Love After You

Chapter 8

Jess remembered the day Adam's ashes arrived as if it had happened only yesterday.

It was several weeks after his funeral, and she had hardly left her house by that point. She was still in her pyjamas, her third day in those particular pair. Her hair was greasy and high on her head in a bun; her eyes were red and raw from tears and lack of sleep.

To put it simply, she was a mess.

Her husband was gone; she was a widower before the age of 24. Her best friend was no longer her best friend. Her only companion was her mother, and even though she loved her mother very dearly and treasured her unwavering support, it was pretty sad.

She smelled; her clothes had days-old stains, but she felt no need to wash. There was no need to change. She was content sitting in her own filth.

Things had become dire.

This particular day, she had been watching TV. Her usual go-to was re-runs of How I Met Your Mother, but she found little humour in it these days. Instead, it was just on to basically fill the silence as her mind thought of Adam.

When the funeral director arrived with his ashes, she asked him inside, but he declined. He probably got a whiff of her odour and ran for the hills. He then left her alone on her front door step with this foreign object that contained her husband's remains.

She ordered a nice-looking urn. It was black and shiny, smooth and cold to the touch. Nothing about it had anything close to Adams personality. He was more of a white kind of guy, not black. She regretted her choice immediately.

For the rest of the day, she sat on her living room floor with it in front of her, just staring at it for hours. How could someone so full of life, someone so big and strong, fit into such a small container?

Eventually, she opened the lid and peaked inside, and she was shocked when the urn wasn't even full of the dull grey ash that was the only remains of Adam's body.

She didn't know how to feel.

She felt no connection to it.

This urn wasn't Adam; it was just a vessel.

She finally got up and placed it on the large marble fireplace, which was the main attraction of her living room. That's where people usually put them, right?

Then, after noticing how lonely it looked up there, she gathered some photos of him from around the house and placed them around the urn to try and make it more connected to him.

Even though it was silly, she did feel better having him home. No matter how small of a part that may be. Finally, she went to bed that night instead of sleeping on the sofa, shocked that she actually slept the full night for the first time in weeks.

Today, the urn still sits on top of that fireplace. People came to her house and looked at it, but no one commented on it.

After the first few months, she found herself wanting to talk about him. She brought him up in most conversations, but people tended to rush over it or try and change the subject in fear of her getting upset.

She hated it.

She wanted to talk about him; she didn't want him to dissolve into a past memory that people thought about now and again.

He was the love of her life, and he deserved to be remembered.

The only person who would talk to her about him was Jake.

Aside from Adams parents, Jake was probably the only other person who understood how it felt to lose him. To miss his smile, his laugh, and even his terrible jokes.