Authors: A. L. Jackson
But even as I was washed in that pain, I sensed something different. It was as if the emptiness inside me had whispered that I was missing something as the days blurred into nothingness. It was something that echoed the loneliness that ached from my broken spirit. But where before I’d given into it, had succumbed to the void that I’d accepted would always be the most prominent piece of my life, today I had the impulse to fill it. It was just a flicker, but it was there.
I will try
.
I guess I’d enjoyed myself on Sunday, if that was even possible. The fresh air had almost made it easier to breathe. Almost. Breathing was the hardest part. Every intake of air was measured. Forced. As if life no longer came naturally.
But being there with Logan, Kelsey, and Lizzie had been simple. There was no pressure and there were no memories. When Logan made me laugh, it shocked me. It was as if my ears were hearing it tinkle from someone else’s mouth, a sound I no longer recognized.
And he called me Liz.
Casual. Like nothing. As if he’d known me all my life. As if it really didn’t matter all that much.
Christian never called me that. He always said my name as if it were his breath, as if it were a prayer, so much meaning held in the just the inflection of the word.
Maybe that was the problem between Christian and me. Maybe the connection that bound us was too overwhelming, too powerful, too much. Maybe a love that flamed so bright could only burn us into the ground. Maybe it was inevitable, our ruin. Maybe we’d already been set up for destruction, because something so strong made it inherently weak.
Because I knew I couldn’t handle Christian right now. Couldn’t handle the intensity of what he made me feel. He was like a burst of color behind my eyes that I couldn’t distinguish, a ball in the pit of my stomach that felt like both dread and anticipation.
He was a reminder of everything that should be and what I couldn’t have.
A symbol of what I had lost.
The hardest part was I didn’t know if that feeling would ever change. If I could ever look at him and not be knocked from my feet by a torrent of sorrow.
I opened my eyes and let my gaze wander across the yard to the swing set he’d built about six months ago.
I’d tried to talk him out of it. I’d told him he was crazy and that we were trying to move and he could build one at the new house. But he just smiled that smile and said it didn’t matter, and if Lizzie played on it for even one day, then it would be worth his effort.
And she had. She had played and played and played on it until she had abandoned it the day Christian had gone away. Since then it’d sat stagnant, like the wreckage of our decay.
Gathering my courage, I stood. The grass was damp, cool beneath my bare feet. I approached it tentatively, as if it were
something sacred. I ran my fingertips up the smooth plastic of the slide then brushed my hand along the coated metal chains of the swing where Christian had spent hours upon hours teaching Lizzie how to pump her legs. I swallowed hard as I moved to stand behind the other, the infant swing Christian had so proudly hung
just in case
we were still living here when Lillie was old enough to use it.
My hand shook as I reached out and nudged it, giving it the slightest push. It creaked as it barely swayed. I pushed it again and closed my eyes and imagined her, what she would have been like had she been here.
Her face flashed, both the one I’d known and the one that I’d fantasized in my mind. The way she’d felt in my arms. She’d been so light, too light, so wrong. And still, I’d loved her. I’d loved her with all my heart and I’d poured it into her, praying that somehow she could feel it.
Pain clenched my heart, and tears welled in my eyes as what I’d known of her presence swept over me. I pressed my hand over my mouth as it all broke through.
Oh my God. I hurt. I hurt so bad, I didn’t how to stand up under it. It was crushing. But today I let it, lifted my face to the sky as I let it rain down on me, as I let her
touch
me, a caress of her spirit as she passed by.
I’d had so many hopes for her life. And I could see her here, could imagine the way she’d have smiled, the sound of her laughter, because I
knew
her.
Because I knew her, and without her, I couldn’t remember how to breathe. I was hit with another staggering wave. It bent me at my middle, and I clutched my stomach as I gulped for the cool fall air.
I missed
her
.
A sob tore up my throat. It was unstoppable.
