14. Death Can Go Fuck Itself
Death Can Go Fuck Itself
SARAFINA
It was nearly a month before I even bothered to turn my cell phone back on. And when I finally did, text-after-text and voicemail-after-voicemail pushed through until the battery just gave up and died.
After I’d charged my phone, I’d deleted it all. Every. Single. Message. Didn’t bother reading a single one. There was nothing anybody could say. Nothing that would bring her back, nothing that would soothe the gaping hole I knew I’d never be able to fill.
I stood in front of the refrigerator, not caring that I was letting all the cold air out. It was basically empty anyway. Just like my heart.
Liam was back in the city working, and my father, who was hardly ever home anymore, had grown reliant on microwave dinners since he’d fired the housekeeping staff.
So I was here, mostly alone, surviving off of cheese sticks and prepackaged cookies.
It was the only thing I could get down since I’d completely lost my appetite, and I couldn’t find it in me to care that I was slowly wasting away.
Nothing mattered anymore. Especially not me.
The house was deathly quiet, which was in stark contrast to how it looked. Festive, filled to the brim with echoes of our ignorant happiness in every corner. Filled to the brim with Christmas decorations . In March.
Christmas was the one thing she had loved most, and none of us had been able to stomach putting all the decorations away. I knew it would never be the same.
Christmas. The holidays. My life.
I knew we could never recreate the fun, the gatherings, the comfort that only she could create. The worst part was that it wasn’t just the holidays, either. It was quickly becoming evident that she was the glue that had held everything together. Everyone together.
I’d lost my mother, but it felt like I’d lost my dad and brother, too. We were all scattered to the wind, processing our grief in different ways.
I’d never known I was taking it all for granted, because I’d actually been one of those lucky girls, one who’d genuinely gotten along with her mother.
Of course, we’d had the occasional spat here and there, but she’d always supported me, given me the room I needed to figure out who I was, room to become my own person, without judgment or expectation.
In all these months that had passed, I just kept wondering why the people that seemed to burn the brightest were always the ones that were taken from us first.
Her death had been sudden.
A total shock.
Brain aneurism.
Shortly after New Years.
The doctor’s report had been both comforting and infuriating. The knowing there was nothing anyone could have done, so at least we didn’t have to live with the guilt that we could have changed the outcome.
On the other hand. Fuck death. She wasn’t supposed to go like that. We were supposed to have more time. She was supposed to be with me when I had my babies. Supposed to show me how to grow up, how to be a mother .
I needed her. For everything . I wasn’t ready to live in a world without a mother.
Now, I didn’t even know if I wanted to be a mother anymore.
In an instant, everything in my life had changed.
Everything felt so foreign and wrong and unfamiliar, and I wondered if I would ever stop feeling this terrible.
If the ache would ever ease. It’d been three whole months, and it felt like three days.
It’d been three whole months, and I still felt like I couldn’t breathe.
I honestly didn’t know how anyone ever recovered from grief like this, because it was all-consuming .
People kept telling me it comes in waves, but it didn’t.
Waves would have been a relief. No, it was a rip current, drowning me, every hour of every day.
It was all-consuming, all the time, with no reprieve.
Just grief and anger, and more of that layered right on top, and it was all just far, far too much to handle.
I’d taken some time off school because I literally couldn’t function, but staying home hadn’t really been all that comforting, because what had made home so comforting was her , but she wasn’t here.
Not anymore. So now the house felt like a living graveyard, and there was nowhere I could go to escape the grief, nowhere to hide from it.
“Knock knock.” Sloane’s voice echoed in the distance, and I let go of the refrigerator door, realizing it’d been chiming at me for some time.
I forced myself to sit at the breakfast table in an attempt to look somewhat normal, rather than the hollow shell that had been reflected back to me in the refrigerator glass.
“We brought soup.” Jules announced, carrying several grocery bags into the kitchen. Someone turned the lights on, and I winced as my eyes protested to the adjustment.
“Where do you want these?” Douglass, Jules boyfriend, asked, holding up a paper grocery bag.
I just stared at him. Couldn’t formulate an answer. What was even in the bag? How could I possibly answer that question? Everything felt hard. Including speaking .
