Things Remembered

Coping with death

So, yeah I got drunk.

My parents set me up on a horrible blind date. They said something about you asking them to if you didn’t come home? Ha! I couldn’t help it, I began hysterically laughing in their faces.

“Must have been during one of his many bouts of stoicism.” I shouted at them across our dining room, deranged snickering still coming from my chest. ”You really thought this was an acceptable idea?” I demanded. “It’s only been MONTHS and you think it’s ok to take advice from my dead boyfriend and trick me into a blind date?!”

 My mother looked distraught. “We just wanted to help you my love. He’s not here anymore sweetie, it's ok to try and move on. To try and heal.”

“Will everyone please just STOP?” I shouted at them, blood pulsing fast through my body. “Stop acting like it’s going to be normal someday? Everyone keeps saying he’s gone, but he’s just NOT, ok?”

“Hunny,” my father started to move closer to me “He is gone. You saw the announcement yourself. We went to his funeral.”

“NO!” I cut him off and stepped back from his advances, my finger now pointing at his and my mother’s concerned faces. “No, that’s just it. He’s…. he’s not gone. He’s fish sticks at 5 AM, and the buzzing of construction machines where we used to walk to school. He’s the guy reading in the coffee shop window, and yellow roses, and... and THIS” my hand slammed hard against the chair between us “this stupid fucking 6th chair at our goddamn dining table!”

 Hot tears ran down my face. “He’s taxi rides, and war movies, my always empty passenger seat. The smell of oranges picked off the branch. He’s the shouting of men at soccer games, and stray socks I’m still finding on my bedroom floor.” I couldn’t bear it anymore, I was almost keeled over in half with sobbing. “And he left me! He didn't have to but he did.”

”I’m stuck here with all of it! And he’s… he’s just a wooden box. A box with a secret number and an evergreen branch carved into it. One of thousands of little, insignificant boxes.” 

I straightened up to look at their stunned figures. Neither one spoke, too dumbfounded at my breakdown. It was in that moment, surrounded by my parents silence, that I knew I had to run. Months of this loneliness, this hatred, this guilt had bubbled inside me and driven me to a point where I just needed to escape.

I ran through our backyard to the guest house and emptied my father’s liquor cabinet. I went down to the oceanside where we spent so many nights counting stars and tracing hearts on each others skin. I couldn’t think of much beyond the pain. My only urge was to be as alone as I felt. To be in a place as empty and cold as how I was inside, with a little liquor to make it just a bit more bearable. I thought maybe then, surrounded by the emptiness, it would all make sense. And when it didn’t, I decided to keep drinking to hurry along the process.

So yeah, I got drunk. I got drunk and yelled your name to the bluffs until my throat ran hoarse and not even the swigs of whisky could make it better again. I screamed, and stomped, and smashed my empty bottles until all the birds nearby flew away in fear of my savage outbreak.

 Whiskey coursed through my system. I screamed how much I hated you- you selfish, honorable bastard. I hated you, and your infuriating need to prove you weren’t your father. You didn't even have to go to war! My father worked his network, got you an excuse- some nonsense about a heart palpitation. But you went, you stupid, egotistical, principled man. You went to the frontlines where they gathered you up in little pieces and buried you in a group cemetery. In a place far off where I’ll never be able to lay next to you one last time.

 And what was I? Not a widower. I told people my boyfriend died in the war and they gave me a half sympathetic smile and said “You’re young darling, you have time.” But fuck that. If I had a ring and a paper with a nice red stamp on it people would get it. That I loved you. That me and you- we were it, and now you were gone.

 People asked why we didn’t get married if we had known you were going to war. Why? That’s because I thought you going to war was a pretty fucking stupid idea, and I’m not the type to reward bad ideas with a little thing like MARRIAGE. So yeah I loved you, yes, of course, I would have married you. But I wasn’t going to do it because you had some irrational need to do something fucking stupid out of honor.

 I have no idea how long this went on for. All I remember was howling out into the wind, and when the liquor ran dry, I ran out into the water and began kicking at the incoming waves. It must have been a curious sight. A girl in a cocktail dress, sloshed out of her mind, kicking at the ocean and shouting “sht-oopid yell-ow roses” “empty taxi… rides” “coffee-fucking reading... guy” at every approaching wave.

 My father found me around 5am. I had somehow managed to collapse on a cushy patch of sea grass upshore. He carried me back to the warmth of our house. All I remember is his jacket around me as he brought me up the stairs to my room. When I woke in the morning I headed down with throbbing temples to face my parents. I prepared myself to deal with the shame of my outburst. But they didn’t say anything.

 My mother just nodded at me and gave me a small smile over her tea before returning to her newspaper. My father busied himself with breakfast and handed me a cup of fresh coffee.  Just when I began to think the previous’ nights eruption may have been nothing but a horrible dream, I noticed it.

The 6th chair. Your chair, missing from the table. Never to be seen or talked about again.

 And from that moment I knew it had to begin- I had to start trying, one little piece at a time, to really let you go.