Page 29 of The Cabin
The minister’s voice is what Adrian would have called mellifluous.
Why is it always that Psalm? What does it have to do with death, and mourning, and funerals? I admit I’ve not really read much of the Bible, but I feel there has to be a more appropriate passage to read at funerals, but it’s always that one.
I’m numb, at the moment. I’m like a gourd that has been scooped out until it’s hollow. That’s me, the hollow pumpkin lady.
A murder of crows perches in a giant spreading oak tree behind the minister, seven or eight of them all in a cluster on three branches. They’re silent. Watching us. As if paying their respects.
Then one of them leans forward, caws raucously, once, and takes wing. It shits on the minister’s shoulder, and for some reason this just strikes me as almost unbearable funny. I have to bite my tongue until I taste blood to keep from snickering at my own husband’s funeral.
This isn’t grief, or sadness, or mourning. This is a void. Emotional emptiness. All of my sadness has been burned through, all my grief used up. There is no more panic. No more desperation. I feel nothing, and I wallow in it like a sow in muck.
It will break, and soon. I know this. I can feel it coming, the tide of sorrow. I feel like someone standing on a beach, watching the water recede, leaving fish flapping and crabs snapping and fronds of seaweed laying limp…watching this means a tsunami is coming.
If you see the waters recede, then it’s usually already too late to run.
So it is with me. There is no stopping what’s coming.
But it’s not here yet.
He’s been dead three days. I have no clue what happened after he breathed his last breath. It’s not even a blur. It’s nothing. Vacant. A bare dirt patch in the landscape of memory.
I remember lying in our bed, feeling his warmth recede from the sheets.
I think Tess was there, maybe she spoke to me, maybe she simply sat next to me. I don’t know.
I haven’t wept. I wonder if I will.7 daysA week.
I’m still numb.
But now the numbness is not a comfort, not a balm of nothingness, not a balloon of calm in a world of pain and chaos and grief.
Now, numbness is…a sickness. An inability to cope. To accept.
I recognize the stages of grief within me, I know where I am in the process. I’m stuck.
Grief is building inside me. To continue the tsunami metaphor, Adrian’s death is the earthquake far out at sea, a mile under the surface. Right now, the tsunami is racing toward the shore, maybe only a foot high, but moving with jet-plane speed, with monstrous energy.
At the funeral, my mind saw the waters pull back.
Now is the seconds or minutes before the freight train smashes into shore. I’m waiting for it.
I’m pregnant with a demon of grief and sorrow.
Grief, and Sorrow. In this, they deserve the title, the capital letters.
I cannot do anything.
I’ve barely slept since he died. I cannot eat. Tess has to force me to sip water.
What do I do with the hours? I don’t know. Sit, or lie facing the window in our bedroom, watching the sunlight travel in an arc across my bedroom floor. It’s abstract, the passage of time. Not a real thing. It feels like a movie montage, where the widow lies in bed and the camera remains still, a time-lapse of sunlight moving across the floor—it’s real. It’s me. I’m that widow.
A widow. I’m a widow.
Then it begins—I feel something, at that realization.
In my rotation in the ER, a gunshot victim said he didn’t feel pain at first, more of an impact, a physical blow but not pain.
This feels like that. The first blow, the impact before nerve endings have a chance to kick in and relay the existence of agony.14 days“….Closing on it tomorrow,” Tess is saying. “I was thinking I’d move in with you.”
I blink. “Oh.” I’m physically present, but mentally absent. “Wait, what?”
She touches my cheek. “I’m closing on the house tomorrow. I’ve sold it fully furnished. I’ve packed up my clothes and the shit I care about, hired a company to clean it out to create a blank slate for the new owners.”
I have a real, original thought for the first time in two weeks. “You sold your house?”
“Yeah.” She’s very patient with me.
Another thought occurs. “Wait. Your divorce. I promised I’d be there.”
She gives me a small, sad smile. “It was the day before…um…”
“Say it.”
“The hearing was the day before Adrian…ahhh…passed away.” Her voice breaks on that phrase. “I went in three-day-old yoga pants, no underwear, no bra, a stained T-shirt, and my fuzzy pink slippers. I told the judge I didn’t give a single shit about anything at all, I just wanted to be done, divorced.”
