Grief"ity"

*Sensitive Content: Mental Health and Violent Imagery

Grief“ity” 2487 Words

The white cardigan hung off her body like a giant garbage bag.

She couldn’t remember the taste of food. The last meal she’d had, had been with him.

She looked around their apartment. It looked and felt wrong. There was a collection of empty coffee cups on the end table. The curtains were drawn so tightly that just a sliver of sunlight made its way through.  

She couldn’t get herself off the couch to do anything except go to the bathroom out of necessity. Even that was a struggle, but dignity won. For now.

She pulled her knees up to her chest and allowed the cardigan to hug her. She closed her eyes. For just a moment, she could feel his arms around her.

She had been wearing his cardigan, the night of the accident. She refused to take it off. There were bloodstains up and down the sleeves and dirt around the cuffs and bottom. She didn’t care. Taking this cardigan off would mean losing him forever, and she couldn’t emotionally bear it.

She pressed her face into the collar. Another wave of tears rolled down her face when she smelled him. Or maybe she only imagined it. She didn’t know anymore.

They had been on their way to see her parents. He was old-fashioned and was planning to ask for her father’s blessing that night. The entire morning, he paced the apartment. He was really nervous. She tried to reassure him that everything would be okay while they ate lunch together. He reached over across the table and squeezed her hand.  

“I love you so much,” he said.

At the time, all she did was roll her eyes and giggle. She wished she had known that would be their last meal. She would have said it back.   

The deer came out of nowhere. There was no way they could have spotted it ahead of time. It had come at them from the left, out of the dark woods so quickly that there hadn't been time to react.

On impact, the antlers came through the driver's side window. The deer with its wild, terrified eyes looked directly at her and moaned in pain. Its neck was broken.  

She forced herself to look away from the deer's gaze and at first all she could see was blood. She checked herself. She was okay. Then she followed the blood trail to the antler impaling him in the seat next to her. He was taking small, quick raspy breaths. His eyes, like the deer's, were open wide. She didn’t recognize those eyes.

She robotically found her phone and called 911. The operator instructed her to stay calm and she remembered the moment when it all became real and screaming that she couldn’t.  

She reached across the console and took his hand. She told him how much she loved him. She begged him to be okay. She felt him try to squeeze her fingers. Then his hand went limp in hers. With bloody fingers, she closed his eyes. She pressed her lips to his for the last time. 

The next thing she remembered were police sirens and the ambulance. They gave her something to calm down. She woke up in a hospital visitor’s chair. 

Three weeks later, she felt more alone than she’d ever been in her entire life. She rubbed the sleeves of the cardigan up and down with her hands, soothing her goosebumps. She had only tried to take it off once. 

It was a day that her mother had come over and insisted she shower. They argued about the cardigan. She had every intention of trying to move forward that day until her mother pushed her further than she could handle. Her mother finally threw her hands up in the air and left. She had returned the next day with groceries. She hadn’t touched a single one. Another week went by. Her mother stopped mentioning the cardigan.

Until today.

There was a knock at the door. She didn't move. Another knock.

“Sweetheart?” It was her mother's voice.

She stared at the door hoping her mom would just go away.

“Honey, it's me.”

She didn't answer. The lock turned. Damn It. Her mother had a key.

She stepped inside carrying a paper bag with soup.

“I’m not hungry, mom.”

Her mother set the bag on the counter. She looked around the apartment. Then she looked at her daughter in the cardigan. Her expression changed. It wasn’t a look of disgust or pity. It was a pleading look that said, “you can’t keep doing this.”

“You’re dying with him,” her mother said.

The words hit harder than intended.

“You haven't eaten.” Her mother put her hand on her bony shoulder.

“YOU are still here,” her mother whispered, softly.

She shrugged her mother’s hand away. “I don't want to be.”

“I’ll leave the soup for you.” She walked toward the door.  

Her mother looked at her daughter in the cardigan one last time. “He would hate seeing you like this.”

“Don't you dare,” she said. 

“Well, he would. He loved you. And he would want you to take care of yourself.”

“Fuck you Mom.”

Her mom gathered her things and left. She was alone in the apartment again. She stared down at the cardigan. She suddenly hated it. She grabbed the bottom hem and pulled, expecting it to rip, but nothing happened. She pulled harder, but the harder she pulled, the more the cardigan seemed to resist. 

She tried a different angle. She grabbed the sleeve and tugged as hard as she could. It wouldn’t budge. She started to panic.

“GET OFF ME!”

She pulled again but the fabric only seemed to tighten around her shoulders. She gasped for air and felt as if none went to her lungs. She could feel the weight of it now. It was no longer the soft, familiarity of him. It was something much heavier. 

She stood and the cardigan pulled her downward towards the floor. The fabric wasn’t hugging her like it used to, it was sagging around her and felt like it had weights sewn into the bottom. 

She tried to lift her arms in an attempt to take it off. But her arms were too heavy to lift. This didn’t make sense. She got on the scale and an impossible number blinked on the tiny screen. She stared at it in disbelief. As she stepped off and back on, the number continued to climb. 

Holy Hell. She was DONE. Half of her body felt numb. She needed scissors. She could see the pencil holder they were in, but she couldn’t reach it. With grit, she inched her way along the floor. She reached over and grabbed one of the empty coffee cups off of the end table and threw it at the pencil holder trying to knock it down. It didn’t budge. 

