Page 62 of Somewhere Along The Line
It’s too much, the juxtaposition of these two women, one gone and one here, tied together only by their care for me (and, I suppose, an affinity for midwestern breakfast).
Grief crashes down my body, as visceral and startling as a cold bucket of water thrashed over my head. It’s the kind of sorrow I haven’t let myself feel in more than a year.
A stinging pain builds behind my eyes and claws at my throat as I consider how much my mom would’ve delighted in Piper. I let my mind consider, for just a moment, the kind of relationship they could’ve had. How much of a pain in my ass they would’ve been together.
How I would have pretended to hate it but would have secretly loved it.
The most gut-wrenching part of grief, I’ve learned, is that you don’t just grieve what you had. You also grieve the moments, the relationships, and the experiences that will never be. Death leaves a trail of presentandfuture loss. There’s always a new moment that’s missing something, missing someone, and sometimes those moments, like this one, knock you straight to the ground.
My only consolation is that Mom must have met Piper, in some alternate dimension, because there’s no other way she’d be standing here with sausage balls. The universe isn’t that kind.
Mom is.
Blinking and squinting, I scrunch up my face to cage in the tears, but it’s futile. They come running, a herd of bulls set free after months in a pen. I wipe my face with my sleeve, or rather, the arm that’s sticking out of Dad’s too-small sleeve, and I duck toward the back of the house, not making eye contact with Piper or Dad who are still watching the movers.
I find the bench that sits at the base of the deck, the one facing the tree with the initials I carved before life got so hard. My head falls between my hands and my hands between my knees as I let gravity pull my tears onto the ground. They split apart at the impact.
I know how that feels.
A hand presses into my shoulder, and I feel the presence of Piper’s body as she approaches me, sits next to me, rubs her fingers back and forth over my neck.
“Hey,” she murmurs.
“Hey,” I return, refusing to look at her. She doesn’t try to catch my eye. She seems content to sit here with me, the same way she did in my car when our conversation turned heavy. Bearing witness, not fixing.
We sit like this for who knows how long, me heaving into my hands and her stroking my back, waiting for me to be ready to talk. A choked “sorry” is all I can muster.
“It’s okay to cry, you know.” She says it kindly, a soft permission I didn’t know I needed. It makes the tears fall faster. I want to rest my head in her lap and let her play with my hair.
I also want her to leave and let me navigate this embarrassing show of emotion alone.
“Thanks, I wasn’t aware,” I reply. My shoulders collapse and I give a tense laugh, but it doesn’t land right; it sounds snarky. It’s my brain’s attempt at pushing her away, at protecting my wildly exposed and tender heart. “Sorry, I just… this is a lot and I’m not sure how to manage it.”
“I can’t imagine. I haven’t lost a parent, but I’m sure it’s impossibly difficult, especially if you were close.” She’s being too sweet. Somehow it makes me feel worse.
“It’s that, obviously,” I peek at her face which is etched with compassion. She is turned toward me, attentive and filled with something like care, maybe love. It guts me. “But it’s…. it’s also you being here.”
Her eyes narrow with concern and she straightens a bit, her hand pausing on my shoulder as I turn my head to hers, my upper body still hunched over my knees. It’s ironic that this position is universal for vomit given the nausea that’s tearing through my core.
“What do you mean?” she whispers, her face falling as she waits for my response. A thread of anger weaves around my grief, and while it’s not justified, I’m mad she’s making me say this out loud.
“It’s too much.” My emotion turns volatile, the energy behind the tears finding a new outlet in my mouth. I sit up and turn toward her, the words barreling out and landing sharply in her lap.
“You can’t come here and give me that fucking smile that drives me fucking crazy and bring my dad breakfast like you’re the damn sunshine after the rain. I don’t need you to take care of me, Piper. You being the way you are—nothing but kindness and optimism—is making this morning harder, and I don’t need any more hard. As you can see, I’ve got plenty.”
“Sorry…I’m… I’m just trying to be helpful,” she says. “You showed up for me ten different ways these past few weeks and I’m trying to return the favor. That’s what friends do. Why is that a problem?”
Her escalation is starting to match my own as her words come faster, her hands gesturing wildly as she speaks.
“Because it makes me want to marry the shit out of you, Piper, and I can’t do that. Is that what you need to hear? That I can’t stand to be close to you anymore because I want you and know I can’t have you?”
I rise from the bench and turn my back to her, not daring to look at her face. My hands find my hair and tug roughly, the pain failing to distract from the ache in my chest.
“I don’t need you to marry me, James!” The location of her voice tells me she’s standing, but I don’t move. “I only need you to talk to me. We don’t have to be anything more than what we’ve been. Can we just be that again? We were good like that. I don’t know what happened that’s making you act like this.”
“Thisis why I pulled back. Don’t you get it?Thisis the person I am—messy, detached, and broken. I’ve spent the last few weeks pretending to be someone I’m not—someone who’s helpful and attentive, someone who doesn’t lie, and who is selfless enough not to mess up your life. I know what you need. I’m never going to be that guy.”
“You don’t get to tell me what I need.” She must be crying now, the way her words are breaking on their way out. “I don’t need you to be someone else. I want you and your mess for me and mine. That’s why I came here—to tell you that. I don’t want to pretend anymore either. I can’t pretend not to care anymore.”
