What Remains

Story containts sensitive content: Death of a loved one, hospital imagery, emotional distress.

People stopped checking in on him by the end of the first week and it made the house terribly quiet. But it was a peaceless quiet. It was a living thing that boomed through the halls unbearably. It had once been chased away by the sound of feet shuffling over the floor in fuzzy socks, or joyful laughter from the living room. Once, she had chased the malignant silence from the house.

Now, he sat at the kitchen table with a cup of cold coffee resting, mostly forgotten, in front of him. The mug used to be hers, it was dusty pink with little dancing grey cats that had faded from years of use.

His eyes narrowed at the cup. Was this what it was supposed to feel like? The sadness was there, he could tell. But it was thin and watered down. It felt like something was missing, but how could he know? He had never lost before, not like this. People talk about it, sure, but what was grief really?

Maybe he was forgetting already.

But it couldn’t be that, it had only been a week.

He remembered her face clearly. He remembered the sound of her voice too, and the way she laughed. He remembered her warmth and gentle weight as they watched the TV.

None of that was gone. If anything, those little memories were sharper. As if the knowledge of her death had blasted apart the big things and left nothing but minute memories behind.

But the feelings attached to it were all wrong.

He should have been devastated. He knew it. Everyone knew it.

He remembered how they had watched him at the funeral. How their gazes always fell on him as if by accident.

But he knew.

He knew that they were waiting for the moment when it all became real for him. When he broke and his world finally came crashing down. It was out of love though, he knew that too. They wanted to be there for him when the shock faded and his new reality finally worked its way through the fog and haze.

Or maybe, they were waiting for him to feel the way they thought he should. Justifying their grief with his.

He had drifted through the eulogies in tearless quiet, waiting for his turn to feel whatever it was that had driven those around him to quiet sobs. Then, before he knew it, he was standing again with folded hands, caught in a kind of numb fugue. He accepted condolences and words of encouragement, nodding and managing a quiet “thank you” every so often.

He remembered someone standing close and saying, “you’re holding up well.”

There was nothing he bothered saying to that.

Now, alone, he pressed his palms flat on the table, on either side of the forgotten coffee and tried to concentrate. He closed his eyes, trying to summon the emotion he knew he should be feeling.

He concentrated on his final memory with her as she lay in that hospital bed, of the last time she had looked up at him. Her severely battered face, still lovely. Her eyes, bright and beautiful but so full of pain and fear. Her cold hand as it finally went slack for the last time in his.

There was a flicker of something. A tightness in his chest, a dull pressure behind his eyes. It was more intense than the thin sadness from before, but it faded almost as soon as he felt it.

He blew out a slow, defeated sigh as he slouched back in his chair. He felt a splash of irritation trickle into the chasm that should have been brimming with grief. But it was still just a splash.

“Is this it?” he whispered to the quiet house.

The silence had become maddening and desperation had moved him into action. He forced himself from the kitchen, intending to replace his chair with the couch. He shuffled through the hall, into the sun dappled living room. Before falling into the well used cushions, he paused, noticing the old sweatshirt slung over the back of the couch.

He stared at it for a long moment. It was silly, he was surrounded by her things, why should an old sweatshirt give him pause, it didn’t make sense. But he felt something from it. Moving closer, he sat down and pulled the old thing toward him, the sound of fabric sliding over fabric as loud as a shout. Slowly, he slid his hand into the front pocket.

A strong feeling of need overcame him as his finger brushed against something hard in the pocket. He scowled as a flutter of excited nervousness started in his chest and wound through his body, then he pulled it from the pocket. It was a ring made of a simple, dull metal. Iron, maybe, though it seemed to subtly change hues as the light played off of it. It was heavy though, and seemed to be well worn.

He turned it over in his hand, his brow furrowing in thought. He was sure he had never seen it before, though it was vaguely familiar to him. He wondered offhandedly why she had it in her pocket. The ring radiated warmth in his palm as he clutched it to his chest and closed his eyes against budding tears.

He nearly put it back, but instantly thought better of it. At first it seemed wrong to take, but the impulse to keep it close, as close as possible, nearly overwhelmed him.

Carefully, he slid it onto his finger. At first, a soothing feeling stole over his mind. As if she were here again, speaking calming words and mending his aching senses. But it was just the calm before the storm.

