What Remains of Us

TUESDAY

6:15 am.

The alarm clock sounded. I rolled over and swatted at it until I hit the button to shut it off. The bedroom was colder than usual. Probably the pilot light on the furnace again, I thought. I had been meaning to fix that.

Claire was still asleep next to me.

“Good morning honey.” I whispered, brushing her hair away from her face.

She must have also felt the chill in the air because she pulled the covers over herself and curled up into a ball beneath them.

She didn’t say a word to me.

“Are you still mad at me?”

Nothing.

We had a fight the night before. I couldn’t remember exactly what it was about. God knows, I hated when we fought. In nineteen years of marriage, we’d rarely argued. Her silence always hurt me more than the shouting.

I decided to give her space.

I found myself in the kitchen thinking about Claire, our marriage and the promotion I had been chasing. Design Director. I had spent so many nights at the office that I sometimes felt like a guest in my own home. I knew Claire had begun to feel the weight of my absence. But I was doing it for us.  All I ever wanted was to give Claire the kind of life she deserved. Once I got the promotion things would slow down.

There would always be time for us later.

At least, that was what I kept telling myself.

I couldn’t shake a strange feeling that I was floating, like I was in a dream. I was staring through a curtain of foggy mist and time seemed to behave in peculiar ways.

A few years ago, Clarie convinced me to see a therapist about my anxiety. Apparently, what I was experiencing was called derealization. Fancy word, right? Three sessions and fourteen hundred dollars later, I was told I was codependent on my wife. Codependent? Wow, and here I spent all those years thinking I was in love.

Footsteps sounded on the stairs. Claire entered the kitchen and walked past me without as much as looking in my direction.

“Claire.”

Silence. She searched through the shelves.

“How much longer are you going to sit there and pretend I don’t exist?”

I immediately regretted my tone. I was already late for a meeting and did not want another fight.

I grabbed my keys from the counter, slipped a finger through the ring and spun them over like a gunslinger in an old western. An old habit of mine.

Claire froze. Her hand remained on the refrigerator door. She squeezed her eyes shut.

“Honey? What’s wrong?”

I noticed tears were running down her cheeks. She trembled slightly. When she spoke, her voice was barely audible.

“Jim, please. You need to leave this house.”

The words hit hard. I wanted to ask if she meant forever, but I dreaded the answer. I lowered my head and left for work.

I returned that evening without remembering the drive, the meeting, or a single conversation at the office. What should’ve been a twelve-hour day felt like a few minutes. Have I been blacking out at work?

When I found Claire, she was sitting beside the bedroom window, drinking tea from an antique cup I bought for her a few Christmases ago. It had hand painted horses on it. Claire grew up on a ranch with horses. That teacup made her so happy. A tired smile stretched across my face when I saw her drinking from it.

“Hi, honey.” I could barely force the words from my mouth.

She didn’t respond.

“Didn’t you hear me come in?”

As I entered the room, she shivered and pulled her shawl tighter around herself. She turned toward the window.

“I can feel you, Jim.” She said quietly. “I don’t know how much more of this I can bear.” “Please,” she whispered. “You need to move on.”

Move on?

My heart sank. My worst fear had come true. Claire fell out of love with me. My body grew heavy and my stomach turned over. I never thought this day would come. I didn’t say a word. I turned and left the room.

I went downstairs and lay on the couch, staring into the dark until I fell asleep. Alone.

WEDNESDAY

6:15 am

The alarm clock sounded. I rolled over and swatted at it until I hit the button to shut it off. The bedroom was colder than usual. Probably the pilot light on the furnace again, I thought. I had been meaning to fix that.

Claire wasn’t beside me.

We had a fight the night before. I couldn’t remember exactly what it was about. God knows, I hated when we fought.

I heard cabinets opening and closing downstairs and decided I should make things right. Claire was my everything, my best friend, my high school sweetheart. We celebrated nineteen years of marriage in July. I could still picture her on our wedding day. Her dark-blonde hair framed her face perfectly and her big bright blue eyes stared straight into mine as we read our vows to each other and kissed for the first time as husband and wife. I was the luckiest man on earth that day.

One moment I was at the top of the stairs. The next, I was standing in the kitchen. I couldn’t remember walking down.

Claire sat at the breakfast table quietly sifting through a box of old photographs. Honeymoon pictures, Christmas mornings, our wedding.

She looked exhausted. Her eyes were glassy and red as if she hadn’t slept well in days.

This was all my fault.

Things were different between us now and no matter how desperately I wanted to make things right I was powerless to fix what had gone wrong. A wave of emotion washed over me, and a thousand thoughts flooded my mind.

My sadness quickly gave way to frustration and then anger. Everything churned inside me like a building storm. I couldn’t take it anymore.

I walked from behind the wall and stepped toward her.

“Claire, baby, please. Can’t we just talk about-”

Claire let out an awful scream.

“Nooo! Please STOP!”

She looked in my direction, but her eyes didn’t seem to be settled on my face. There was terror in her eyes.

The color drained from her face as she jumped back. Her chair scraped against the terracotta floor as she stumbled backward. Her arm struck the table and the antique teacup I bought her for Christmas crashed to the ground. It shattered into jagged pieces.

Claire barely seemed to notice. She pressed herself against the back of the chair. Her hands trembled as she tried to cover her sobbing.

I instinctively reached for her.

“STOP! Please just stop!”

“Jesus Christ, Claire! It’s me!”

She ran past me. Her footsteps up the stairs boomed like thunder. Then the door slammed overhead.

I stood beside the broken cup. I wanted to gather the pieces to fix it but I couldn’t make myself move. I kept seeing the look in Claire’s eyes when she looked at me.

What is happening to us?

