Post by ivy on Jun 23, 2006 16:30:43 GMT -8
Hi everyone. I'm new here, so I thought I'd just post something. Hope you like it.
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There were times in the morning when I could swear I could feel the gentle pressure of his lips against mine, and my eyes would flutter open sleepily only to discover that he was never there. It was as though I had imagined him, as if he were perfection confined only to my deepest of dreams. I would smile to myself as I woke up, when it would dawn on me that he actually existed in my reality, and that he was not merely a creation of my overactive imagination; it was all in the traces of himself he’d left behind for me to follow. His night shirt would be wrapped up in the tangle of sheets I had either won over some time in the night, or had grabbed up in the early morning when he had surrendered them to me in slipping out of bed. Translucent condensation would cling to every mirror in our small, but cozy bedroom, indication that I had not been left alone for very long, that he had only just gone. It also meant, however, that I had longer to find something to occupy myself until his return. There would be an empty coffee cup cooling on his bedside table, and I would try imagining him sipping it silently –his wedding band clinking lightly against its porcelain handle– in those minutes before he’d bother getting dressed. It wouldn’t be his only cup of the morning of course; he’d pour himself another before he left for work, and he’d bring it back later in the evening for me to wash for the next day. To make up for it though, he would always leave a post-it note on the coffeemaker that would tell me how much he loved me. On his return, he’d never miss the chance to repeat those sentiments accompanied with a kiss on the forehead. I’d kept all of his little love notes in a shoebox which I had hidden underneath the bed, in fear that throwing any of them away meant that I took his affection for granted.
I will never know what I had done to Karma to incur her mighty wrath, but it had obviously been a slight so great that her revenge had to resonate in my mind until the day I died. It has always, and will always amaze me at how quickly life takes its turns, how sharply it makes them, and how unexpected they turn out to be. There are few things in life one can truly be prepared for, but even so, nothing ever happens the way one would want it to. All they can do is stand by helplessly as their life comes falling down like a tower of Jenga blocks.
They say there is no greater a loss than when a parent loses a child. She proved them right as she tried to tell me over the phone –in between her constant choking sobs– that neither of us would ever see him alive again. No one would ever hear his joyful laugh, or feel the warmth in his hugs, or receive one of his genuinely friendly smiles until, perhaps by chance, we met him again in a different lifetime. The comforting words I wished I could use to console the both of us got lodged in my throat, so I was limited to nodding and shaking my head into the receiver. The line went dead a few stressful moments later, and I hung up with a numb feeling that slowly grew inside of me like a parasitic child surviving off of my happiness.
In the days after, I refused to allow the sun shine light on my tears; no, I left them for lonely, merciful night to look upon sorrowfully. I’m sure my heartbreak was nothing new to her, but her dark cloak provided a comforting shelter in which I could cope with my loss. I could not bring myself to crawl into our bed, where all I could expect was an empty spot where his exhausted form should have been resting next to mine. Instead, it was stuck somewhere in last night’s memory, so I would lie on the couch downstairs, twirling the two rings around on my left ring finger to the steady rhythm of the ceiling fan.
Silence was the only thing I treasured after I had fully accepted the fact that wishing him alive again was something only a disillusioned fool would do. It had occurred to me to unplug all the phone cords in the house, but I didn’t do myself the courtesy. I did not want the people who tried reaching out to me thinking I had died as well. What I don’t think I had yet fully realized was that I actually had died the minute I found he had. He was the only thing in my life that I felt was worth living for, and without him, I was just a shell of a woman, which is what I suspected most widows would be in the immediate aftermath. Without him to wake up to every morning, it seemed as though my only purpose in life was to make sure he passed smoothly into his grave. Truthfully, the only reason I made it from day to day was that I wished to overcome the charming allure that falling asleep forever possessed. I was compelled to wander aimlessly through the skeleton of a once happy place, looking around and being reminded of him in the little things; in the little things was where I knew him to be. He was in the thin ribbons of light that filtered through the blinds in the bedroom. He was in the odd book that had been put back in the wrong place on a bookshelf meant to be arranged in alphabetical order. He was in the black and white photographs in their little silver frames that covered almost every available surface that served as little doorways into a happier past. Most of all, though, he was in the shoebox beneath the bed, where a neon rainbow of I Love You’s and similar little notes accumulated over the past three years were stowed beneath its top.
