Page 1 of The Legend Next Door
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DearLiz,
Fuckyouverymuch for leaving me.
I love you and I miss you.
Love,
Ben
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Ben Stirling
Ireadthenoteagain, shake my head, and scrunch it into a tight ball.
What was I thinking writing that? Aside from the obvious fact that I have no forwarding address, Liz is blameless in all this. I’m embarrassed I wrote it. Imagine if Luca found it. How the hell would I explain?
I guess I’d have to say, “Well, son, I’m afraid that’s what the anger stage of grief looks like. Not pretty, not sensible, but powerful all the same.”
Talking of stages of grief, whoever coined the term did a real number on branding. Seriously, someone in PR or marketing should snap them up. They know their stuff. Stages,pfft. What a misnomer. Wildly inaccurate and factually wrong. It makes you think it’s a ladder. That there’s a start and an end. It makes you think there’s something finite about the process. A little graduation and then a bump up to the next level once you’ve cracked the previous stage.
Utter bullshit.
There’s nothing linear about grief. No pattern. No rhyme. Only an involuntary beginning without an ending.
The old me had no idea about things like this. The old me never really thought about this kind of thing. I certainly never thought about stages of grief and got angry about the fact that they aren’t stages at all. Denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and the ever-elusive acceptance. They sound like stages, but they aren’t. There’s nothing neat or tidy about them. You don’t get to be done with one and move on to the next. No. You get to flick back and forth. Sometimes, you’re stuck in one stage for weeks. Other times, you get to experience all of them in a single day. A single hour.
So, no, there are no stages of grief. Only a shitstorm of it.
The shitstorm of grief.
It doesn’t have the same ring to it, but it’s a lot more accurate, I guarantee that.
The house is quiet. A little too quiet, so I pad through the living room into the kitchen to see what Luca is doing to be on the safe side. I’ve almost finished unpacking in here, but the empty boxes and mounds of crumpled packaging make it look worse than when I started this morning.
I can safely say I’m at the point in moving where I can’t fathom how or why it’s legal for people to do this to themselves. It’s self-harm on steroids if you ask me. It shouldn’t be allowed. You should have to apply for special permission or a license to do it. A license that should only be issued after a strenuous psych evaluation.
I eye the kitchen tile above the stove warily. Each tile has been individually painted and fired. No two are alike. The designs are intricate. Complex geometric shapes that fan out from a single point in the middle. Straight lines and swoopy curves. All skillfully made but still wonky in their own way.
The overall effect is pretty and pleasing to the eye. A soft blue and white that gives the room a lived-in feel.
They have a lot to answer for, those fucking tiles.
I scoop up a big armful of packing paper and compress it into the box in the corner, clearing a path to the back door before throwing open the French doors and calling out to Luca. He pretends not to hear me. He’s standing close to the fence, face almost pressed against it. His head is cocked and he’s squinting slightly from the sun in his face. I watch him for a few minutes. His mouth is open way more than it’s shut.
I smile to myself. The little man has his yap on. He’s cornered the new neighbor and is making the most of having a captive audience.
One of his knees is bent and he has a hand on his hip. He looks like an old-timer in a Western movie. A tiny, pint-sized old-timer, which only makes it more comical.
Apparently, Liz’s grandpa Paul used to stand exactly like this when he was in a talkative mood. Her whole family gets a real kick out of the fact that Luca does it, especially because Paul died years before Luca was born.
Liz loved it when he did it. It made her so happy.
A few months ago, I found an album on her phone filled with nothing but pictures of Luca in this exact pose.
A thin blade of sorrow stabs my side, penetrating my lungs and briefly winding me. Fortunately, it’s a rage-y day, so my body quickly heats and smothers the sadness.
