"Hey, Honey! Is it Top Model time?" My mother shouts enthusiastically as she pops her head round my bedroom door.
"No mom, I don't feel like it." I reply.
She leaves in silence, slinging her dish towel over her shoulder. When I hear the door shut I curl up into a ball once again, my knees up to my chin and my arms bent and pulling myself tighter together.
Beside me on the bed is the crumpled piece of paper that has my eulogy on it, the one that Augustus wrote. I can't stop reading it. I have looked at it everyday for 4 months since the funeral.
My mother thinks it's time that I start moving on, going to more classes, getting out more, getting up earlier. But how can I? I would have nowhere to go out to, nobody to see, apart from Isaac, but he seems too busy these days with this new girl he met at support group. It's not like I'm going to go out to support group, that'll just make things worse.
I see and feel him everywhere. Especially in support group. There's the chair where he sat which is still set out but it has not yet been taken by a new victim of the literal heart of Jesus. There's that old depressing swing set that reminds me of conversations we had there. Whenever I see my book 'An Imperial Affliction' it reminds me of the wonderful trip we took to Amsterdam to find out about what happens after the book ended. He's everywhere.
I'm stuck. I can't move forward, I can't move up, I feel like I'm moving down and I sure as hell wish I could move backward. So that I could just spent one more day with him. But I can't and that is something I am going to have to accept.
Why did it have I be him? It wasn't meant to be him, not first anyway. It was meant to be me that died and him that lived. I wasn't bothered about leaving my mark on the world, he was and he would've if he had just lived.
I am starting to see what he meant, about oblivion. I feel like nothing now. I feel like I am lost in Oblivion. I feel like together we could've made our mark on the world and we could've been something so great and beautiful, we already were. Why couldn't God have given him more days than his short set?
YOU ARE READING
Rough Waters
RomanceFour months after Augustus' death, Cancer is tightening it's grip on Hazel. She is close to the end and she knows it, she always did, but now that it's closer than ever she is starting to realise that maybe she did not leave her mark on the world. O...