The flood of emotion was terrible and immediate.

As if a dam broke within him, it slammed into the void in his chest. His breath hitched, and he lurched forward as the emotional flood coalesced into physical pain. He braced one hand against the frayed cushion, the other clenched in a white-knuckled fist against his chest, as the room blurred around him.

It all continued to surge through him, overwhelmingly potent. Love, anger, and regret all swirled within but most potent of all was grief. The pain spread outward, spiking into his limbs, his throat and behind his eyes.

He sank to the floor without realizing it, breaths coming in jagged and uneven bursts as hot tears ran in streams down his cheeks. A sob tore itself from his throat.

This was what it was supposed to feel like.

Time blurred through his tears. He didn’t know how long he stayed there, curled in on himself, the ring biting faintly into his skin as the grief ran its course.

Hours must have passed before the torrent eased enough for him to breathe steadily again. The sun had set and shadows blanketed the room. He sat up and rubbed at his tired, stinging eyes, taking long breaths of cool air.

Instinctively he rose and stumbled to the kitchen to start another pot of coffee. He reached absently for the mug with the dancing cats, then stopped as a sharp tink sounded through the silence when the ring struck the ceramic.

He squinted through the darkness at the ring, having forgotten it in his exhaustion. He remembered what had happened when he had put on the too-heavy, too-warm piece of metal, and something like fear threaded through the lingering grief. Slowly, with shaking fingers, he pulled it off.

The weight of the grief vanished immediately.

He sucked in a breath, the sudden absence almost as jarring as the initial flood had been. The memories remained, of course. They had never left. But the emotion attached to them went gray and dull, slipping just out of reach. He just stood there, dumbfounded. The ring hung loosely between two fingers as he tried to reconcile the two states.

The void was back, the reservoir of pain and devastation drained away with the removal of the ring. But it didn’t feel right.

On the other hand, the pain had been too much. It was frightening to feel that raw and exposed. He had lost so dearly that he was stuck between nothingness and ruination. It was a terrifying prospect.

But, alone in the dark, the fear of grief won out. Now that he knew the monster for what it was, he was afraid of it. He crossed the room and stepped on the trashcan pedal. He stared at the ring a moment longer, hardening his resolve. He dropped it in before he could second-guess the decision.

It was back the next morning.

He found it on his bedside table, resting by his phone as if it had always been there. He stared at it for a long moment before reaching out and touching it lightly, just to make sure it was real.

It was just as solid as the previous day, making a faint scraping sound as he moved it against the wood of the table. A deep frown creased his mouth as he picked it up. The same strange warmth radiated from the band. He turned it over once, then twice, pondering its weight. Then he set it down again, left it there with a frustrated sigh, and walked out of the bedroom.

For the rest of the day, he refused to look at it, avoiding the bedroom with deliberate effort. Instead, he tried to occupy himself, tried to live life again. But all the while, he thought about the damn ring.

He pondered its origins as he made coffee he would never drink. He questioned how it worked as he ate food he wasn’t really hungry for.

Later that afternoon, his mother called. She did that every other day.

He knew he should have talked more. If for nothing else then to keep her from worrying. If she thought he was okay, she’d stop asking as much. But all he could do was stare at the trash can in contemplative silence while she struggled to keep a one-sided conversation alive.

“I love you, and I worry about you,” she had said by the end of a hard ten minutes. “You be sure to tell me if you need anything, okay?”

He had muttered his thanks and hung up, never breaking his focus on the trashcan.

Try as he might, nothing could turn his attention from the ring. Mysterious as it was, it gave him something that he had been missing since her death.

He realized the day had been wasted trying to go back to the way things had been the week before. He had felt grief, his own, true misery. There was no returning to the grey torpor.

By the time evening came, he began to feel the emptiness even more powerfully. It was not the same thin feeling from before. But a hollowness that made everything feel even more distant.

He walked into the bedroom and, with a trepidatious sigh, gingerly picked up the ring. The thought that he might not be able to live without it, without all of those emotions, made his stomach turn in fear and disgust.

But he needed to feel.

The hollowness in his chest bordered on physical pain, and he knew there was a way out. He paced several times, working up the courage to quench the pain in the searing ice of his own sadness. With a deep breath, he shoved it on.

