Dear Meredith

Dear Meredith

by Belle Kismet

Copyright © 2013 Blue Ribbon Books

All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

All characters appearing in this work are fictitious. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead is purely coincidental.

For questions and comments about this book, please contact us at [email protected]

Chapter 1

           
In my dreams, we're walking hand in hand along a forest path. There's no one else in the world, just me and him, leaving crushed leaves in our wake. We don't say much, our fingers wound tightly together doing all the talking. He turns to me occasionally, his smile dappled by the sun filtering through the jungle canopy. "Are you ready?" he asks. A simple question to which I give a simple nod in reply. His fingers tighten around me as he starts to run, pulling me in his wake. My legs flying alongside his, my hair streaming like banners in the wind. I have never felt so alive. Suddenly, inexplicably, I see a cliff edge in the distance, where the path runs out of the forest.

            Mike looks at me again, our breaths chuffing in unison, determination on our faces. "Are you ready?" he asks again, yells it out loud this time. Our feet never stop pounding down that path and I feel we're picking up enough speed to fly. "Yes!" I shout back just as we reach the cliff's edge and we leap, soaring up into the air for a moment before we start plunging into free fall. 

            I open my eyes to darkness, thrown into confusion as my mind fights to remain in that glorious, suspended state. My breaths come in harsh gasps, as though I had really been running my heart out, my legs twisted together with sheets.

            My right hand feels empty, bereft of anything to grip, while I feel sweat trickling down the sides of my face.

            Blindly, I reach out for comfort and there's nothing but empty space beside me.

            Of course, I reali
se again, with the same deep, vicious stab each time, that Mike is dead.

            He's dead. My husband is dead.

            No matter how many times I scream that litany over and over in my head, it still doesn't feel real. A part of me is still in blank, utter denial and it flinches like a wounded, bleeding animal whenever I'm forced to confront that fact again.

            I hear now the whimpering sounds I'm making with each exhalation. I've only ever encountered one thing that sounded the same, early on in my teens.

            I had passed by the park while on the way home one evening, when I heard a gut-wrenching noise, not an articulate cry, but a repetitive one that spoke wordlessly of grief.

            It sliced into me like a knife, sinking itself into my head. I couldn't ignore it.

            Finally, I pinpointed its source down to a particularly thick bush, and I had some trouble at first checking out what was wrong. I saw the blood first, red splotches staining some of the leaves.

            Then, as though a filter had been lifted from my eyes, I saw everything. 

            The brown bitch, her right hind leg set at an impossible angle, nudging a bloody, lifeless puppy nursed between her front paws. Her head snapped towards me, her eyes boring into mine.

            And all the while, that keening coming from inside her was circling in my head even as I had stumbled away for help.

            Now, so many years later, I finally understand the song she was singing. It speaks of mute loss, that something has shattered inside which can never be made whole again.

            It is late afternoon when I wake up again, this time from a formless, jumbled sleep.

            I can tell from the sunlight filtering through the curtains.

            I don't know what day or date it is, and I realise that I don't care at all.

            All I want to do is to lie here forever, scrunched up tight into a defensive ball. I fantasise that I'm a hedgehog, with a shield of prickly bristles to protect me from the world. I become that hedgehog in my mind and for a moment, I feel my chest ease just the slightest bit.

            But never for long. Somehow, my traitorous brain will find a way to remind myself that Mike died. And the same cycle starts all over again, as my eyes well up with a seemingly never-ending source of tears until I cry myself into yet another fitful sleep. I've stopped even trying to stem the flow. At least it's better than the awful numbness which creeps up over me sometimes, like an ice-cold hand gripping my heart.

            During those periods, I just can't seem to care about anything. I have no feelings. I feel like an empty bathtub, whose plug has been pulled so all the water can drain out.

            Perhaps it will never be refilled. I'll just be this empty vessel who just goes through the motions of living. And it is then, right at that moment, that I realise I don't have an urge to live. It is one of the first seeds of depression that germinated inside my receptive, grieving mind.

            The light in my room has dimmed considerably again. The sun is setting soon, then. Another day without Mike.

            Suddenly, a distressing thought pushes its way into the front of my mind. Where is he? Where did he go? He hadn't believed in an afterlife.

            "Heaven, hell, reincarnation be damned," he had said more than once, his blue eyes twinkling. "All I care about is living this life with you."

            And that's what we had been doing. But now that he's gone, I am suddenly confronted with the reality of our frailty.

            What if he was right? What if there was nothing after death? I imagine humans winking out of existence, like a bubble does when it's popped, the minute they breathe their last. It's ghastly, such an awful notion.

            I cannot accept it; there has to be more meaning to our lives than that. But I suppose that's what Mike had meant. That humans feel the need to attach significance to their otherwise ever so brief lives. Otherwise, all that violence, drama, happiness, tears, mean nothing.

            It was the one thing we had never been able to agree on. I can't believe that life just ends at death.

