Page 10 of Love the Way You Lion
Sleep was an elusive specter, taunting me from the corners of couches and mocking me from stiff chairs. I’ve chased it desperately, but it dances just out of reach, leaving me to trudge through each day in a haze. And through it all, there’s Sari, her soul fracturing before my eyes, relying on me to guide her through this treacherous terrain of loss.
So I sip my spiked coffee, letting the warmth and the sting anchor me to the moment, to the here and now where grief is a constant companion and rest is a luxury I can’t afford.
I have to keep myself from collapsing under the weight of all the emotions I’m burying to support everyone else.
Setting the cup on the counter with a decisive click, my hands steady despite the weariness that clings to my bones. Rafe and I burnt out our anger in a spectacular display of unchecked emotion before this all began, leaving us hollow. Now, in the aftermath, we’re spent forces circling the debris of our own turmoil.
“I think it’s time for us to go,” I announced after the first few hours at the hospital, my voice low but carrying. The room stilled, a collective intake of breath from the extended family showing their surprise.
“Are you sure?” Rafe asked, his brow furrowing, eyes still rimmed red.
“Quite sure,” I replied firmly, not meeting his gaze. “We can’t risk exposure. Not here.” It wasn’t just about the hospital’s prying eyes—it was about containment, control, and the preservation of what little normalcy we could feign.
One by one, they filed out, murmurs of assent or dissent lost in the shuffle of feet and the quiet closing of doors. As the last of them disappeared around the corner, I sighed heavily. We needed to go home to work through our grief in private, not in front of this mass of people gathered helplessly in the hospital with Sari.
Turning back to the window, I watched as the hospital continued its relentless march of efficiency outside the room. White coats flashed by, gurneys rolled past. Life and death played out in sterile corridors, oblivious to the storm of grief raging in this small, secluded space.
I allowed myself a moment, just one, where the weight of self-neglect pressed against my chest. But the moment passed as quickly as it came, swallowed by the necessity of being the anchor in Sari’s tempestuous sea of sorrow. She wailed and blubbered, insisting that I had to stay with her to help her work through the details, and though she’d pulled some awful things, the weight of our shared past forced me to concede.
My care would have to wait; there were no other options.
I could almost hear Taurus’s thoughts clashing with mine when I decided on an unspoken battle of wills. He knew I was thoroughly wrecked and should go home, but my conscience wouldn’t allow me to abandon someone grieving their mate.
This one day stretched to two, and so on, until now I’ve been here two days past the funeral. I’m so exhausted I can barely think, but each time I’ve tried to exit, Sari has fallen into a tempest of misery. She begged me to stay, and I caved… but my goodwill is waning with my ability to continue taxing my system.
And so, the couch became my bed, its cushions never quite yielding enough to let me forget where I was. Clothes arrived in nondescript bags, my toothbrush a stranger amongst the bristles of another’s. Meals were whatever scraps I could scrounge up without leaving the house, as the simple act of going out to hunt was now a luxury beyond my reach.
That’s why I’m going to try yet again, to gracefully take my leave so I can recharge and lean on the support of my family.
“Perhaps it would be best if I leave you to your family for a bit,” I say, my voice barely above a whisper. Amanda catches my eye as she crosses the threshold; her grief feels manufactured, a caricature of the pain I can’t express while I’m held in place at this house.
“Go? You think you can just go?” Sari’s voice shatters the pretense of calm, her outburst reverberating off the walls. Her hands clutch at nothing, grasping for something I can’t reject.
“This reaction is why this—” I motion to the steaming cup in my hand, “is necessary.”
Sari wraps her arms around herself, her expression petulant as she struggles to find a reason I have to stay when everything has been taken care of.
“Maeve needs?—”
“No!”
Trapped in this domestic limbo, unable to seek solace or strength, I watch in horror as Sari throws herself at me—acting as if I’m a lifeline amidst the wreckage of her world. Once I extricate myself from her clingy hold, I suck in a deep breath as I move out of range. This is out of hand, and I don’t know how to make her understand I cannot remain here forever because he is gone. She will have to stand on her own, no matter how much it hurts.
I lean against the cool kitchen counter, my fingers tracing the edge as I work to ground my emotions. The texture is a poor substitute for the comfort I need, but it’s all I have in the barren wasteland of empathy that surrounds me. Each person who enters this house since Wilde’s passing sweeps in with their agenda—real or contrived—leaving my needs unacknowledged like specters in the room.
They’ve been sucking me dry slowly, and there isn’t much left.
Sari is crying now, her face red and full of the fat crocodile tears she’s been using to manipulate me into ‘one more day’ over and over. I turn away from it, looking into space as my mind tries to separate me from that spectacle.
Memories seep through the cracks of my composure. I can’t shake the image of the small urn on the dais, stark and surreal. Wilde’s essence was reduced to ashes, contained within a vessel far too plain for a soul as vibrant as he once was. The service was intimate, a collection of mere whispers in the grand tapestry of his life. Wordsworth’s verses lingered in the air, mingling with the solemnity of Shakespeare’s prose—each line a tribute to the man we’d lost.
Rafe stood by the urn, his eyes hollow as he unveiled the portrait he’d been coerced into providing. I knew the way his passion bled onto canvas, but this piece was different. Haunted by memories, it held a somber beauty that spoke of a joy long faded. I could almostfeel the weight of expectation that had pressed him into using an old work—one from a brighter time when Wilde’s laughter hadn’t been tinged with evil.
Then there was me, my voice trembling as I sang ‘Ava Maria,’ each note a shard of glass in my throat. Singing sweetly for an audience of mourners, when all I wanted was to scream at the injustice of it all. By the time he died, Wilde had all but pushed Rafe and me into the roles of abused spouses, yet we had to celebrate his life as if he’d been wonderful. But I held it together, because that’s what was expected of me, and I couldn’t admit what we’d become.
“Beautiful rendition,” people said. “It must have been hard for you,” they mused. But the platitudes were devoid of concern for my well-being. They didn’t see the effort it took to stand there, to pour my soul into a melody while every fiber of my being screamed in protest.
None of them asked if I was okay—not even once.