I should have known better than this, letting it go, welcoming the remnants of her existence into this miserable life. Because I couldn’t deal with it, but I couldn’t keep myself from receiving the smallest portion of her light.
I staggered back into my house. The drapes remained pulled, the rooms darkened as I stumbled through the kitchen and into the family room. On the stairs, I held myself up on the railing, pulling myself forward, or maybe I was drawn.
I’d never been able to look before, even though I knew it was there. Before she went back to Virginia, Claire had kissed my forehead and told me it was there for me whenever I was ready. And I didn’t know if I was ready. I didn’t know if I ever would be. Four months had passed, and I knew one day I had to face this.
I will try
.
I came to a standstill outside my bedroom door. Tears streamed, and I just stared. I still didn’t know if I was brave enough to handle what was inside.
Brave
.
The hoarse laughter that shook me was almost bitter. None of it was directed at Claire, even though she was the one who had proclaimed it.
There was no bravery found in me.
After they’d ripped her from my arms, I didn’t even have the courage to open my eyes. I just wanted to seep away, bleed into the nothingness that my spirit called me into.
I will try
.
With a trembling hand, I reached out and pushed on the door. It swung open to the room that served as my refuge yet haunted me at the same time. In it was Christian’s presence, both the warmest light and the harshest freeze. It was here I’d loved him and here where I’d let him go. These walls still crawled with
that anger, something that had boiled between us before it’d finally blown.
Part of me still hated him for it.
Sucking in a pained breath, I took a step inside. The loneliness I was met with every time I walked through this door encroached, wrapped me in a cloak of isolation, amplifying the void at the center of me that was getting harder and harder to bear.
I swallowed deeply as I shuffled across the floor. I came to stand at the entrance to my walk-in closet. A frenzy of nerves sped through my veins. I pushed them down and slowly opened the door. A dark, vacant hole stared back at me.
I fumbled for the light switch. Harsh light flooded the tiny space. I squinted, holding my hand up to shield it. Once my sight adjusted, I edged forward then dropped to my knees.
The box was on the top shelf, shoved back and hidden behind a stack of blankets in the far corner.
Discarded.
Like waste.
Agony twisted my heart, so tight I didn’t know how it was possible for it to keep beating.
She would never be that way to me. Forgotten. Unwanted.
Rejected
.
A shot of anger rumbled beneath the surface of my skin, resentment I was sure I would never shake.
I tugged on the box and pulled it down, got onto my knees in the middle of the closet floor. It was a large keepsake box, pink and floral and accented in ribbons. The kind designed to keep someone’s most cherished memories.
I sat there for the longest time, staring at it through bleary eyes, searching inside myself for the courage I knew didn’t exist.
I fisted my hands on my thighs. I blinked, and tears slipped down my cheeks and dripped from my chin. I sniffled and wiped them away.
I owed her this. Owed her this respect, owed her this act of adoration when my body hadn’t been strong enough to protect hers. And maybe I owed it to myself, because it was her memory I clung to so desperately, and her memory that caused me my greatest pain.
Maybe I needed to see.
Something pushed me forward, and I lifted the lid from the box. For a moment, I froze, stricken by the items waiting inside. My chest quaked. I slowly set the lid aside.
Little remained of her, just the few things that had touched her life.
My jaw quivered, and I sank my teeth into my lower lip to try to stop it.
She hadn’t even been given that.
Life
.
But to me, she had. She had lived because she lived in my heart.
The tiny identification bracelet that had been cut from her ankle lie on top. It was so small, so small it could have been a ring. A shudder trembled through my being. Did I forget how small she had really been? I picked it up and gently twisted the plastic band that had marked her stilled leg around my finger.
Tears resurfaced. I tried to bite them back, but they bled free. And I knew they would fall endless, ceaseless, even when my eyes were dry. Never would I stop grieving her. This love was eternal. My name was there, just under hers, and numbers were printed below that I knew somehow categorized her death. I let it curl around two fingers, held onto it as I dipped my other hand into the box. I pulled out the preemie Onesie my mother had bought from the hospital gift store for me to dress her in. It
was the one she’d worn as Mom snapped three pictures of her in my arms. They were there too, the pictures, tucked inside a card, a merciless reminder of her face that was forever frozen in time.