“The fridge, obviously the fridge.” Jules steered him towards it and then proceeded to dig through the produce they’d left the last time they were here—it was probably rotten now.
Sloane dumped an ungodly amount of cheese sticks into the deli drawer and then started arranging far too many types of cookies on the kitchen island.
A moment later, Sloane was pulling down a bowl from the cupboard and microwaving some sort of soup that I knew I wouldn’t be able to eat even if I wanted to.
Nothing else existed as my eyes locked onto something shimmering near the sink, and I wasn’t sure when I’d gotten up, but I was already floating towards it.
It was sort of horrifying the way it was just sitting in the soap dish, waiting , like she was coming back for it at any moment. Her wedding ring.
These tiny little habits and memories of my mother were all over the house, and you’d stumble across them when you least expected it. Every time it happened, it was always bittersweet.
I slipped my mother’s ring on, finding it loose, but I knew, three months ago it probably would have fit. God, my hands looked so much like hers. I didn’t know if I hated or loved that—the never being able to look at my hands and not think of my mother.
Sloane placed the bowl of soup on the table. “I got my grandma’s chicken noodle soup recipe. Do you think you can try to get something down today?” She asked gently.
The smell of it was already making me nauseas, and I shook my head no and wandered down the hall.
Collapsing onto the nearest couch, I closed my eyes, twisting the ring with my thumb as if it were a magic genie lamp that could somehow bring my mother back. Maybe if I rubbed it long enough, wished hard enough.
Even from down the hall, I could hear them all whispering about what to do, and I couldn’t find it in me to care. I was just too exhausted.
I felt someone sink into the couch cushion next to me, and Jules gentle voice spoke, “Sloane called Liam. He’s going to come pick you up tomorrow and take you over to his place.”
I hummed in response as I let myself drift off into a tormented sleep. I hoped I wouldn’t dream. Peaceful darkness would be nice for once.
It was the middle of the night when I finally woke up on the couch, groggy, with a pounding headache. Slowly trudging upstairs, I noticed my father’s car still wasn’t in the driveway.
He hardly came home anymore. Where he went, I had no idea, but when he was home, he didn’t even sleep in his bedroom, he opted for the couch in his office. We hadn’t spoken more than a few passing words in weeks, and I knew he was in pain, but so was I .
As I collapsed into my bed, I suddenly wondered if I’d ever really had a relationship with my father at all. My mother was never coming back, I knew that, but for some reason it felt like I’d lost my father too.
“Sorry for your loss.” A tall, ominous presence continued to hover in front of me.
I started to respond before I realized who it was. “Thank you.” I tensed the moment I looked up at that sneering face.
“I am truly sorry .” Taggart Caldwell said, looking vaguely sympathetic and then, “You should have tried harder to save her.”
Anger and grief slammed into me, but I didn’t say anything. I couldn’t for some reason.
Sloane was on one side of me, Jules and Ariana on the other. “You’ve done enough.” They seethed at him, their voices sounding like snakes.
“He’s right, you know.” My brother turned to me. “Why didn’t you trade places with her? You’re the one who deserves to be in that casket.”
I tried to speak, but I couldn’t, and as I looked down into my mother’s casket, I realized she was gone. I tried to scream, to tell someone she was missing, but I couldn’t. Not a sound would come out of my mouth.
I was suffocating. Silken fabric pressed against my face.
I was in the casket. I was my mother, and we were dead.
I woke up screaming, gasping for breath, and nobody was there to hear me.
I was lost in my own thoughts, just waiting, when the front door pushed open. “Hey Sar-Bear.” Liam said, a sad, lopsided smile on his face. “Damn, you look terrible.” I knew it was meant to be a joke, but it came out far too sincere.
My lower lip quivered, and his eyes were shiny as he pulled me against his broad frame—as the first sob cracked out of me, I was already being crushed into my brother’s warm, solid embrace.
“I know.” His voice wavered. “I miss her too.”
We stood in the entryway, neither of us saying much more, until I finally let go first.
Liam cleared his throat, thumbing away the damp beneath his eyes, and asked, “Is Dad home?” I shook my head, and Liam grimaced, dragging a hand over his stubbled jaw. “I thought you were on campus.”
“I was.” I said, wiping my own cheeks. “And then I came home.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
I shrugged. “Didn’t want to bug you.”