She found a cup with coffee left in it and without hesitation, chucked it at the container holding the scissors. The coffee cup lid came off mid-strike and coffee splattered all over the kitchen back splash. The pencil holder fell to the ground scattering its contents in a two-foot radius. She grabbed the scissors. 

She started at the bottom and planned to gut the cardigan and then peel her arms out one at a time. She went to make the first cut, but the scissors were too dull to get through the material. She screamed his name. She yanked at the cardigan in every direction possible. Then she picked the scissors back up, arched her back and impaled it.

That hole opened up a portal back in time. She could feel his hand on hers. She could hear his voice. She made another hole in the sweater. She could see his eyes; not the ones from the accident, but the ones that used to look deep into hers when they made love. 

She needed more, wanted more. She made one of the holes bigger by ripping it up to the sleeve. Suddenly everything she had tried to block out flooded in. 

She saw all her future plans that would never come true; the proposal, a wedding, the house they would buy, and their family with kids. She took the scissors and stabbed them into the wooden floor over and over again until she was so tired that with her knees tucked up under her, she pressed her cheek to the wooden floor and closed her eyes.

When she woke up, the cardigan was off of her left arm and shoulder. She sat up and maneuvered her other arm out of its sleeve and then pulled the cardigan up over her head. The weight had decreased. She smacked her legs to see if she could feel them and wished she hadn’t hit them quite so hard. 

She stood up slowly and walked over to the bathroom scale. How? Then she looked at the distorted cardigan lying on the floor. She was now able to see how much space it had been taking up.

Her foot grazed the sleeve. It was soft again. She picked it up. The blood had dried a rusty brown color along the cuffs. Dirt still filled the bottom hem. The left sleeve was torn to the shoulder. The holes she'd made with the scissors peered up at her.

She gathered “him” into her arms. Her brain was trying to process the weight difference from just a few hours earlier. It didn’t make sense. She carried the cardigan to the kitchen and opened the curtains. 

Sunlight sparkled across the floor, lighting up all the coffee cups and illuminating the aftermath of her personal struggle that had occurred that day.

She let the sunlight hit her face and took a moment to just be. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw the recyclable grocery bag that they used to take with them to the local farm market. She walked over and took it off of the hook on the wall and placed the cardigan inside.

Then she opened the refrigerator. She found hummus and used two fingers as a spoon to get the nutrients to her mouth. The soup her mother had brought was still there. She ate it. Cold. She choked down two glasses of water that she was pretty sure were going to come back up. Then she put on one of her own T-shirts to replace the cardigan, changed the pants and undergarments she had been wearing for too long, and left the apartment. 

Was the sun brighter than normal? The world felt large. She hugged the recyclable grocery bag to her chest as she drove out of town. She just had to make it to the campground. It was the one where they had spent a weekend the previous fall. Sleeping on the ground had been new for both of them. She was so happy that he had thought to bring body pillows.

She registered her vehicle and found an empty fire ring. As she took the cardigan pieces out of the grocery bag, the leaves in front of her spun into a circle and shot straight up into the air, then cascaded down around her. 

She knew he was with her.  

She placed the cardigan inside the ring and struck a match. As the flame moved from one fiber to the next, the fabric curled in on itself. The brown stains turned black and the sleeves slowly started to look like marshmallows in a s’more. She watched until there was nothing left but a small pile of gray ash.

She waited patiently until the fire was completely out. Then she knelt beside it and gathered as many ashes as she could into a small glass jar. It was slightly windy, so some blew away. She didn’t chase them. 

On her way home, she stopped at a gas station close to the park. Next to the gas station was a general store. The owner was a woman who carried everything anyone could need in a 50-mile radius. She also had unique items that couldn’t be found in most stores. 

On one shelf, there was a bottle for “tears.” There were love spells and potions for all kinds of ailments. The book about astral travel was particularly interesting. But when she saw the glass pendant that said, “Reincarnation,” she picked it up and took it to the front counter. This was where his ashes belonged. At least some of them. The owner of the shop wrapped the pendant carefully in tissue paper and placed it in a tiny bag.

She headed back to her apartment. She carefully took the top off the pendant and rolled a coffee filter into a cone shape. She was able to easily pour the ashes into the pendant this way. She took the rest of the ashes and spread them in the potted plant in the corner of their apartment. 

She gathered the empty coffee cups and put them in the recycle bin. She took a shower and put on an outfit that she’d never worn before. She picked up the pendant, unhooked it and put it around her neck. It was just the right length. She could feel him there with her. She felt a sense of balance. She felt whole. 

She walked out of the apartment and decided to walk the opposite way of the route they had usually gone. She desperately needed a fresh cup of coffee. She tried to be in the moment and notice all her senses. She could see a seagull sitting on an overhead telephone wire. She heard people mowing their lawns and the cars as they echoed going through the underpass. She could taste the salt in the air from the bay. She could smell the first batch of cookies from the bakery. She felt light, almost weightless…

She entered the small cafe. It was especially crowded. The owner approached her, giving her condolences for her loss. She hugged her for a few extra seconds and then went to the register to put in her order. 

“Order #19!” She went up to the counter. As she reached for the coffee, her coffee, another hand reached for it at the same time, knocking it over onto the floor. She tried to remain calm. Her day had been going so well. 

“Oh my God, I’m so sorry” the man said. 

One of the employees came over to help clean it up, stared at both of them and their face went ashen. 

She bent down to pick up the coffee cup. As she stood, her eyes slowly adjusted to the image in front of her. The man was wearing a very familiar cardigan. She looked up into his eyes. 

She touched the pendant around her neck and said, “Well, we could order another one?”