Stifled air pressed down. I felt strangled, as if the life were slowly being squeezed out of me.
Seeing her this way, so clear, removed from the fog of that day, gutted me.
Stripped me bare.
How could I face this? When would it ever be okay?
It wouldn’t.
Still, I held the pictures at my chest as I lifted my face toward the ceiling. The single bare bulb glared down, streaks of light glinting against my eyes that were squeezed closed. Tears continued to fall, and my anguished cries bounced around the confines of the tiny space.
I could barely suck in a ragged breath. It hurt as it expanded in my lungs.
By the time I set the pictures down on the floor and pulled the blanket Claire had given her from the box, I could barely see. I frantically pressed it to my nose, desperate to catch a suggestion of her. I held it close and inhaled the fabric, because it felt like the most tangible thing I had of her.
But that void…it just throbbed.
She’d taken a piece of me with her and left this hollowed out place that I didn’t know how to fill.
And it ached and stabbed and cut.
She was real. Didn’t they understand that?
But I knew no one really could. No one could really understand the impact she’d made on my life. How she’d changed me inside.
Because she’d been real and my child and now she was gone.
Gone
.
And it hurt. Oh my God, it hurt so badly, stretched me thin and compressed me tight, and I didn’t know if I’d ever see through it.
My fingers curled in the blanket as I wept, as I cried out for the child I would do anything to hold in my arms again.
One token remained at the bottom of the box.
I still didn’t know if I could bear to look at it.
No amount of time could heal it. No passage of days or months or years could erase the fact that she had never been given the chance to live.
Memories surfaced, ones that I had blocked through the shocked haze that held me under. Ones I still didn’t want to remember. Somehow, I knew Christian had picked it out. Vague impressions slipped through my mind, the way he’d tried to hold me as he’d asked questions at my ear I didn’t want to hear. I remembered this was what he’d wanted and somehow I’d agreed.
It was a small pewter cube.
It was different from anything I’d seen, different from anything I’d expected when Claire had told me it was there, but I knew it was her urn.
A delicate script was inscribed across the top.
Lillie Ann Davison
Forever In Our Hearts
There was no date.
He’d simply stated her time as
forever
.
And for a moment, all I could feel was Christian’s grief. It broke over me in a crashing wave. I gasped as it knocked me forward, and I held myself up with one hand as I struggled to breathe.
Had I been unable to recognize it then? Or was I just imagining it now?
But it was strong. Overpowering. As overwhelming as the confusion he spun up in me.
I fought against the oppressive weight that suddenly crushed my shoulders.
I couldn’t bear his sorrow, too.
I became frantic, picking up her things, pressing them to my face, to my nose, before I rushed to put her pictures and small things back into the box.
I thought…
I thought I could do this. I thought I was ready, but I realized then, I was not. I didn’t know if I ever would be. I couldn’t look at them because I didn’t want to let her go, and somehow holding all of her things made me feel as if I was trying to. It was just so much easier to hold it all inside, to box it up with all these things that I wanted to treasure, even when they just seemed to cause me more pain.
Sobs racked through me as I folded her blanket and hurried to place it on top of everything else.
But I couldn’t.
I couldn’t let her go.
My pulse stuttered as everything slowed. My fingers curled into the fabric, and I cautiously drew the blanket back out. My eyes dropped closed as I held the satin trim at my cheek.
Chapter Fourteen
Elizabeth
Early June, Four Months Earlier
Frantic.
I couldn’t breathe.
No
.
I clutched her to me, rocked her at my chest.
No
.
“You have to let her go.”
This was all I had of her, and they were trying to take it away.
I fought, fought for her as I crushed her to me.