Bereavement Liminality

I must have fallen asleep.

Or died.

Some unearthly smell pinches at my nose, a mix of fog and mildew that settles beneath my ribs and low in my stomach. Close to the feeling you get when you descend on a rollercoaster—a brief moment of weightlessness followed by your loosely anchored internal organs mixing in your belly.

Oh. I am on a coaster.

Only I’m not moving. Not anymore, at least. I’m stranded.

My tongue finally settles in my mouth, and only now do I realize my knuckles are turning white from how aggressively I am holding onto the handlebars. The metal almost blends into my knuckles as I look down, noticing that my knuckles are not white—but red. Pink brush blurs outward into my fingers.

I’m freezing.

The sky is yellowing. It’s almost a dirty color that is so strangely thick that I cannot see the ground. I begin to realize that I cannot see anything more than the track ahead and behind me—it climbs upwards for a bit, vanishes, then reappears several yards later into the very top bit of a loop.

Rusted.

The track is rusted.

I run my eyes along the rails as they run from me. So hastily following the support beams downward that my body tips forward—the bar now digging into my stomach and reminding me of my organs that are now twisting into knots.

I can’t see the ground.

Nothing tells me how far up I am.

I sit back and ponder in my thick skull—coming to the conclusion that I don’t like how I cannot hear anything. Amusement parks should be loud. . . right? They should be bustling and full—a cobblestone walkway in the center maybe where my mother and I should walk along. Music should be playing somewhere, machines purring and children screaming.

My mother?

My eyebrows draw together at that thought—my brain clouded with the same yellow of the mist, and unfortunately I cannot remember what she looks like. I know I have a mother. Everyone has a mother. I know that much.

Amusement parks should also have a floor.

I eventually turn my head, meeting the dozen empty seats. Their lap bars all pulled down, seatbelts buckled. I count them. One. Two. Three. I don’t know why I am counting. I glance at one of the blackened headrests of the seats, a darker black stain sits on its front. It looks wet.

I turn away.

This is normal. I’m sure. 

I try to loosen my hands, and for a moment I forget how to move my limbs. It feels foreign to move something that has been still for so long—to uncrumple tinfoil knowing that no matter how long you spend flattening the edges, the creases will always be visible.

My palms are red where the metal has been pressed into them, little crescent marks from my fingernails. Like the moon, opposite of the sun. I look up, eager to meet the brightness that I assure myself the sun has.

There is no sun.

No mother.

No floor.

However, there is a sound now—a gentle creak from the car as I flex my hands. The tiny muscles in my fingers seem to itch as they pull apart, a pressure I cannot describe beginning to finally release. I almost do not notice the sound as my eyes tear to my feet.

My shoelaces are untied.

They are draped over each other messily and intertwining with the dust bunnies that have piled up in the corners of the car. Like veins, I think. Suddenly I can feel my veins, feel my heart pulsing violently in my chest and ushering my blood into places where my body has gone numb.

I can feel it in my teeth, my lips, my eyes.

I blink.

I'm aware of my eyelashes brushing each other, my pupils dilating. It almost feels like a vibration, a song or melody that does not contain any lyrics—just a beat. The beat of my heart. I can feel my veins again.

I have come to the conclusion that I am all too aware of myself.

I need to be aware of my surroundings.

Closing my eyes, I let my body examine something other than itself. I wait for a breeze from the thick fog and find myself sitting in the utter uselessness that is devoid of wind. I am sitting in a fishbowl of yellow sludge that does not move. It simply lives, exists in its own time. I wonder if it can also feel my veins?

The smell of it is. . oddly enough. . .pleasant.

It smells of rust, just the edges of it though—specifically the parts that can give you tetanus. It has a bitterness to it that is almost warm, like it was doused in wax and then frozen in a moldy freezer. I take another big breath, my shoulders inhaling along with my lungs as my hands finally sink into my lap.

I let it swallow me.

