Grief

Your expiring body is limp and neat, lying there with a sense of purpose, dignity even, confirming the belief that you don’t know the scars you are etching into each person who walks in and out of this room. I have memorized the figures the peeling white wallpaper has created; they comfort me as the quiet covers us both like a blanket, waiting. We will refuse to accept that you are fading.

But you are going. The once fresh memories you gave me slip through my mind and become distorted, uniting together so that I can no longer differentiate between them all; they have become one, a continuous role of scratchy black and white film that refuses to stop rolling. I feel as if I am losing all of those moments, those once insignificant seconds that have passed, the ones I didn’t bother to bask in. They are important now.

You used to tell me everything, but now they say that your head is empty; I want to believe that this is not true. I want to capture your thoughts in the palms of my hands, open up your head and let them pour down my arms, watch as they sink into my skin to become a part of me. A penny for your thoughts? All the change I have placed under your pillow has still not brought me what you have yet to say out loud.
My mental state fluctuates; my grief turns into anger instantaneously. I am angry, did you know that? I am filled with red, hot anger that churns my stomach. The animosity that brews there will one day throw me off the edge. You were so bold. A firecracker. It reminds me of you, the redness I have, the scalding, lethal feelings it brings. Your body has given up on itself; it feels you have inevitably given up on me.

They say one day you will be gone. When they speak these words, my anger turns into sorrow; the fingers in my clenched fists unroll slowly in notched movements to reveal my shaking hands. I can feel as my cramped arms go limp, releasing the static of my muscles as they drop, dangling off the side of the chair in front of your bed. I sit taking jagged breaths, my palms facing the ceiling, my head lolling uncontrollably. The fact that I can no longer be mad at you destroys me. I want to cradle your body against my chest, breathe you in one more time. But you wouldn’t smell the same would you? You have been tangled in the same sheets for too long, twisted in the same antiseptic aura. Now I wonder why I didn’t trap your scent in a jar when I could.

We used to make love on the newly waxed wooden floors, its earthy scent sweet, its surface smooth and revived. I could feel the space in your palm where the hammer would sit during the day, the prestige oval patterns of the calluses running up and down my back. You have not held a hammer for months; your blisters have matured into a smooth palate of skin. I want to feel your hands chafe against my back, I want to yelp as the strands of my long black hair get caught in the dry parting of the blisters that leave a streak of irritated red across my skin. I want to feel the muscles of your back contract, feel the strength and vastness between your shoulder blades. I remember when your voice and your vigor was a tonic to my senses. But now I sit here, watching you decay and remember the countless times you shed my name from the small parting of your lips. I can imagine them moving, the four-syllable notes slipping from your lips in one easy gesture. Invigorate me, I used to say. I sometimes watch your lips as you lie there. They are clammy now, the color of grey. They merge into the rest of you. You blend into the ashen color walls.

I am thinking about when we walked together in those woods, the ones that we called forgotten. The shaft of sunlight that poured through the greenery would illuminate the crisp needles and leaves and create a montage of silent, colorful perfection. The lull of our surroundings would accent the sounds of leaves swirling gracefully to the ground and the quiet crunch of decomposition under the soles of our feet. I never told you this, but I used to wonder how the earth felt about being so big; did it ever feel abandoned? We walked through those re-birthing woods, leaving behind our prints as our feet kissed the earth, leaving patterns in the soil. I used to believe that I could feel the earth breathe with relief as we walked across its surface, as if graced by our presence. You have not forgotten me, it whispered. I want to lie on the earth’s dewy surface and press my cheek against the cold, cushiony ground. I know what it’s like to wonder if you will ever be touched again, I want to tell it.

I sense them walking into the white room, while a foggy haze blurs my vision. Their starched white lab coats brush against me and I tremble. I am immune to their voices, their urgency. They remove you from the sheets you have been entwined in and I wonder if today the word death will suddenly become an actuality, the forebode of loss that can no longer be delicately walked around, just as it has been, like shattered glass on a kitchen floor. I watch as they turn to me and my eyes focus on their lips as they move, forming shapes of sympathy; semi-circles as they frown, sharp horizontal lines while they grimace. They surround me, placing their hands on my arms as I stand defensively in the middle of their circle. I want to yell and scream as they guide me out of the room. I was prepared to live there my whole life. It brought the comfort of knowing you were still here; it brought the silence and the abundance of memories that you were able to deliver to me before that day, the day you went into a vegetative state, the day you left me behind. You are gone, but you still have so many footprints left to crush into this earth with your beautiful feet. You are one less person to make it feel as though it has not yet been forgotten.