Free Me (bxb)

Part 7

"Mama isn't coming back, Griffin," Tim explains to him at seven in the morning, barely twenty minutes after she flat-lined and the doctors' couldn't bring her back to her weeping husband and wailing child. "She's gone to be with the angels now."

"I don't want her with the angels!" Griffin screams, clutching at the front of his daddy's rumpled shirt, his little fists shaking and bottom lip quivering. "I want her here! I want Mama!" Griffin's big eyes well with tears and he presses his red, blotchy face into his daddy's belly, sobbing loudly, his whole body heaving with the force of his cries. His daddy crouches down and his arms wrap tightly around him, and Griffin can feel his daddy's own tears in his hair.

They stay like that for minutes, and the entire time Griffin cries into his daddy's shirt, he wishes his mama's arms are wrapped around him instead of his daddy's. He doesn't want his daddy's comfort, he wants his mama's but his daddy is telling him she's never coming back to them. He can't understand why. He can't possibly wrap his mind around why God would take his mama away when he still needs her and didn't want to let her go to the angels yet. He doesn't understand how God needs her more than he or his daddy does. He just doesn't understand why his mama had to die.

"C'mon, Griffin," Tim sighs once Griffin calms down, and Tim himself feels less like the world is collapsing upon him. He has his son to take care of now, and he promised Byony that he would take care of their son even when he could hardly take care of himself. He wasn't going to break the only promise Bryony needed desperately for him to keep. So, even though Tim wants to fall to his knees and lie there until he joins his beautiful Bryony in Heaven, he stands and picks Griffin up with him, cradling his broken boy in his arms. "Let's go home."

"I don't wanna go home without Mama," Griffin whimpers into his neck, but he doesn't lift his head or scream or kick to be let down. Though he doesn't understand why his mama had to leave, he understands that she did and he understands that she's not coming back. He's just stating the thing they're both thinking, and Tim's knees shake under the weight of grief at the realization that the home he built with Bryony will feel empty and nothing but a house they're temporarily visiting.

"I don't either," he says softly, and rubs Griffin's trembling back as he carries him from the hospital. He'd deal with whatever paperwork possibly needed once he has his son home and taken care of as well as he possibly can.

Griffin doesn't cry or do much of anything on the way home, and Tim often checks on him through the rearview mirror just to see the same thing. Griffin sitting in the carseat Bryony picked out almost as soon as she found out she was pregnant, with his head pressed against the window and staring outside, barely blinking. Tim doesn't know what to say or what to do for his son that shouldn't be dealing with the kind of grief no child should go through. But he is and Tim has to help Griffin through his impossible grief before he can even think about nursing his own crippling mourning.

When he pulls up the gravel driveway, Tim stares up at their house for a long minute, and while he does, Griffin doesn't make any impatient sounds or movements to be let out of the car. Griffin doesn't want to go inside any more than Tim does, because the thought of seeing everything Bryony without her here is like torture. But Tim fights through the torture and doesn't let himself scream. He gets his son out of the car and carries him into the house.

When he steps inside, everything looks the same even while everything is different. Bryony's things are scattered around without a Bryony there to scatter them anymore, and Tim's stomach turns and turns and turns, but he doesn't vomit and he doesn't let go of Griffin. He carries him into the bathroom, ready to draw Griffin a bath to wash away the scent of hospital, but Griffin suddenly starts kicking and screeching out a steady stream of broken no's.

Tim sets him down out of the shock, and Griffin ducks past him and into the hallway, standing stubbornly there and looking tearfully up at his daddy. "I want Mama to give me a bath," he whines, tears slipping down his cheeks again and curling in on himself near the wall. He looks tiny, so scared and like a child that he needs his mother now more than ever, but Tim can't bring her back, even just for five minutes to tell Griffin that she's okay and is in a beautiful place called Heaven now and she'll see him again when the time comes. Tim stands uselessly in the bathroom while his six-year-old son shatters before him like a wounded soldier. "Why did she have to die?"

"She was- I don't know," Tim tells him honestly, and a strangled sob leaves Griffin's mouth, and that gets Tim's feet moving. He kneels down on the hardwood floor next to Griffin, and brings him into another hug. "But there is a reason, even if we don't know it, Griffin. Nothing happens without purpose."

"I don't care!" Griffin shouts, struggling in Tim's hold, but Tim doesn't let him go to just suffer in his grief all alone. "I want her back! I want- I wish it was me instead!"

"Don't you ever say that, Griffin," Tim tells him sternly and just pulls his son closer to his aching chest. The thought of losing Griffin too has Tim choking on a sob he can't hold back this time, and he runs his fingers through Griffin's soft blonde hair. "Mama wouldn't want to hear you say that, she would never ever want to hear that. And I don't want to hear it either, so don't. Don't ever talk like that again."

"I'm sorry, Daddy," Griffin whispers into his shoulder, and his struggling slowly ceases until he limply lies in Tim's strong arms, letting the hold of his daddy comfort him.

"Mama loves you very much, Griffin. And she's still watching over you in Heaven, and she'll always keep you safe. Never ever forget that."

Griffin continues to cry into his daddy's neck for possibly hours, but his daddy's strong, loving hold on him never falters and he talks about Mama for as long as Griffin cries. His daddy isn't anything like his mama, his hold is a little too tight and he smells too much like the work he does outside, but it isn't any less comforting. It isn't the same, and it won't ever be the same again, but it's enough. It isn't how Griffin wishes it is, with his mama still alive and loving him here, but he knows his mama is still loving him from somewhere he can't get to yet, and that's enough.