It is familiar. Familiar like a relative that looks identical to your sister—yet you have never met them. I know the smell, but I cannot place it. It is pretending to be familiar, pretending to have a place in my memory that has yet to return.

I open my eyes.

Is that what this place is? An impersonation?

The lap bar that had been cinched to my stomach clicks, and before I can feel my veins again, it flies upwards and aggressively recoils back into its original place. It is loud. I can hear again. Metal on metal pinches my eardrums in a pressure I again cannot explain.

My nose scrunches at the sound, pulling upwards into my already drawn eyebrows. I probably look disgusted. I am disgusted. How dare she leave me with nothing.

Do you think if I looked happy, I would feel the same?

I smile, my lips pulling over my teeth in an awkward way that my mother should scold me for.

No, that's not how emotions work. I tell myself that the emotions come first; only after that are you inclined to make a face to match the feeling in your gut. Or not. For instance, I am freezing, yet my teeth cease to chatter.

I guess that's more of a bodily function than an expression.

The human body is quite confusing.

It would be more along the lines of being sad and choosing not to cry. Like when my mother died, and I desperately tried not to—the prick of my tears bottling up in my throat and catching on my lower lids, my eyelashes holding them from trailing down my face.

My mother.

I am suddenly reminded that she is gone. I do not know what she looks like, though I remember her death. A person could not forget their own mother’s death—though they probably also wouldn’t forget how she looked.

I’m crying now.

I can hear my sobs, my lungs shuddering in short breaks for air before the warmth of the tears cut down my face. Though my face is not scrunched into a ball, I am still smiling. My face betrays me, even if the tears feel natural.

Everything hurts so naturally now.

The car below me creaks forward.

Not with the violent lurch I expect, but with a slow, reluctant groan of something being dragged across a floor. I wait for the wind again and am slightly disappointed when there is none. My stringy hair is still slicked to my head, and my clothes do not flutter. Every breath is close to my face, rippling across my nose before disappearing into the yellow.

I can feel every wheel beneath me, every rotation of metal complaining onto the track. Each little jolt sends a tiny shudder through the seat and into my spine. I am aware of my spine now; my bones now throb with familiarity.

Up I go. Another few feet until I cannot see the loop ahead of me any longer. I lean forward again and peer into the fog—expecting it to thin. If anything, it thickens. The yellow greens at the edges in a sick and translucent spin that swallows the support beams one by one.

The track ahead is barely visible, two dark lines suspended in all this color. I am beginning to understand that I don’t want to be here anymore, which seems like an obvious thing to understand considering I am alone on a rusted roller coaster suspended above a world I cannot see.

Yet I have just now thought about it.

My stomach notices the increasing incline before my head does—my spine leans backward against the seat as the track climbs higher. I don’t bother to look into the rails anymore; I know they will disappear a few feet ahead of me. I cannot see anything.

No mother.

No floor.

No end.

I begin to question myself, which brings me to question those questions. I don’t know how long I am supposed to be going up. I don’t know how long a roller coaster is supposed to take. I don’t know how long my mother has been dead.

“If I remember her...” My throat is noticeably dry, my vocal cords shredding themselves against the mist that I have sucked into my nose. “Can I go home?” I don’t really recognize my voice; what I’m saying doesn’t match the thoughts in my head. But they fall from my mouth so comfortably that I forget to stop begging.

“I’ll remember.” I rasp again, my voice higher than the first time it escaped me. Though that is an effortless lie, I still bid myself to try to remember. The only thing that comes to my mind is flour. I don’t know why flour.

My mother cooked.

She must have.

My spine is now molding its own shape into the fabric of the seat.

“Please.” I’m pleading with anything now, my voice barely above the constant grind of metal that has drowned itself out in the back of my mind. “Please.” Tears threaten to fall again, building quietly at the edge of my tongue.