It slipped over his finger just as easily as before, as though it had been made for him.

The grief came again, just as torrential. But this time, he was prepared. Scared as he was, it would not blindside him like it had before. He lay back on the bed, openly weeping into the darkness. The emotions filled him, rushed into the jagged empty places the hollowness had carved from him.

It hurt. God, it hurt. But the pain felt right. It felt natural and real. And why shouldn’t it? It was his pain, The pain he felt for her. He had loved, lived, and ultimately lost, but for her, he would hurt so he wouldn’t forget.

He allowed the pain this time. The previous night, he had been overwhelmed. But now he could take it. And when he finally took the ring off again, the hollowness returned, but not as abruptly. An echo of the feeling lingered, and he realized the quiet of the house felt less malign.

Over the next several days, he fell into a pattern. He would go hours without it, sometimes longer, letting the numb hollowness settle in until it became unbearable. Then he would put the ring on and let the grief come in full.

The first two days he used it sparingly. Then, once he grew used to the feeling, more often. There were days when he didn’t take it off at all, letting the emotion run unchecked until it left him exhausted and wrung out. Unable to do anything but lie around in his own aching misery.

Those days always ended the same. He would pull the ring off in desperation, gasping as the weight vanished, letting him breathe again but leaving him hollow and shaking.

It wasn’t a sustainable way of life. But the alternative was not feeling at all. Sometimes he would lie in bed and weep over the time before she died. Those tears were for himself, for the time when he could feel normally and wasn’t addicted to his own suffering.

The realization came to him one day after wearing the ring to bed. He had woken up feeling worse than ever. Barely able to drag himself to the bathroom, he looked in the mirror and saw a shadow of who he had once been. His skin was sallow, his eyes dark and bloodshot. He was messy and unwashed, unable to remember the last time he had forced himself to bathe. He stared at his reflection and was disgusted by it.

That day, after a shower and a strong pot of coffee in the mug with the dancing cats, he set the ring on the kitchen counter and stared at it.

“I can’t get rid of you,” he thought aloud, “but I can’t be consumed by you either. It’ll kill me.”

He took a long sip of the hot, bitter liquid and sighed. Then he turned and looked out the window to a sun drenched yard. It was spring and flowers were blooming. He smiled as he thought about her and how much she loved to tend to the delicate, colorful blooms.

A thought sparked and he slipped the ring on. The grief flooded him again but this time, it met a wall of soft warm joy. It seeped into the grief as they met, softening it, slowing it.

Grief kept him grounded, helped him remember. But it was not all he was. He could remember the good times, the joy they had shared. Between the grief and hollow nothing, he had forgotten how to smile.

Years passed, and the house changed with him. The malignant silence no longer stalked the halls. Sharp, cutting memories became soft reminiscence. He learned to live again.

Through it all, the ring stayed with him. He didn’t think about it much anymore. It wasn’t something he checked for, or something he reached for in moments of need. It was simply there, resting against his skin. Its warmth and weight were simply part of him.

Mostly, he forgot about it. Sometimes, though, it forced him to remember.

He was washing dishes in the kitchen one evening when he noticed it again. This time, not because of weight or warmth, but because of a brief sting.

It was faint, barely more than a prick of sensation, but enough to draw his attention. He sucked in a sharp breath. He glanced down at his hand, turning it slightly as the light caught the dull surface of the ring. For a moment, it felt sharper.

He smiled as he looked down at the mug with the dancing cats, warmth stirring along with the bite. But the warmth was not from the ring this time. It came from a memory.

Across the room, another sat where she once had and looked up from a laptop.

“You okay, babe?”

“Yeah,” he said, still smiling. “It was nothing.”

She studied him for a moment before looking back at her screen.

He wondered sometimes if she could see the ring. She had never once mentioned it, but on the occasion that the grief was sharper than usual, she seemed to sense it. There were times, early on, when he had thought about taking it off and hiding it from her. She had become important and he was nervous it would scare her away. But she never seemed to notice it. Besides, it was a part of him now.

He returned to his work, feeling the warmth settle back into place as the sting eased. It would never leave him, but he wouldn’t want it to. He watched her work for a moment before drying his hands and walking over to her with a grin.

“Enough work for tonight, let's go out and do something fun.”