            No, I
choose
to believe Mike is out there, somewhere. Perhaps watching out for me. And maybe if I believe hard enough for both of us, he really will be.

            Sunlight. This time, bright, morning sunshine.

            It casts long shadows over the room, illuminating things brightly in its spotlight, dimming others outside the circle of its influence.

            I watch its progress silently, lying on my side. Funny how I'd never really noticed how sunlight moves before. I remain motionless, my mind blank and quiet.

            I think I would have been contented to lie in that numbed state forever, had the phone on my bedside table not shrilled, sending a horrible jolt of shock to my heart.

            It rings once, twice, thrice.

            I stare at it, wondering furiously if I should answer. But its imperious tone is too hard to resist and my hand floats over to it more on auto-pilot than by conscious decision.

            "Hello?" My voice comes out as a husky croak. I haven't spoken to anyone in days.

            "Meredith?" My mother-in-law's concerned voice. "Are you all right, dear?"

            I close my eyes in a vain effort to keep the sudden tears at bay. "Hello, mom."

            Janet's the only woman I've ever called mom.

            "I know you asked us for some private time to grieve," she says, her voice catching over the word 'grieve'. "But I've been so
worried
about you."

            "I'm sorry. I should have called," I say, meaning it as guilt floods me. Suddenly, all I want to do is confide in her, my sweet mother-in-law whom I had clung to in a haze of hysteria when they lowered Mike's coffin six feet under.

            "It's not getting better," I blurt into the phone. "I just lie here like a zombie, day after day, and all I can think of is how life isn't the same without him anymore."

            It's like a dam has broken within me and my words tumble out faster and faster. "I've tried telling myself that I have to get on with living, that Mike wouldn't want to see me this way. But I can't. There's this empty hole inside me now that's getting bigger every day, and the only way I can run away from it is when I sleep and dream about us."

            Janet is silent for a moment, while I wipe furiously at my tears.

            "Oh Meredith," she says at last, her lovely voice filled with heartbreaking sadness. "Losing him as a son was so very hard for me. Losing him as a wife, I know how that feels as well."

            I nod, even though she cannot see it through the telephone. I have never met Mike's father, he died of prostate cancer when Mike was fifteen.

            "Mike told me about him. He was a wonderful man. I really wish I could have known him."

            "And I wish he could have met his only child's wife. He would have loved you so, the way I do," she answers softly. "But Meredith, listen to me. I love you as my own daughter. That will never change, and I will be there for you whenever you need me, for as long as I can. But this is a journey only you can walk. The both of us will need to find a reason for living again, me for the second time and you for the first."

            I absorb her words, sensing the painful truth of them. The grief inside me is still too strong and raw for me to delve further, but I feel as though some pent-up poison in my system has been released a little.

 "Thanks, mom," I say at last, two simple words which carried the heavy weight of my gratitude and love behind it.

            I hear the tired smile in her voice, the exhausted undertones of her own grief as she replies, "I love you."

Chapter 2

            A slow wind lifts the ends of my hair as I make my way through the quiet graveyard.

            I am carrying a bouquet of sunflowers. It is our favourite flower.

            The sky is a bright, blazing blue and the day is so beautiful that my spirits can't help but lift a little. 

            Finally, I reach my destination.
Michael Alan Armstrong. August 8, 1983 - June 3, 2013.

            And underneath it, etched in strong, clean letters, his favourite Jimi Hendrix quote:

           
“I'm the one that's got to die when it's time for me to die, so let me live my life the way I want to.”

           
It's the first time I've felt able to make this trip since the funeral.

           
I kneel down, place the flowers in front of his gravestone, which Janet had picked out. I hadn't been in any condition to choose anything. It's beautiful, I see now.

            "Hi, baby," I say, my gaze lingering over his name. "I'm sorry I haven't been able to visit before. I wasn't doing too good."

            I smile a little at my own words. "Okay, maybe that's the understatement of the century. I'm still not doing too good, but I suppose you already know that. I miss you terribly and the house is so silent without you stomping around.

            "I'm still avoiding the neighbours because I don't want to get trapped in small talk. Your mom called the other day, and we had a pretty good chat. I swear, part of the reason why I agreed to marry you is because I love your mother so much."

            I am surprised at the easy chatter flowing out of me, and I dropped cross-legged down on the grass so I can get more comfortable. Hey, it's a good thing when you can strike up a conversation with your dead husband's gravestone. Never mind the fact that I have taken to avoiding the grocery store like a plague because I don't want to talk to anyone else.

            The pain of his death still burns fiercely inside me like a stubborn peatfire, but being here, somehow, eases my heart. I wonder why I've stayed away for so long.

            "I don't know what to do anymore," I say softly into the silence. "It's so difficult thinking of a life without you. I'm not sure I even want to."

            Suicidal thoughts have been creeping up on me ever since that day I realised that I have no urge to live. Not thoughts that I want to kill myself, no, but more of a real indifference as to whether I live or die. It was actually kind of liberating once I allowed myself to accept that.

