My Blossoming Redemption

THIRTY-FOUR

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I stare at the pile I've made of Joel's clothes. Checked shirts, black skinny jeans, a few hats for the winter, and some black hoodies.

They smell like Joel – woody, ocean, fresh – and though he hasn't worn most of these in a while, the scent is so strong.

We were separated, yet when I think about the prospect of him never wearing these clothes again, it's like I'm being hit by a brick.

We'd built that rocky foundation together for two years, yet it's been demolished in one hit now he's dead.

Dead.

Such a small word: four letters. It starts and ends with a hard-sounding letter. It's a strong, captivating word that holds so much weight with it.

Yet it's such a peaceful thing, right? The person whose dead is basically sleeping. For Joel and his dad, it means they're no longer in pain. They're seizure-free, pain-free, brain-fog free...

Free.

Another four-letter word. An airy, light word. Means so much and encapsulates everything. Much like death, free... it holds so much weight.

They're not often put together in a sentence. Most people view death as a frightening, horrible thing. You can't possibly talk about death; you have to be frightened of it.

But for Joel and Frank, and a lot of other people with illnesses, freedom and death go hand-in-hand. They will find freedom in death, death is free.

But why does it still hurt so much?

We weren't in love; we were separated. He told me I was a single woman. Yet, now he's gone, something feels different. Suffocating, maybe. Maybe it's that despite being free from pain, he never, ever deserved death. Joel deserved so much better than that; he deserved to be happy, to be free in life. Not this. Never this.

'For the living know that they will die, but the dead know nothing, and they have no more reward, for the memory of them is forgotten.'

I don't want Joel to be forgotten. No matter how much he lied or how wrong he was for his affair, he didn't deserve to die. He doesn't deserve to be forgotten, as if he was something insignificant.

Joel was my best friend, my only support system. Despite his wrong decisions – most of which involved me – he was still a victim. A victim of Huntington's disease. A victim of my mother.

I pull out the wallet Monica gave me. I feel it, smell the worn black leather. It's amazing how even when a piece of leather has been used for years, worn down to scratches and creases, it can still bring back that scent as if it was newly bought. Despite it smelling of nothing, my nose inhales the new leather smell as if I was gifting it to Joel on his birthday all over again. I bought it two years ago, just after we got married, for his birthday. He was so ecstatic about it; I remember his face lighting up like a Christmas tree.