroll
as sung by Linda Eder