She wore a simple black dress when she arrived on my doorstep, while I greeted her in one of his favorite over-sized football jerseys and a pair of grey sweatpants. At one point in time, she might have looked me over with a critical eye, but today it seemed as though she looked at the world with puffy pink eyes which still leaked a few stray tears. We had begun our relationship as two women so very different from each other, but his death gave us something in common. Her hug reminded me of his, and I reveled in our first real embrace as mother and daughter; if only it were prompted by a less morbid occasion. Her reason in coming was to pick him out a suit for his good-bye party, and it became my duty to watch her while she did it. She stood in the closet he and I once shared, next to his unwashed nightshirt I had folded and put in there earlier, flipping through his various outfit choices. I would study her from where I sat on the bed, my eyes sometimes flicking about the room, always stopping on the empty coffee cup that still sat on his bedside table. Occasionally she would turn to me and ask for some input, but I would answer her with a blank stare, as if I had never even heard her question, or, if I had, as if I didn’t comprehend. She would nod empathetically at my choice of reply and go back to her task at hand; it didn’t bother her that I was still in a rather unresponsive state. She knew what it was like to lose someone she loved.
The suit lay next to me, dark navy in color, rising and falling over the ridges the unmade sheets made underneath it. It reminded me of a night about a year ago, when he had told me he wanted to wear a bright blue suit to his funeral, and how I wished now that I had written it down. What if he knew that night that the Grim Reaper would show up in the form of a drunk driver and take him away not a year later? What if he was preparing me for the crushing blow of that reality? She had gone downstairs to heat me up some Lean Cuisine, leaving me some time to do whatever I wanted to with myself. I wondered how much faith she had in me to not find a way to be with him forever while I dressed in more appropriate clothing. Sleep: I couldn’t remember how much of it I had gotten since his passing, not that I really cared. People would wonder about me, I knew. They would wonder if I had let myself go, if I would ever recover, if I had completely lost my mind. Maybe they would think that my obsession with keeping everything as it was before he died was a sign of denial, but I had already accepted that he was dead, and that he wasn’t coming back.
She greeted me with a meek smile when I entered the kitchen. My eyes watered as I looked at her, she reminded me so much of him, and it was as though my heart was breaking a second time. She told me not to cry, and offered another smile that was meant to reassure me that everything would be alright, but I was no optimist. The smile, however, turned into a puzzled frown when I pulled the shoebox out from behind my back and asked her to put it in his casket as one last gift from me. Though to her it might’ve seemed like a time capsule full of memories to be unburied in the afterlife, to me it was the only proof I had left in the world that love can defy death, even if death conquers all.
---
There were times in the morning when I could swear I could feel the gentle pressure of his lips against mine, and my eyes would flutter open sleepily only to discover that he was never there. It was as though I had imagined him, as if he were perfection confined only to my deepest of dreams. I would smile to myself as I woke up, when it would dawn on me that he actually existed in my reality, and that he was not merely a creation of my overactive imagination; it was all in the traces of himself he’d left behind for me to follow. His night shirt would be wrapped up in the tangle of sheets I had either won over some time in the night, or had grabbed up in the early morning when he had surrendered them to me in slipping out of bed. Translucent condensation would cling to every mirror in our small, but cozy bedroom, indication that I had not been left alone for very long, that he had only just gone. It also meant, however, that I had longer to find something to occupy myself until his return. There would be an empty coffee cup cooling on his bedside table, and I would try imagining him sipping it silently –his wedding band clinking lightly against its porcelain handle– in those minutes before he’d bother getting dressed. It wouldn’t be his only cup of the morning of course; he’d pour himself another before he left for work, and he’d bring it back later in the evening for me to wash for the next day. To make up for it though, he would always leave a post-it note on the coffeemaker that would tell me how much he loved me. On his return, he’d never miss the chance to repeat those sentiments accompanied with a kiss on the forehead. I’d kept all of his little love notes in a shoebox which I had hidden underneath the bed, in fear that throwing any of them away meant that I took his affection for granted.
I will never know what I had done to Karma to incur her mighty wrath, but it had obviously been a slight so great that her revenge had to resonate in my mind until the day I died. It has always, and will always amaze me at how quickly life takes its turns, how sharply it makes them, and how unexpected they turn out to be. There are few things in life one can truly be prepared for, but even so, nothing ever happens the way one would want it to. All they can do is stand by helplessly as their life comes falling down like a tower of Jenga blocks.
They say there is no greater a loss than when a parent loses a child. She proved them right as she tried to tell me over the phone –in between her constant choking sobs– that neither of us would ever see him alive again. No one would ever hear his joyful laugh, or feel the warmth in his hugs, or receive one of his genuinely friendly smiles until, perhaps by chance, we met him again in a different lifetime. The comforting words I wished I could use to console the both of us got lodged in my throat, so I was limited to nodding and shaking my head into the receiver. The line went dead a few stressful moments later, and I hung up with a numb feeling that slowly grew inside of me like a parasitic child surviving off of my happiness.