            The thoughts come most often in the dead of night, when the silence in the house is so loud that I can hear it reverberating in my ears. I've become something of a fledging insomniac, my brain unable to shut down for hours and hours until I finally fall into an exhausted, fitful slumber.

            But today, as I take a deep breath and look up at the sky again, today those thoughts are held slightly at bay.

            Sitting there with my dead husband under me and his gravestone a silent listener, I feel for the first time that despite my world shattering, some fragments of it can still be made whole.

            It is dark by the time I reach home, lights behind my neighbours' curtains presenting a homely scene to passers-by.

            I walk towards my front door, already feeling the peace that had filled me for several hours dissipating like vapour.

            I almost miss it, except for the fact that the cream envelope glows almost as brightly as white in the darkness.

            I guess someone had left me a condolence card, the latest out of the many in the past few weeks. I scoop it up from the porch floor, keep it in one hand as I unlock the door with the other. A vague curiousity about the letter stirs within me, but takes second stage when my stomach rumbles audibly.

            Maybe I'll have mushroom soup, I muse, taking a mental inventory of my rapidly depleting canned goods. I switch on the lights and head straight to the kitchen. I had spent the whole day at Mike's grave, just sitting there and gathering my thoughts until the sun started sinking over the horizon.

            I feel an overwhelming sense of relief that this first visit to his grave had been a good one. I had been so afraid that my raw grief would stop me from going there for a long time. But now I knew I had at least one sanctuary I could turn to.

            I place the letter on the countertop and start to get down to the necessary business of feeding myself. It has been three weeks since Mike died, and I am slowly getting back into the routines of life even if I still have trouble sleeping and my heart still feels like a herd of elephants ran amok and trampled over it over and over again.

            Suddenly, my mobile phone comes to life. Bon Jovi belting out Bad Medicine. It's a calendar reminder - Laney's birthday.

 My best friend, the only link I allow myself from the past. She still doesn't know about Mike. She's away, on some island hundreds of thousands of miles away, having one of many sponsored holidays she enjoys throughout the year.

            She's a travel journalist for
The Adventurer
, and a damn good one. Her editor, Avery, told me that her column,
Laney's Destination of the Month,
always brought in the most inquiries from readers.

            "It's the way she describes the place. You feel as though you're right there beside her, digging your toes into the warm sand and sipping cool coconut water as the sun beats down on you," he said when we caught up for drinks one night.

            This time, she told me she would be away for three months, island-hopping, with the challenge being to spend as little money as possible while still having a fantastic time.

            "I've got to fly straight to the Galapagos Islands from Malaysia. I'm writing up a gorgeous feature on it and I swear I've piled on at least ten pounds since I've gotten here. The food, Mer, the food is unbelievably sinful. Tomorrow I'll be visiting the state of Malacca, south of Kuala Lumpur, and they tell me more amazing food is waiting as well as a ton of history. You'd love
that
," she told me in one of our rare phone calls. That had been about a week before Mike died.

            I smile, thinking about her. A surge of guilt swiftly follows. I haven't even thought about her since the funeral, everything just took backseat when the numbing fog of grief had consumed me.

            I hope she hasn't broken too many hearts by now. Opening a new message, I type: "Happy birthday, Laney. I hope you're not dancing on tabletops again. We'll clink bottles when you get back and swap stories. I miss you so much and I have lots to tell you. Come back soon! Love, Mer."

            I'll tell her about Mike when she gets back. The last thing I want is for her to decide to cut her trip short for me. Laney and Janet are the only family I have left.

            My stomach rumbles again, angrier this time. Right, the mushroom soup. I'm pretty sure it's the last can left, hidden behind several tins of sardines.

            I search and search but I can't find it. Finally, there's just one cabinet left, the one just above the countertop. As I stand on tiptoe to open the door, my gaze flicks downward for a moment, lands on the letter before moving upwards again.

           
Wait a minute.
I freeze. Literally. Very slowly, my gaze swings back to the envelope, my left hand still on the cabinet handle.

            My heart starts hammering faster as my brain struggles to accept what I am seeing. It simply can't be. But look! The loopy M, connecting straight into the next letters shaping my name, until it ends with the flamboyant h.

            Scrawled in black ink, in handwriting as familiar to me as my own.

           
If what I'm looking at is really what I think it is, then the envelope is from my dead husband.
                  

All thoughts of mushroom soup fleeing from my stunned brain, I just stand there for a good five minutes, gripping the edges of the countertop as I stare at the letter. For I have no doubt anymore that that's what it is - a letter.

            As my acceptance increases and my disbelief fades, I feel excitement starting to trickle into my brain. "My God, Mike wrote me a letter. You wrote me a
letter
," I say aloud, and somehow, that simple act cements my conviction that this isn't a dream.

            I finally move to pick it up, carry it to the living room where we had all our long conversations over mugs and mugs of coffee.

            Opening the envelope, I draw two sheets of paper out, gleaming with his words, and begin to read.