Haunted

He sat, staring at his hands in his lap, and listened to people as they came forward and said lovely things about his beloved.

“...never known a kinder person…”. 

“...would give you the shirt off her back…”.

“...she always thought of others first…".

He continued to stare at his hands. She would have probably laughed softly and then clucked her tongue at the state of his hands and his fingernails. They were mostly clean, but his cuticles were terribly dry and he could see at least one hangnail. She always said choosing to be a hermit farmer was no excuse to just let yourself go. She would have shaken her head and sat down beside him, and then took hold of his huge hands in her delicate ones. She would likely have kissed each one, and washed them with a baby wipe, and then filed his nails and rubbed some good hand cream into each hand. She liked soft scents, like lavendar or rose, but always kept some unscented cream in her purse, just for him. “Have to keep those workin' hands healthy,” she would say. He wanted to chew on that offensive fucking little piece of hangnail so so bad, and get a hold of it with his teeth. He wanted to just rip it free and let the sharp pain wash over him, and maybe it would dull the unbelievable ache in his heart.

Someone at the front was crying now. 

“I’m sorry,” then a choked sob, “I c…can’t,” and then someone laid an arm across the person’s shoulders and steered them back to a waiting chair.

They were all nothing more than shadows. He was not aware of names or even faces, just blurred shadowy figures moving across his vision every now and then, and talking and crying and holding each other.

They avoided him. It wasn’t cruelty, they just didn’t know him anymore. They didn’t know what to say or what to do or what he needed. It was like they were afraid of him, at least a little. No, not really afraid, he just made them uncomfortable.

He knew in the back of his mind that it was his fault, he had spent the better part of a lifetime avoiding them. He had, over the years, made his beloved the only person in the whole world who mattered to him, and slowly but surely, he stayed away from social media, he stopped going to town, and then kept turning down invitations and ignoring calls, until he had cut off ties with everyone except her. She continued accepting invitations (alone), running errands in town (alone) and talking online or on the phone with friends and family. Occasionally she might even go on an overnight trip somewhere to visit with someone. He was okay with that. He would miss her terribly when she was gone, but he could deny her nothing, so he let her have her time with others. He didn’t need anyone except her. She was his world. 

No, she had been his world, but she was gone.

Now he sat alone, staring at the callused hands in his lap, wondering how he was going to go on, knowing he could not live without her.

“You will be fine, you know.” 

He ignored the voice beside him. It sounded so much like her voice that he knew it was in his head. It had to be in his head. She was gone.

“I mean, I can really only imagine, I am sure it hurts right now, but eventually… well, you are as strong as an ox, and twice as stubborn. You will be okay.”

He shut his eyes tightly. The voice in his head was wrong. He couldn't be okay. There was no eventually. There was no future at all.

“It’s time to go,” someone softly said in his ear. Not her voice. He opened his eyes.

The shadow in front of him slowly morphed into the funeral director who had coordinated everything. He looked kindly down at the man staring blankly back at him.

“Time to go to the gravesite now, John. Are you ready?”

He reached out and put a hand on his shoulder, as if to give him strength through touch. It didn’t work.

“C’mon, darling. Time to move. You got this.” Her voice.

That worked. He slowly stood and followed the director outside.

As he watched the coffin being lowered into the ground, he listened to the voice beside him (in his head?), telling him how strong he was, and how good he was, and how he was going to manage just fine. How he could do anything. How he just needed a little time and how everything would be okay.

He didn’t really believe any of it, but the voice soothed him. It got him through the day.

Later, after he had been sitting on the deck for a while watching the sunset, a beer gone warm in his hands, he realized again that he was alone. Like he had somehow forgotten. Like she had just been out and about and would come home and make a cup of tea and sit and watch the sunset with him, and ask him if he was hungry.

But she was gone. She was gone, and he was alone.

He awoke to someone shaking him. It was dark and the side of his neck hurt. He realized that he had been sleeping in his chair out on the deck and he was going to pay for falling asleep out there with a sore neck and a scattering of mosquito bites.

“Get up, you silly man, and get your butt inside before you get eaten alive”.

 Out of habit he glanced over at her chair before he realized it should be empty, because she was gone.

But it wasn’t.

It wasn’t empty at all.

“Liv?” he whispered.

He knew she was gone. He knew the voice lived only behind his eyes. But there she sat all the same, looking at him with that familiar, soft concern. 

His eyes filled with the tears he hadn’t cried when he got the call. The tears that stubbornly refused to be born when he sat through the funeral. The tears that were absent at the gravesite. They all flowed freely now, all of them and more.

“That’s good, my darling,” she said quietly. “Let it go. Let it all out, a good cry will do wonders.”

He buried his face in his hands and sobbed, great heaving shudders wracking his frame until his ribs ached. When the storm finally passed, he wiped his face with his sleeve and looked up.

The chair was empty now.

He sighed deeply, got up and went inside.

After one of the deepest sleeps he could remember ever having, he awoke to the familiar sound of his beloved singing, low and just a little off-key, as she often did while making coffee. He smiled and trudged into the kitchen.

The stove was cold. The coffee pot stood empty. 

The quiet of the empty kitchen hung in the air, but the echo of her song didn’t fade. It stayed like the smell of woodsmoke in a heavy coat.

John didn't reach for the coffee pot. Instead, he pulled on his battered work boots, the leather soft and cracked at the flex of his toes, reached for an old quilted plaid jacket, and stepped out onto the porch. Morning mist clung to the low pasture, turning the treeline into soft gray cutouts.

"Got work to do," he said aloud. His voice sounded old and thin in the chilly air.

“And you need breakfast first, mister,” her voice, right near his left shoulder. “You’re no good to anyone on an empty stomach.”

He paused on the top step, his hand resting on the smooth pine railing he’d sanded for her three summers ago. He didn't turn around. He knew if he turned, he’d just see the empty chairs or the quiet doorway. So he kept his eyes on the mist.

"A couple of eggs, then," he muttered.

He went back inside, cracked two eggs into the iron skillet, paused for a second and then cracked two more. He sprinkled some salt and pepper and let the sizzle fill the silent house. This time, the quiet didn't crush him. It was as if the house itself was breathing with him, holding space for a ghost that wasn't a haunt, but a harness—something to keep him hitched to the day.

By noon, he was out in the upper field, hauling cedar posts to mend a section of fence that had rotted out over the summer. His hands, dry and split at the cuticles, stung as he lifted the heavy timber. He set the post down, wiped his brow with the back of his forearm, and looked at his knuckles.

A faint breeze carried a clean, almost medicinal smell that reminded him of the unscented lotion she used to keep in her purse, just for him.

“Mind those workin’ hands, darling,” the breeze whispered.

John closed his eyes, took a slow, deep breath of the fresh air, and smiled.