“What if I remember her?” I sound like a broken record, a guilty record that is scratched on the edges and only repeats the point of the song that no one wants to hear. “That’s why? Right? Me?” I’m not sure if I’m speaking anymore; I can hear myself, but I cannot feel my lips moving.

The car tips, leveling with what I can only assume is the horizon because my stomach has stopped flipping inside of me. Then it ushers forward, leaning the opposite direction. I’m traveling downward.

Down, down, and down again. At a gruesomely slow pace that forces me to be aware of my body again. Time begins to warp in my head, mixing days into hours and minutes into weeks. Nothing makes sense but everything hurts. However hurting is familiar—so I grasp onto it.

Something amidst expectation and anticipation rips through my throat as the pressure around me changes. My ears unclog, pressure popping through them as I begin to listen.

Metal is louder than I remember.

So is the slow, terrible realization that I have been descending for far longer than the height of the track should allow. Though I cannot be too sure—I am not a mechanic. I am not even sure what I am. My mother is dead; I’m not opposed to the idea that I might be as well.

The little ring of track that my eyes have been fixed on for some time begins to fade into a lighter shade of yellow—tinkering on the edge of white, maybe blue. For the first time, I can finally see something beneath the coaster.

A dry pang of either a cough or a laugh rumbles in my stomach before waving outwards into my throat—it escapes my mouth in a crackly sigh that I’m not even sure has a name. But it has noise. Something other than metal on metal. Flesh on flesh.

Green.

Sage spikes, all around.

Ground.

I'm aware of my organs again and my heart that is now pounding in my chest, though it is a different type of pound. It’s ready. I’m ready.

I cannot tell where the fog ends and the earth begins, but it is there and real. Patches of dark green emerge through the lighter bits—tearing through the yellow in a contrast so stark that I almost gasp. Or choke. The car keeps moving, tilting from its position to meet the horizon—the grass. The end of the track.

There is a floor now.

But no mother.

No sun.

By the time my feet are on the ground—the real ground. I have forgotten how I got off of the coaster, just that my sneakers are sunk into the earth, and the worms of my shoelaces are back in their home atop the mud.

Home.

My organs sink in my body, settling back into place now that I am standing upright. I am sore, my legs that were once numb now aching with the simple chore of existing. My veins are swollen with emotion, pleading for me to sob again.

I shift my weight and stand for a moment—my gaze drifting over the yellow that has thickened at the lower bits, crawling through the grass and curling around my ankles. I watch it move between my shoes, filling the parts where my toes don’t entirely reach the end.

I almost envy it.

My head feels empty. A different kind of empty where I cannot feel my brain any longer. I am aware but not paranoid. I am alive but not living.

I look back at the coaster to find it sitting there, taunting me, begging me just as I had it. The track still disappears into the horizon, looping and twisting through nothing that I can see.

I don’t want to get back on.

I know that.

The thought comes without panic; I simply don’t want to. I’m not terrified of it or anything—I just know it's sitting there, waiting. I close my eyes without turning back, letting the shape of everything come barreling into my mind.

I almost open my eyes again. But I stop myself, knowing that if I did—she would be gone.

Her laugh is so vivid, so full of life and all the love that was for me. I realized, amidst remembering, that I had been trying so hard to forget her face. Forgetting was easier than remembering that there was a time when she had one. A time when she was a person instead of death.

My chest hurts.

I let it.

The pain does not mean I am dying. I just miss her—though I’m not sure if there's much of a difference.

When I am finally ready to open my eyes, nothing has changed. The fog is still thick and sunless, the smell still edged with rust, and the coaster still behind me. I am still here.

I lift my foot, halfheartedly hoping that my body still knows how to walk after being sat in that coaster for so long. Rotting in the seat so effortlessly that the fog has eaten me alive.

I walk.

To where? I’m not sure. I don’t think I’m supposed to know.

Grief is a rollercoaster of emotions.

And maybe, eventually, learning that you don’t have to stay on the ride forever.

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