Page 67 of The Night We Met

Denial

I close my eyes to steady my heart and calm my breathing. I muster up every bit of strength that I can to spill the words that only sound right on paper.

“When I thought about funerals, I’ll admit I pictured this happening in seventy years. I would tell stories of Liam. The life we lived. The children we had. The love we lived for. Never in my wildest dreams did I think I’d be talking about our stories now.” I begin as my eyes begin welling up with tears.

“We first met in the second grade. I made him sit next to me because he was the new kid in class. We soon bonded over anything and everything that seven year olds could bond over. Bugs, who could be the first to themonkey bars at recess, who could throw a baseball the furthest…to who could get their driver's license first. From elementary school to high school, we spent all of our free time together. Our parents couldn’t separate us.” I look at Liam’s parents with a shaky smile on my face.

“From the time we were seven years old, we were inseparable. Our parents teased us about getting married. And when you’re seven years old and a girl, boys have cooties. It was just the rule when you were a kid. But as we got older I noticed slight changes and then in college I stopped seeing him as a boy with cooties.” I look up to the sky knowing that Liam is looking down. My smile is strained as I do everything I can to keep the tears from falling.

“My, oh my how our parents were right. Even though Liam frustrated me to no end, I knew in the end that he was the one for me. He helped put me back together when I never thought I’d be whole again. But unbeknownst to me, I couldn’t do the same for him.” My voice cracks as the tears I’ve tried with all of my might to keep from falling, end up falling in rivers down my cheeks.

“I never thought I’d have to say goodbye to the love of my life and best friend at twenty-five. I never thought I’d say goodbye to him before we got engaged. I never thought I’d say goodbye to my best friend before we could grow old together.” I cover my mouth to suppress my sobs. “For almost twenty years he was the best part of my days. I never imagined I’d have to say goodbye to him at all. Mr. and Mrs. Taylor, thank you for raising an amazing young man. I’m so thankful that I was part of his and your lives, even if it was for a small part of it. Liam, a part of me wishes that I could just go back in time. I’d remember every single thing that we did together in detail. The last time we saw each other, I told you I loved you. I didn’t want that to be the last time. Ijust wanted more time.” I finish with tears falling in thick streams down my face.

With a breath of finality, I sit back down as the reverend says a few more heart-warming words. When it comes time, Liam’s casket begins lowering into the ground and my tears continue to fall faster than ever. The finality in this final goodbye hits me like a sledgehammer to the face. Sobs upon sobs escape from me. Crippling me from my upright position to hunched over in my lap. Jax pulls my body into hers as if she could take this pain away from me. But knowing that her efforts are futile. One-by-one, and in little groups, people grab handfuls of dirt and throw them onto the casket.

Goodbye my friend, my confidant, my other half, my everything.

Depression

Knock! Knock! Knock!

“Come on Kam, open the door!” Jax shouts from the outside.

After Liam’s funeral I continued to shut everyone out. I stopped functioning. I stopped living. My company which was just getting started was put on the back-burner. I’m surprised with myself that I’m still half-way functioning.

“Kam, it’s been a month. Open up…please?” Jax pleads with me.

You may be wondering why my sister doesn’t just use her key to come inside. Well, I took it off her key ring when she wasn’t around and she finally noticed. The last month has been hard on me. I carry a lot of guilt around. Not justfor Liam’s parents, but for Emily and James. They didn’t deserve any of what happened. I spent the past month crying and wondering if there was something that I could’ve done.

“I’m unsure which pain is worse – the shock of what happened of the ache for what never will.”

-Unknown

A week later I hear a different voice pleading with me to open the door. One that I haven’t heard since the funeral. One I didn’t think I’d hear again. And for the first time in five weeks, I open my door. To my surprise there are two people I never expected to see again standing at my door.

“Hi Mr. and Mrs. Taylor,” I voice shakily. Tears that I thought had dried up, pool in my eyes and spill over.

“Oh, sweetie,” Mrs. Taylor somberly says and pulls me into a big hug. It was then that I let all of my tears go unabashedly. I just cried. For how long? I don’t know. Standing in the threshold of my house with the people that were a second set of parents to me.

After a few minutes we move to sit on the couch, when Mrs. Taylor breaks the silence. “I know what you’re going through sweetheart. And trust me, it has not gotten easier for us. But shutting out the world is no way to live, Kamryn.”

I look up in surprise as if she knew that’s what I was doing.

“Jax called us,” Mr. Taylor tells me with a shrug and wraps his arm around my shoulder and pulls me into hisside. “And that’s not the way that Liam would have wanted you to live your life.”

I nod absentmindedly just to agree with him. The truth is, I don’t know what Liam would have wanted from me. I don’t even know what Liam wanted from himself.

Mrs. Taylor places a box she brought on the coffee table. “I was going through Liam’s room at the house and his apartment, and brought some things that you might want,” She tells me.

When I look up at her, her eyes have glassed over from unshed tears. Liam’s and my relationship was rocky but still stable. When I moved out, I had hoped with every fiber of my being that we could get back to the good place we were in before. It worked for a while. But then it didn’t. I have no clue where our paths diverged.

“You don’t have to open it now,” Mr. Taylor declares as they stand to leave. “Just know that our son loved you with all of his heart. And so do we Kamryn. You will always be a part of our family, the daughter we never had, even though he’s not around anymore.” With final hugs and kisses on the cheek, I see them to the door.

I walk over to the box that’s sitting on my coffee table, afraid of what I might find in it. Elbows perched on my knees and hands clasped under my chin, I stare at the box. “Liam you better not have any secrets.” I say out loud to myself. I open it up to find one of his ratty t-shirts that I always slept in, a couple of pictures in frames of us at our high school and college graduations and one of us at my last birthday before he died, a bottle of cologne that I loved when he wore it, and a black velvet box.

And like the moment when I received that phone call, time just stops. My body freezes until I have no choice but to let a sudden rush of air into my lungs. A choked sobcomes out of me. With shaking hands, I open the lid to find a 1.5-carat engagement ring. I cry an earth-shattering cry. I cry for a man who did want to give me the world. I cry for what I lost and what I could have had with Liam. And I cry for all of the guilt that I still feel.

Grief is a funny thing. I shouldn’t say it's funny. But it’s an unexpected feeling. Where you don’t know whether to cry buckets of tears. Or comfort those who are sobbing uncontrollably. Or yell into the void in hopes that this current situation you find yourself is just a bad dream you’ll wake up from.

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