unresolved
I dream about him. I wake up in the middle of the night and it begins: I
think I hear the side door open and for a second I think it’s him, going
outside in the middle of the night like he used to. I hear the garage door
swing open in the wind, I hear footsteps coming down the stairs, I see a
shadow slide past the back bedroom window.
At 3am, it’s always him, not the wind, not the trees, not the radiator
making noise. My half awake mind thinks he is still alive and this is still
18 months ago or three years ago or eight years ago and I panic for a
second, thinking that everything has been a vivid dream and then I’m
fully awake and aware of the present and my mind does that
thinkthinkthink thing: where I can’t turn it off and I wish for a sleep
mode, where I can just push a button and my brain doesn’t freight train
through a thousand things like carpaymentdue,
heartpalpitationsohmygodimdying,
whatifyoudidn’tgivehimyourcarthatday…
And that’s how it begins. Every time I push one thing further down, my
subconscious acts like memory foam, soaking up what I don’t want, but
pushing something else back up at me in the process, like it can only
hold so much down at one time. At 3am, everything is a problem,
everything seems insurmountable, everything is a crisis.
I wish I didn’t think of him so much, but I suppose he will be there like a
ghost until I can exorcise all my guilt and unresolved feelings — until I
can rid myself of the image that seems like it will never leave me. The
sounds that will never leave me. My sister screaming, the baby crying,
running up the stairs, meeting her halfway as she collapses on the middle
step, crying. Tell her to stay there, run up the rest of the stairs with her
behind me…
I remember his hand. So white. So damned stiff looking and white. My
eyes won’t run over the rest of his body just yet. The baby cries again
from the other room and I’m jolted and I look. His legs, still in jeans at
5am, hanging over the end of the bed. He has his jacket on. Where was
he going? Oh, I know where.
I know.
His face is serene, arms at his side. He’s sleeping. He’s dead. My sister is
feeling his body, looking for warmth, searching for a heartbeat, a pulse,
all the while sobbing, knowing it’s no use and I just pull her back as she
starts screaming again, pull her away from her dead husband and I grab
the baby out of his crib, run downstairs, blather something to my
boyfriend, who is already throwing his pants on and stumbling toward
the stairs. Only 30 seconds have passed since I flew out of bed.
Then there’s a blur of ambulances and the coroner and policemen, people
in my house, on my couch, in my kitchen. His mother, his aunt, my
parents, my other sister. Neighbors gawking out their windows at 6am on
a Saturday, those who ask being told nothing more than he’s dead.
Waiting for the ambulance to take him away. Holding the baby, shaking
my head to clear it, consoling my son, being grateful my daughter slept
out the night before. Waiting for everyone to leave — and then the blank
look in everyone’s eyes. The “what now” look. My sister gets carted off
to my parent’s house — and the wondering, the “what ifs” begin.
What if he stayed in rehab another week or so?
What if I didn’t give him my car to go to a meeting when he got home because I don’t think he really went to a meeting?
What if I tried harder?
What more could we have done? Did we give him too many chances?
Did my sister go too easy on his mistakes? What if I had been tougher on
him in those last, turbulent months instead of always forgiving, always
wanting to believe that he meant it, that this would be the last time, that
he’d get better?
The wake, the funeral, the tears, the sorrow for my sister and the baby -
days fly by, months come and go, birthdays, holidays, anniversaries.
Each one brings fresh pain to her, each one brings tears. Each day is like
a hole for her and she crawls into it, shutting out the light, shutting out
everything. Eventually, she crawls out, but the hole is always there and
sometimes I see her inching toward it. I pull her away from it the way I
pulled her from his body.
I vacillate between guilt and anger, between sadness and complacency.
Sometimes I forget that he’s dead; sometimes I forget the burden he was
while he was alive. Sometimes I think about the person that was deep
inside him: the kind, gentle, loving, generous person with a quick smile,
quirky sense of humor and a forgiving, calm nature. Where did that
person go? What more could we have done to keep him from drowning
within himself? Why would he let all that go?
When I hear that noise at 3am and I think he’s out there, even if it’s his
ghost, I want to go out there and kick his ass and scream at him. A few
deep breaths later and I want to apologize to him for not caring that last
time, for giving up on him even though I took him back and reached my
hand out to him a hundred times before. I want to say I’m sorry for
lying in bed that Friday night wondering if this weekend would be the
end and would I feel relieved and if I did, so what, it’d probably be a
relief to my sister in the long run.
I’m sorry but I’m not. I’m angry but I’m not. I’m guilty — but I’m not.
Years go by. My sister moves forward, moves along, moves to Rhode
Island with her son, a place where she’s found contentment and
happiness.
We rarely talk about him, except for maybe when she has the odd dream
about him and texts me about it. I don’t tell her how often I dream about
him, how often I think about him and the guilt I harbor. I’ve let the
resentment go, I’ve loosened the grasp on the anger — but the guilt?
I’ll always feel that, I think.
It’s spring now — and with that comes Easter and I can’t help but dwell as
the anniversary nears. Everything in this time of year reminds me of it
and I go back to that morning, back to all the days following that seemed
to melt together; the grief, the mourning, the disbelief — but also, quietly,
that small sense of relief that it was over, his pain was over, his struggle
was over even though my sister’s struggle had barely begun. Death in
this manner is such an odd thing.
It’s been, let’s see, a lot of years. I’ve lost count. I don’t think my sister
even counts anymore. Does it matter? What matters is each spring, each
Easter since has moved us farther and farther away from that day, away
from that grief. There’s a peace that goes with remembering this now for
my sister — and if she can find that, I have to believe that I can, too.
But every early spring, like clockwork, come the birds and baseball and
the feeling that I didn’t do enough — or perhaps did too much.
