Further Up & Further In

Flowers For Her Grave: Chapter 6

There was so much chaos in Susan's mind. Her brothers, her father, stiff and in suits, looking almost as if they were sleeping, but bruises still showed through. Her mother with her best pearls around her neck, (Susan had always loved them but wouldn't touch them now,) and Lucy in one of Susan's own dresses. (It had always looked better on her little sister, and Susan hadn't been able to bear the sight of it in her closet, so she put it in the ground.)

They were all in the ground now. 

It was all a blur. Phone calls and letters and lawyers and coffins, flowers and meals and hugs and tears. Arguments she didn't remember having, (apparently she was no longer seeing that young man she had so liked a week ago,) and conversations that didn't seem to end. She gave some sort of speech at a funeral - or she tried to - and five bodies which were so alive not long ago were buried in dirt. She didn't go to Eustace's funeral. She didn't go to Jill's. She made sure some arrangements were made for the Professor and Aunt Polly, (dear Aunt Polly,) as they didn't have much family, but she couldn't bring herself to do any more than that.

All gone. All in the ground.

Susan didn't speak to Uncle Harold or Aunt Alberta, and they didn't speak to her. They'd seen each other once since the accident, and Aunt Alberta had cried, and Susan had tried to cry with her. But her Aunt glared at her and said this wouldn't have happened if it wasn't for those Pevensies, and Susan couldn't even bring herself to argue. (Who was she if she couldn't defend her siblings? She couldn't protect them now. They'd been so far, for so long, but now they were out of her arms forever.) Susan didn't mention - in fact, didn't even think about the fact that Eustace would have had to take the train on his way to school anyway. She took her broken heart, and let her Aunt and Uncle believe what they wanted.

She didn't know how she walked away. How could she let them believe it was all her siblings' fault? Oh, it had been so easy to blame them a short while ago, but she knew it wasn't them who had done this. It was their Narnia. 

Susan let her plants die in her windows, and stopped answering her phone. Friends showed up uninvited at her door, desperate to make sure she was okay, and, oh, she would've loved to thank them, but she couldn't quite bring herself to do it. She lost a few pounds, even though they made sure she ate. Her hair began to get thinner.

Things arrived for her: inheritances she didn't want. They all ended up shoved into boxes and forgotten.

Oh, how she longed to forget.

Forget.

Like she had before.

*          *          *          *          *

Was the first year harder? Or was it the second?

There was something awful about all the firsts. She knew the dates too well. Her parents' anniversary: they'd just reached 25, but their 26th was celebrated with a single glass of wine, and their wedding picture was overturned. Susan's birthday was colder, and lonelier than she could have even imagined. She didn't dare throw a party, and though her friends sent gifts, no one came to see her. When Christmas rolled around, one of her parents' old friends invited her to join them, and though she had dinner at their house on Christmas eve, she stayed in bed Christmas day. She didn't go to church that year.

The first snow fell silently, though in her mind Susan still heard Lucy cheering. When spring rolled around, she still heard Peter humming strange songs. Peter's birthday came and went, and she heard about a few of his friends meeting to celebrate, but Susan still felt "celebrate" was a dirty word. Lucy's birthday came next. She would have been 18. Should have been. Could have been. How was it that she had only been 17? This young child, (who Susan had been so mad at for being one,) really felt more like a woman than anything else, now that she looked back. A woman, and yet her baby sister... A woman, and yet forever 17. But then came Edmund's birthday again, the last milestone before the biggest one, and she wondered how it was that just a year before they had all been dancing together.

Yes, the first were awful, and all blurred together. What should have been celebrations were silent instead. There was the first meal she ate, and the first time she heard Lucy's favourite song playing on the radio. The first time she wanted to call Peter and remembered she couldn't. The first time she thought she heard Edmund's footsteps outside the door. The first Remembrance Day, when Susan stood too straight, the way her brothers would have done. The first birthdays alone, first Christmas alone, and the first day she didn't cry. The first time her heart broke after waking up from a dream, because in the dream they had been there, and she remembered now that they weren't. And then, most terribly, the first anniversary of the accident which had taken her family from her.

But in their own way, the seconds were worse. The novelty had worn off. No longer was Susan Pevensie living her first year alone; she was living her life now. 

So it went on. Whispered toasts. Unsent birthday cards. Books shoved in boxes. Plants growing again. Chess board put away. Dinner with friends. Hugs that lingered. Applying makeup. Crying. Fixing makeup again. Giving away dresses. Buying new ones. Buying flowers to leave on gravestones. 

Alone. Alone. Alone.

The first year passed, and the second, and by the third she was going to parties with her friends again, but differently this time. She set days aside for her family: to read Edmund's favourite books, and listen to Lucy's favourite record, and to take a walk for Peter, and to talk to her parents' gravestone. The third year, and this was a rhythm. She lived her life with all the grace she could muster, and when she broke down, she was a little less afraid of reaching out. She let herself have fun. She let herself not be alone. 

By the fourth year, Susan was dating someone for the first time since the accident. He was an old friend of Peter's, and he was nice. He made her happy. He went to church, like her parents would've liked. (Though she never joined him. She couldn't yet. Not yet.) 

She could feel the light bleeding through the cracks in her armour, now, and she wondered if she ought to fix that, but she was tired of being alone. She was tired of being afraid. She was tired of being angry, and empty all at once. Her windows were often left open, and she let herself take it all in, and found the courage to let it all out. 

Something was changing in her. 

Piece by piece.

Little by little.

And she liked it.