Black Ice

Chapter Eleven

"Death is not the greatest loss in life. The greatest loss is what dies inside us while we live."

~Norman Cousins

*****

They say when someone you love dies, you are bound to go through a hard time.

That isn't really true.

Yes, it is hard. But it isn't 'a time', per se. To group it into a box, to make it 'a time', with a beginning and end, is unrealistic. When you lose someone you love, it lasts. You don't just wake up one morning and feel hopeful again. Hope comes back to you in bits and pieces, little shards of who you used to be that slowly fit together again. But the person they build will never be the same, because there will always be a piece missing. And day by day, moment by moment, you start to forget them. That is what we call 'moving on'. It isn't getting over the loss of a person, it's forgetting why that person meant quite so much to you in the first place. And then that missing shard of your heart disappears completely, and you are whole again. But a different person. A different heart.

We keep photos and letters and fragments of that person with us, but the one thing we can't keep are the memories. They are stolen, inevitably, by time or age. And maybe we still love them, but it is impossible to remember exactly how you felt when you were with them, because happiness cannot be stored in a locket or kept in a hope chest. And that is when we start to forget, whether we are ready to let go or not. Once we find a new kind of happiness. Once we start to forget exactly how the old one felt.

No, you cannot map a calendar for grief any more than you can put a due date on love.

For me, the story of my grief is born from love. 

I'm not exactly sure when I realized I loved Carter, nor what about him in particular I loved. Maybe I started loving him that night, on the pier. Maybe I loved him way back in grade school, the little boy who stole my daisy crown. Maybe I didn't know what love was. All I knew was: the week that followed our night on the pier was the best week of my life. I wasn't allowed back in school yet due to my injuries, and Carter's schedule was tight due to his part-time job. But every night, he'd sneak over to my house, and we'd drive out to the pier. 

Every night. It was our spot. It wasn't so much the pier that I loved so much as it was that it held the memories of a girl who I didn't know I could become, but who Carter somehow brought out in me. It wasn't all teasing, either. One night, we lay with our backs against the cold wood of the dock, his head by my feet, my head by his, our arms reaching toward the other, our fingers brushing together. 

And we just lay there, not speaking. Taking in the night sky and the feeling of the other person there, the world so quiet we could hear each others heartbeats. 

But that was then, and this is now. Now - now comes the grief.  

*****

I wake up on the morning of my tenth day - a week after my first date with Carter at the pier - and I can't breathe. 

It's not that I'm simply short of breath, or that I feel like there's a weight on my chest. I literally cannot breathe, cannot summon the physical strength to inhale, cannot control my panic enough to move. I am paralyzed. 

I lay there, staring at the ceiling, fear gripping my heart, lungs on fire, black spots dancing in front of my eyes, and I realize that this is not how I want to die. 

I am young. I have people who love me. I have reasons to live.

I am laying in a bed, not breathing.