July 10, 2005
My recurring fear in recent years is that I will be forgotten or left behind at a most critical point in life by the ones I love the most. This trepidation lies in a past full of realized complacency and maltreatment, in wounding words and, still more painful, the lack of words in a moment's worth of chaos. My fear is born from the anonymity of a life I once thought I had an impact upon, from the lasting silence of my voice after the beep of his cell phone when I could not bear to ask for help since I knew that the request would never lead to fruition and from the cumbersome movements of my heart at night when I knew not where he laid his head.This is the past...
I reached for a hand that was not outstretched, as I stood motionless next to my mother the day we gathered for my grandfather's memorial service. There was no hand, no arm, no shoulder, no body, nor a single whisper of a comforting syllable to cure the aching within my worried knees. My upright stance and hurried glances were barely noticed in a crowd so intent upon consoling the partners at their side. Yet I was alone. The endless moments spent eyeing the parking lot through the windows shaded in a surreal outside world, waiting for his presence, were moments spent in vain. The rose my grandmother handed to me was accompanied by another which was meant for only him. A man she had only met but once, yet she knew he was in my heart and therefore it just seemed right.
I drove back home in a swirling haze of saddened music and careless taste. The touch of the wheel beneath my hands seemed to undulate with every turn and threatened to melt within my fingers if only the red lasted a little longer. The familiar scene of trees and buildings and well known streets seemed foreign at every passing glance and all I knew in my withdrawn world was that I needed an hour not to be strong. I desperately yearned to simply collapse and fall under the weight of the wobbling knees that still shook despite my sedentary position. I wanted my whole body to be held, tight up against his chest, and the soft caress of his finger tips to, for what would mark the very first time, slip slowly through the straight lines of my light brown hair.
Instead, I placed the single rose upon his tool box at work, after having left early to catch him at the shop, and began a slow decline into the darkness of night. Accompanied by an unopened case of Miller Light and a fresh pack of cigarettes, I waited all evening for one word from him. Despite the long hours, he did not return to the shop, nor drop by the house, nor call to inquire. Instead, he found himself in his own company, with the pivotal players of his life, whom I've never met.
The rose wilted before eyes. The hours crawled by without mercy. The man who never had to lose a moment of sleep for lack of support, left me by the curb without a second thought...
That is the fear that burrows itself deep inside every crevasse of my chest. That is the worry and exhaustion which draws itself in throughout each passing day. That is the dedication, to a cup filled with air, that one day, the thirst will be quenched.
That is the past.
I almost wonder if I would have bothered to open my eyes had I not been so succumbed to the hope of viewing his sweet face. I was most admittedly afraid and the hospital lights were and full of uncaring fluorescent ferocity. I was told to lie back and I was dizzy with pain and full of pure question. I was barely capable of holding onto a single second's worth of objectivity, but somehow The Boy kept me grounded, as well as he could, by taking my hand and never taking his beautiful eyes off of me.
Although the anxiety rolled through my body as unyielding and as frequently as the pain, an unfamiliar feeling of safety and security also ran over the tips of my senses.
I was not alone. I was not abandoned or ignored or required to produce any amount of rational thought at all whatsoever.
The Boy had me covered.
He cared for me and worried for me, watched over me and answered all the questions that my mind only jumbled into gibberish when asked. He was never absent from the left side of my hospital bed, save for one bathroom trip which made me insanely jealous, and he never made me want for anything.
This is the present. This is the here and now. And although I could not tell you if it will be as perfect in the future as it is right at this moment, I can tell you that I never want to see the end. It's all right here, right now, just as he lovingly took my hand in his, before I even had to ask...