Desire and Despair

Chapter 31

They didn't go through with the wedding. After all, now there had to be a funeral. Not exactly the way he'd imagined her derailing his wedding plans, but still. That was the first time Nathan paid attention. He'd been going through the days in a haze, they all blurred together with no one to define them. "Bury her in Cuba," he said.

No one else understood. But they did as he said. They all felt sorry for him. They didn't dare argue, for fear he'd snap. He was already wearing paper-thin.

They dressed in black. No one smiled. They looked out of place in the cheerful sunlight.

Katie cried. Nathan didn't. Not anymore.

Funny how it was usually the people who cared less who ended up crying.

Katie had lost a friend. She'd really liked Heather. But when this day ended she'd go home to a husband who loved her and her two daughters and plenty of other friends. In the end she'd go back to living the same life. Nothing had really changed. She'd cry today and move on tomorrow. It wasn't like that for Nathan. Maybe he wasn't crying yet, but he wasn't anywhere close to moving on either. His entire life had been uprooted. Nothing would ever be the same.

It was like some part of him was protected from feeling the full grief of the loss. Maybe he was in denial, and maybe technically that was bad, but he didn't really feel like processing any of it anyway. He never really cried over the true tragedies in life anyway. He just let them wear him down and broke down at the slightest hint of adversity later.

He'd always been protected from feeling all the pain that came with his tragic love affair. A part of him had never really thought they'd last. She'd always seemed a little too perfect to last, a little too good to be true. A part of him had been steeled for this moment since the beginning, mourning her since the day he met her, picking petals off flowers to guess at her feelings while the truly bereaved left their flowers at gravesites and his pain was never memorialized with a headstone. He did that with every good thing in his life, thinking not of the providential job Rochelle had gotten him but how easily he could screw it up, not of the newfound freedom he should be living to the fullest but how he once again had something to lose, not of the pretty girl in front of him but how he could never have her. He'd grieved Heather in life as much as death, even when she was only about a half-hour drive away, still healthy, happy, alive. Loss was kind of a foregone conclusion with him. You didn't have to be a psychic for that. He never really won. He'd always held part of himself back to protect himself in the inevitable fallout. Even now he knew that part of him was still alive, the only thing keeping him up and running, the numb, base-instinct survival he treasured more than love.

The service started. Some official man was talking. "Things are given, and things are taken away," he droned.

Nathan felt that old, cliche line wasn't really comforting at all, just rubbed salt in the wound. He was perfectly, painfully aware that something had been taken away from him, and trivializing it so grandiosely was hardly helpful.

That rambling speech finally ended and Nathan was supposed to talk next. After all, he'd known her best. He didn't know what to say. He might be drunk. He wasn't sure. Words blurred together in his mind, so many memories all at once. And really it was ironic that he had no idea what to do because in a way he'd been preparing for this moment almost all his life, trying to learn to live without Heather. Red light, green light, stop and start, touch and go, love her, hate her, off and on til the end. In the beginning he'd been trying to move on just the same, when she was close and yet far, there and yet not, with everyone but him, and now he was doing the same now that she was truly gone, lost to everyone. He'd started this story mourning the same girl he mourned now at the end, and he couldn't tell if that was tragic or beautiful, if he was loyal or pathetic. Probably both. He really didn't know what he was supposed to say, what he wanted all of them to hear. He wasn't sure if he wanted the crowd's sympathy or not. A part of him longed to tell the whole story, every gruesome detail, force them to understand him, force them to share the weight he carried just so he wouldn't be alone. Part of him just wanted to be babied, excused from all responsibilities, hugged and held and told "Oh you poor thing"-but the rest of him scoffed at all that, wanted to be strong and independent for whatever it was worth. As he stood there the first thought that crossed his mind was that they somehow had managed to run off to Cuba together. But he didn't say that, not with Rochelle in the audience, they might not be together anymore but she still didn't need to know how he'd felt while they were. "I don't know what to say," he began finally. "I'm only really doing this because it's for her, and I know most of you think I'm selfish now, but I wasn't then, not with her. Now I don't care. Life was selfish to me, fate was cruel and so were some of you. I'm the only one I can depend on. I wouldn't drop anything for almost everyone here and despite all the guilt-trips I don't feel bad about it. But back then, while life was kind and I was in love, I wasn't selfish. There isn't a single thing I wouldn't have done for her back then, to protect her, to keep her close, even just to make her smile. She was the only thing that mattered to me, everything I'd ever really wanted, beautiful and sweet and funny and effortlessly perfect-so enticing to me, a forever striving perfectionist who could never quite attain it. She laughed often and made life her own-it was all a game, none of it mattered, but if it had she would've been winning. She doesn't need some ceremony written by some random official who didn't even know her, or for all of us to wear some itchy black suit with shoes that pinch, or eat cheap catering bread and dry cake with sad quotes ironically misspelled all over in icing. Heather celebrated her life just by living it. Fancy magazines wrote her memoirs long before she was gone. She loved freely and often. She followed her heart, to the very end. Every day she existed was a celebration of herself and those around her. No one needs to be told all of her accomplishments today in some uncomfortable booth with no real back rest. Her success is common knowledge, well-chronicled in gushing articles. Her beauty is captured in a million pictures, from modeling shoots to mugshots. She took her beauty for granted, she was aware she was beautiful, but she wasn't excessively proud of it because she never had to work for any of it. People who work all their lives or pay good money for beauty always flaunt it a little, but it was just an innate part of her. She possessed beauty and goodness effortlessly. She had a million pictures scattered over runway walks and billboards, living on forever. And her love will live on too, given freely away, in all the hearts she's captured. She lived a fleeting life, ended too soon, but she's already lived a legacy. I've always been terrified of so much in life but she made it look easy and for that more than anything I loved her. Maybe too deeply. I gave her too much, everything I had. And it still wasn't enough. I changed everything around us but I couldn't change myself. When we first met I crashed my cart into her car, wrecking a small piece of her perfect life. And in the end I was what ended it. She crashed on the way to my wedding to another girl. I never brought her anything but pain. I never deserved her. I don't deserve your sympathy. I'm not a good person. And most days I'm okay with that, I've made my peace with it. Most days I don't even want to change. We can't all be perfect. I lived for love and now I live for myself and I'm not sorry for that, though the world always seems to tell me I should be. And even if I had always been selfish, if mere selfishness was the price for all I had I'd pay it forever. But on these kind of days I wish I had been better, in her wake I wish I'd found it in myself to care for anyone but her. Because all I ever brought her was destruction. I tried so hard to give her everything but I never had much to begin with. Honestly some days I wish I'd known before that it would all go down like this, so I could've appreciated her more, loved her better. But truth is deep down I'm glad for so long I didn't know it would all fall apart. At first I thought if I'd known this was always how it would end I wouldn't have wasted so much time chasing her. But I'm not sure what else I could've done. I'm a striver by nature, it's in my blood, and she gave me meaning, purpose, direction, for years on end. Even though I lost a part of me is still glad I played the game, and I couldn't have done it if I hadn't believed I'd win someday. So, all things considered, I'm glad I didn't know it would end like this. I'm glad I ran every step of this race to nowhere. Buying a hamster wheel isn't considered some cruel joke on our pets. We know they'll never get anywhere. But they're better off believing they could. They need their little circles to run in. And I'm coming to realize I do too. Knowing the ending wouldn't have made me any better, I don't think. I'm not sure how much better I'm even capable of being. When I see past my stupid, bargaining delusions I realize I probably couldn't have changed that much anyway."