In the days after, I refused to allow the sun shine light on my tears; no, I left them for lonely, merciful night to look upon sorrowfully. I’m sure my heartbreak was nothing new to her, but her dark cloak provided a comforting shelter in which I could cope with my loss. I could not bring myself to crawl into our bed, where all I could expect was an empty spot where his exhausted form should have been resting next to mine. Instead, it was stuck somewhere in last night’s memory, so I would lie on the couch downstairs, twirling the two rings around on my left ring finger to the steady rhythm of the ceiling fan.
Silence was the only thing I treasured after I had fully accepted the fact that wishing him alive again was something only a disillusioned fool would do. It had occurred to me to unplug all the phone cords in the house, but I didn’t do myself the courtesy. I did not want the people who tried reaching out to me thinking I had died as well. What I don’t think I had yet fully realized was that I actually had died the minute I found he had. He was the only thing in my life that I felt was worth living for, and without him, I was just a shell of a woman, which is what I suspected most widows would be in the immediate aftermath. Without him to wake up to every morning, it seemed as though my only purpose in life was to make sure he passed smoothly into his grave. Truthfully, the only reason I made it from day to day was that I wished to overcome the charming allure that falling asleep forever possessed. I was compelled to wander aimlessly through the skeleton of a once happy place, looking around and being reminded of him in the little things; in the little things was where I knew him to be. He was in the thin ribbons of light that filtered through the blinds in the bedroom. He was in the odd book that had been put back in the wrong place on a bookshelf meant to be arranged in alphabetical order. He was in the black and white photographs in their little silver frames that covered almost every available surface that served as little doorways into a happier past. Most of all, though, he was in the shoebox beneath the bed, where a neon rainbow of I Love You’s and similar little notes accumulated over the past three years were stowed beneath its top.
She wore a simple black dress when she arrived on my doorstep, while I greeted her in one of his favorite over-sized football jerseys and a pair of grey sweatpants. At one point in time, she might have looked me over with a critical eye, but today it seemed as though she looked at the world with puffy pink eyes which still leaked a few stray tears. We had begun our relationship as two women so very different from each other, but his death gave us something in common. Her hug reminded me of his, and I reveled in our first real embrace as mother and daughter; if only it were prompted by a less morbid occasion. Her reason in coming was to pick him out a suit for his good-bye party, and it became my duty to watch her while she did it. She stood in the closet he and I once shared, next to his unwashed nightshirt I had folded and put in there earlier, flipping through his various outfit choices. I would study her from where I sat on the bed, my eyes sometimes flicking about the room, always stopping on the empty coffee cup that still sat on his bedside table. Occasionally she would turn to me and ask for some input, but I would answer her with a blank stare, as if I had never even heard her question, or, if I had, as if I didn’t comprehend. She would nod empathetically at my choice of reply and go back to her task at hand; it didn’t bother her that I was still in a rather unresponsive state. She knew what it was like to lose someone she loved.
The suit lay next to me, dark navy in color, rising and falling over the ridges the unmade sheets made underneath it. It reminded me of a night about a year ago, when he had told me he wanted to wear a bright blue suit to his funeral, and how I wished now that I had written it down. What if he knew that night that the Grim Reaper would show up in the form of a drunk driver and take him away not a year later? What if he was preparing me for the crushing blow of that reality? She had gone downstairs to heat me up some Lean Cuisine, leaving me some time to do whatever I wanted to with myself. I wondered how much faith she had in me to not find a way to be with him forever while I dressed in more appropriate clothing. Sleep: I couldn’t remember how much of it I had gotten since his passing, not that I really cared. People would wonder about me, I knew. They would wonder if I had let myself go, if I would ever recover, if I had completely lost my mind. Maybe they would think that my obsession with keeping everything as it was before he died was a sign of denial, but I had already accepted that he was dead, and that he wasn’t coming back.
She greeted me with a meek smile when I entered the kitchen. My eyes watered as I looked at her, she reminded me so much of him, and it was as though my heart was breaking a second time. She told me not to cry, and offered another smile that was meant to reassure me that everything would be alright, but I was no optimist. The smile, however, turned into a puzzled frown when I pulled the shoebox out from behind my back and asked her to put it in his casket as one last gift from me. Though to her it might’ve seemed like a time capsule full of memories to be unburied in the afterlife, to me it was the only proof I had left in the world that love can defy death, even if death conquers all.
