Earlier

TW: terminal illness, grief

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"I wish we could have met earlier in life," she tells you, tears brimming in her eyes like dew-drops on a crisp March morning. Nothing about her is crisp though and it isn't March, it's a bleak November in the last year of her life. You sometimes sing Christmas pop songs to help her go to sleep because of all the things to be sad about, she is hung up on the fact she will not get to decorate another fucking Christmas tree. As though that matters more than the years you are losing.

In this last journey of hers, your grief has had little stage time and it's making you resentful.

"I wish that too." And your mind reels and throws about the numbers. Two years together, four months until you had planned to propose. If you'd met just two years earlier you might have been married at this point and wouldn't have had to miss the most important day in your life. If you'd met five years earlier, she might be dying in the comfort of her and your own home, decorated tastefully, paid for responsibly. If you'd met ten years earlier, just after high school graduation, there might have been children to mourn her. A boy of five and a girl of three years, you think. Your family always had children in twos, always a boy and a girl so why should yours be any different?

You juggle the numbers, but there's too many zeros to ignore. Zero chance of survival, zero imaginable futures, zero percent of doubt in the eyes of the doctor who pronounced the end of her life like a prophet sent straight up from hell.

"If we'd just met earlier in life," she keeps wheezing. Her lips are cracked and her skull is visible under her paper-mâché skin. "Then we could have had more time." She cries and you hold her and you don't. You scream alone in your car. And when she passes, there is no one there to mourn her except you and the nurses.

They pat your back. They look at you in a way that makes your skin crawl with a thousand tiny bugs. A pity infestation. You say your goodbyes to them, to what's left of her and you leave her behind for medical students to train surgeries on. It's much cheaper than a funeral.

The next morning, with nothing more than the clothes on your back, you begin the search.

-

The river of time is hidden in plain sight, down a winding path between the abandoned Goodwill and the tire shop, a path that is owned by ivy and pieces of plastic super hero toys, carelessly tossed into the world. The way down to the river bed smells like when your childhood cat had a leg infection.

This is time then, you think as you look at the churning, frothing stream.

You dip your toes in and jerk back. The water is icy, relentless, the current snaps its jaw at your flesh and your heart plummets into your bowels. This river is not made for swimming, but worse yet, it flows decisively in the wrong direction. It would take inhumane strength to make just a handful of strokes upstream. Imagining the effort wearies you down to your marrow. You're tired. You're sad. But you have no choice.

Now you're 28. You met her two years ago.

Just two more years.

You think back to the handful of swimming lessons your grandpa gave you before you weren't allowed to see him anymore because of the divorce. The thought doesn't help and so you dive in, arms stretched overhead and kick and punch against the current. Instantly, the air is ripped from your lungs. You lose all feeling in your fingers and toes. You scream and your mouth fills with water so cold you get a toothache. Just two years.

With all the available strength in your body, you start dragging yourself upstream. Inch by bitter inch, and it gets easier. The water bites, but it doesn't drown and when you finally drag yourself ashore on a small outcropping you stay conscious, you're alive, you made it.

-

Now you're 24, back at college and with it comes the stress of final exams, thesis drafting, presentations, choir practice, working night shifts. Your body remembers the burnout like a childhood friend and you remember why you didn't have a girlfriend then. But no matter. Academia can go fuck itself, so you go looking for her and can't find her.

She's in another country, a gap year in Scotland, you can't afford to follow. You could wait, but that is precious time lost. You return to the river and it gurgles at the sight of you. Came back? It seems to mock. You steel yourself.

Another year or two.

-

Now you're 21, you missed your exit, and you're in the dead middle of orientation week parties. The college is local, community, she will go there too, but not yet, she is younger than you, though not young enough that asking her out would be illegal. You shoo away the gorgeous brunette grinding on your leg and she slaps you across the face, but you don't care. You have to find Andrew from high school. You never really liked him, but he's in the same major as you and, more importantly, he's her brother. He will know where she is. You tear through the party like a rabid lawn mower, shoving people aside, swaying as you realize just how much alcohol there is in your blood.

Someone kicks you in the shin and you fall face-first onto the dirty carpet. It smells like beer and your stomach is about to empty itself, your head is spinning. You push yourself up onto your knees and glance around the corner. Your world stops. There she is, looking divine in a floral summer dress with her curls wild around her face. There she is and there is some guy with his tongue down her throat who has draped her body over himself like a blanket and she is melting into him with tiny little sounds that make you dizzy.

The river, you think, it will wash the queasiness and the alcohol right out of you and take you back to just before orientation so she will never have met the guy. If you can just swim that far.

-

Now you're 16 and she's a shy 14, a tangle of awkward limbs and barely there curves and you don't fare much better, caught in the midst of puberty. But this is perfect. This would give you twelve years.

You know where to find her. Down the road on your creaky bicycle, a sharp left, through the roundabout and then at the end of the cul-de-sac there it is, the black-shingled house you have come to see as your in-law’s. Now you’re too young to really understand much about marriage, but the sight of if gives you tingles nonetheless. You throw the bike onto the curb and run to the doorway.

Andrew blocks your way.

"Where are you going, weirdo?" His breath is death become vaporized and you try not to gag. Your eyes water and you can feel the blood drain from your face. You have to play nice or he will never let you get to her.

“Hello, Andrew. How are you?”

“Since when do you care?” he barks and shoves you roughly away. Like you used to shove him away back in elementary school when he just wanted to be friends.

“Fuck,” you mutter under your breath.

“What did you say?” Andrew towers a few inches over you and he shoves you again. “Huh? What did you say, dumbo? Is this some stupid prank?”

“No, I-”

“Get lost!” His spittle hits your cheek and you retreat hastily, dragging the bicycle after you. You cannot give up, though. It’s just after school so you can just wait it out on a nearby bench until their parents are home. They know you, they will let you in. Or you can throw some rocks at her window once night has fallen so she will let you in. It’s not a perfect plan. You have to keep going.

In a nearby park, you stretch out on a free bench. Swimming up the river of time has made you exhaustion become human and even though the orientation week parties are eight years into your future, you still feel a little seasick from the Jack. A short nap won’t hurt.

-

You wake up gasping for air, river water in your nose.

-

Now you're 5 years old and see the life through fuzzy eyes. Every day, Mommy takes care of you, drops you of at kindergarten, plays with you, let's you play with others, makes you pancakes, normal stuff. Every day you feel strange, like you lost something and there is so much sadness in your little heart, but you don't know where from. Daddy is often gone, but it was always like this. You always had Mommy. And your cat, Mulan, too.

"Susan called," Mommy says. Her smile is like the biggest bear hug from across the room. You love it when your Mommy smiles like that. "She is taking Andrew to the petting zoo today. Should we join them?" Your joy stutters. Andrew smells a bit funny. And he sometimes doesn't watch where he's going. You don't really like Andrew all that much and your instinct is to vehemently scream no with balled fists. "His little sister is coming too," Mommy adds. That gives you pause. You don't know Andrew's little sister. For all you care, she might be twice as bad. You shake your head no. Mommy smiles and that makes you feel even sadder. Tears blur your vision. Hot and salty, not at all like the river you once fell into.

“You can still think about it,” Mommy says, her arms wrapped tightly around you. “There’s still time.”