Chapter 21
Four
Tears stream down my cheeks, mixing with the rain.
There are people here, boxing me in from all sides, but the throat tightening panic doesn’t come from the crowd.
Her parents are here just a few people away.
I can hear them crying. The choked sobs whittle away more and more at the hole where I know my heart should be.
I stared down at the dark sweater dress I wore, picking at the stray threads sticking out at the seams. I can’t look up.
I can’t see it. I can’t see that photo of her, the one I know she hated, blown up four times its size, displayed with all of the flowers I know she didn’t like.
Her favorite flowers weren’t roses or lilies.
No. She was more than that. She was sunshine in a bottle. The feeling of a warm breeze at sunset on a hot summer day. The sound of birds in the early morning. She was happiness, and freedom, and nothing like this cold, wet, anguish.
A man in all black stands in the front of the crowd, shielded beneath a large umbrella, speaking prayers and poems from a little black book, and I can’t listen.
I can’t hear beyond the sniffles and sobs, and murmurs interwoven with the cadence of rainfall, the absence of my heartbeat, and knowledge I won’t hear her laugh again.
I just stand there. Staring at the ground, at the puddles forming around my boots. Soaked by the onslaught from the heavens. It’s ironic.
Rain. Cries. Prayers. Rain. Sobs. Poems. Rain. Sniffles. Speeches.
Bullshit. It’s all bullshit. More than half of these people didn’t know her.
Didn’t speak to her. Didn’t care. Didn’t give a single fuck about her.
I shouldn’t even be here. I caused this.
I fucked up. I didn’t do enough. She was better.
She had a future. She was loved. Fuck, she was loved, so fucking loved.
It shouldn’t be this way. It can’t be this way. It’s my fault. It should have been me.
As the big shiny wooden box begins to descend, and the crowd dissipates, still I stand there. As her parents pass me, her mom reaches out to touch my shoulder, but her hand is a ghost passing through me.
I barely notice it. I barely feel it. I barely feel anything but the pain.
The ache inside won’t stop. It hasn’t stopped for weeks.
It should be me. No one would be hurting like I am right now if it had been me being lowered into the cold, wet earth.
Sure, she would probably be sad, but nothing like this.
She was better than me. She could have done better than me.
She was beautiful. Smart. Funny. Charming.
Compassionate. Sympathetic. Accepting. She had dreams, and plans, and goals she was going to reach.
All I had was her.
Now, she’s gone.
I finally look up and stare at the hole in the ground. It’s not enough for her. She deserves better. More than this. My steps are slow, but my body pushes me forward as I look down into the grave.
“I lo—” My voice cracks on a sob. My knees buckle beneath me.
“I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry—” I mutter it over and over until there’s nothing left to my voice, and my lips move soundlessly.
I kneel there for hours until night grows near. On shaky legs, I stand, forcing myself away from her. Then, as I’m walking to the front gate of the cemetery, my boot slips in the mud, and I’m falling.
The weightlessness carries me through the air, closer and closer to the cold earth beneath me.
Before my eyes, the ground dries, the grass grows higher.
The feeling around my throat tightens, more than just my sobs are choking me.
The burning from my cries intensifies, sharpening into something deeper, centered in a harsh line across my neck.
As the ground comes closer, I shut my eyes, awaiting the hard impact, the sounding snap that has echoed in my mind…
only to open them to find the frosty bank of the river again, beneath the tall oak tree…
the thick branch above swaying in the wind.