C.S. Lewis once wrote: “No one ever told me that grief felt so like fear. I am not afraid, but the sensation is like being afraid. The same fluttering in the stomach, the same restlessness, the yawning. I keep on swallowing.”
I walk past her door. It is an obstinate reminder of the distance between us now. An impenetrable solid barrier.
I place my hand against it, feeling the wood grain agitate my fingers. It tells me no.
“She’s sleeping.”
Trevor’s voice startles me, and I turn my head, my hand still pressed firmly against the door.
“I know.” I drop my hand, like a useless talisman dangling limply now by my side.
“She was asking for you earlier.”
I cringe, feeling the hair behind my head stand up.
Trevor leaves me staring at the hallway floor.
The grief that fills my chest, spreading like the cancer in Hannah’s body, makes me stagger under its pressure. I lean against the wall and look up, counting the ceiling tiles until I gain my balance again.
One… two… three… four…
I was so busy. No, you weren’t.
I didn’t think she would want me there. Yes. She did.
This isn’t about me. No, it is not, but I know in an instant that for Hannah, it is about me. Me and all her support team.
I feel my pulse quicken at the notion that, while I was willfully avoiding the pain of Hannah’s slow and labored decline, she was patiently waiting for my presence.
A burning rises in my gullet, and I press my stomach contents back into their place. My thighs quiver, and I slide down the wall, dropping my head between my knees. My breath comes in great, gasping gulps as I shudder under the anguish of my failure.
“Here.”
Trevor hands me a small, purple, cloth-covered journal. Dangling from its spine is a rhinestone angel, a gold thread attached to it.
“She wrote you something.”
Of course she did. A sudden wave of ice floods my limbs, tingling at the edges like pins and needles.
I flip the page to where the gold thread is placed.
Dear Sarah.
I place the book face down on the floor next to me. Fear coils in my stomach, a snake ready to strike.
I’m such a coward.
Tears fill the hammock of my lower lids, cresting and rolling down my cheeks, flushed with emotion.
I can no longer tell if it is grief or fear.
Grief over losing my best friend, my number one girl, my sister from another mister. She always laughed at that one.
Fear over the depth of my callousness, my unkind selfishness during her time of need. Over the pain I caused.
Grief over the nature of life and this lesson in object impermanence.
Fear over my growing despondency to faith.
Grief. Fear. A whispered secret between concepts, finding harmony in shared meaning. Emotions, like rivers, sometimes merge into something greater than themselves.
Dear Sarah, I start again. I no longer have the strength or power to live.
I inhale sharply. Oh, Hannah. My face contracts inward.
But I endure.
I hear Trevor banging around in the other room, his heavy footsteps pounding out a rhythm, a staccato to my heartbeat.
I miss you, but I know how painful this is for you. And I want you to know, have no regrets. We abide in love.
My heart sinks low into my gut. Impulsively, I straighten, push open the door, and lay myself down next to my friend. The cool, paper-thin skin of her shoulders sticks to my sweaty chest and neck. I am blistering with grief and rigid with fear, melting into the last visage of love, grasping tight to the end.
“Sarah?”
I open my eyes; the sting of my tears blurs my ability to see. I glimpse wisps of her fragile hair remnants, draped down along one brow. She faces the darkened ceiling, her eyes straining toward me, just out of sight.
She raises a gaunt hand blindly, veins extruding, knuckles gnarled and looming. I grab it gently and lower it to her duvet. We lay like this in silence, save for the rasping of her breath and my muffled whimpers.
“My boys.”
It’s a statement more than a question, but I know her intent.
“They’re in the other room.”
She sighs deeply, and my heart catches as I wait for her next breath.
There it is.
“Hannah, I am so sorry.” My voice cracks on the last word. “I am. I regret it so much. I don’t have an excuse; I am not worthy of this time with you.” Stop making it about yourself. Stop being so needy.
I hear a quiet harumph from her, validation of my disappointment and accusations of myself. And even in this thought, I make it about me. Jesus.
“No,” she exhales. “You aren’t. I’m leaving. Leaving the party.”
She takes another breath.
“And I don’t expect everyone to stop for me.”
She blinks, so slowly, it holds me captive in a moment of stillness.
“I want to make an Irish goodbye.” At this, she attempts to smile, wryly.
I snicker nervously, the new emotion bumping up against my grief and fear. No room, I say, and expel it back to the recess of my emotional locker. I massage her frail hand gently. She sighs again.
“I love you, Hannah, and I will always have space in my life for your family.”
I watch her eyelids close, her face go slack, and her breathing deepen.
A tiny snore. She is asleep.
I feel my muscles soften, my life force rising to her ebbing essence. Like puzzle pieces clicking into place, they recognize each other and settle in. I let my emotions of grief and fear flow for both of us.
Grief and Fear.
Truth often arrives in twos, each idea holding up a mirror to the other. Finding common ground to coincide together.
In peace.