I sank into the chair she was sitting in and covered my face with my hands.

I glanced at the broken cup again. I thought of our marriage. They were one in the same. Broken.

THURSDAY

6:15 am.

The alarm clock sounded. I rolled over and swatted at it until I hit the button to shut it off. The bedroom was colder than usual. Probably the pilot light on the furnace again, I thought. I had been meaning to fix that.

Claire wasn’t beside me.

We had a fight the night before. I couldn’t remember exactly what it was about. God knows, I hated when we fought.

My head throbbed. I was so tired and so cold. I couldn’t get warm no matter what I tried.

Downstairs, I heard Claire talking in the small office near the front of the house. Her voice was low, and I only caught pieces of the conversation.

“…I can’t keep living like this…”

A long silence.

“…if he won’t leave then I will have to…”

She will have to what? I thought. Would Claire leave me?

I felt a familiar rush of anxiety. My marriage was over. I wanted to open the door and beg her to talk, but that would push Claire away even further.

I needed to clear my head. I grabbed my keys and headed out the front door. Out of habit, I flipped the keys in my hand like a cowboy in an old western as I left for work.

When I returned home Claire was sitting in the family room across from an older woman I didn’t recognize. She had soft warm eyes and long silver hair that she kept out of her face with a large wooden hair clip. She wore a colorful blouse and several pieces of antique jewelry on around her neck and on her fingers. She was confident and quite stunning for her age. She placed her hand on Claire’s to get her attention and spoke softly, “James is here now dear.”

I stopped in the doorway.

“Claire? Who’s your friend?”

Claire sat in silence.

The woman’s gaze drifted around the room as she spoke.

“James, my name is Miriam,” she said. “Claire asked me to be here today.”

I narrowed my eyes growing increasingly suspicious of the strange woman sitting in my living room.

“And why exactly would she do that?”

I looked at Claire for some sort of explanation.

“Claire, honey, can you please stop the silent treatment? I know we had a fight, but I would really like to know what the hell is going on here.”

Claire lowered her eyes. Miriam squeezed her hand.

“James, I think I it might help if I explained a little about myself and what it is I do.”

“Yeah. I think that’s a great idea.”

The woman sat up straight. “My name is Miriam White. I am a medium.”

She looked at Claire who seemed nervous. Miriam offered a gentle reassuring nod and Claire nodded back.

“I communicate with the deceased, including those who have trouble…letting go.”

I looked at Claire and then back at Miriam.

“I’m sorry. You do what?”

“I think we should start by asking you a few questions. Answering them honestly may help you comprehend your situation better.”

My situation?

Miriam continued, “Lately, have you felt as if time passes strangely? Minutes or even hours seem to go by instantaneously?”

I hesitated for a moment, “Yes” I whispered.

“Do you experience any unexplained memory lapses? Have you found yourself somewhere without remembering how you got there?”

“Yes”

“Have you experienced a strange exhaustion, a heaviness in your body that you can’t relieve no matter how much you rest?”

“Yes” I said clearing my throat. “How…how do you know all this?”

Miriams expression softened, “Because I’ve spoken to others who have experienced those very same things, James.”

“Others? What others?”

“People who haven’t realized they have passed.”

For a moment, nobody spoked. I stared at her in disbelief.

I laughed at the absurdity. “That’s not funny.”

“I know it’s frightening James-”

“No! I don’t know what kind of sick game you two are playing but-”

“When the spirit is suddenly removed from the body-”

“SPIRIT? Are you nuts?”

“James, please. You need to calm yourself”

“Don’t tell me to calm down! I’m done with this BULLSHIT!”

A sharp crack split the air.

The mirror above the fireplace shattered. Glass rained onto the hearth and scattered across the floor.

Claire screamed, covering her mouth with both hands. Miriam remained seated, though her face had gone pale.

I looked from the mirror over to Miriam.

“What just happened?”

“Sometimes when a troubled soul becomes overwhelmed by strong emotions, particularly anger or fear, that energy can sometimes affect the physical world around them.”

Troubled soul.

“That’s how your wife knows when you are near. She feels your presence and sometimes when your emotions are particularly strong, she can get a glimpse of you.

I took a step forward and caught my reflection in a jagged piece of mirror lying on the floor.

I stopped.

Something was staring back at me.

At first, I didn’t recognize the face. The skin was a pale blue stretched across sunken cheeks. The eyes were hollow surrounded by dark bruised flesh. The clothes were soaked and filthy clinging to the body as if they had been dragged through mud and left out in the rain.

A ragged wound split the flesh on the forehead; blood hardened along the edges. Mangled tissue protruded from the hole.

I moved my head and the thing in the mirror moved with me. My stomach turned. I raised my hand to my face in horror as the figure in the mirror did the same.

It was me.

“My God” I whispered. “When…how did this happen?”

Miriam looked at Claire, “I think it’s time dear.” Then she looked up at the air around her. “There are things your wife has been wanting to tell you James. Things I believe you are finally ready to hear.” She nodded at Claire.

Claire unfolded a sheet of paper. She began shaking so hard they rustled against her knees.

“You died on a Tuesday”

She paused struggling to find her voice.

“It’s been thirty-seven days Jim. Thirty-seven days since I last heard your voice or held your hand. Yet I still wake up every morning expecting to find you beside me.”

She wiped a tear from her cheek and continued.

“We argued the night before you died. You had been working so many hours I was beginning to feel so alone. I had been asking you to fix the furnace in the basement, but you never had the time. That morning I heard your alarm go off and I felt you get out of bed, but I pretended to be asleep because I was still upset and I didn’t want to talk to you.”

Claire paused wiping tears from her face again.

“God, how I wish I had opened my eyes. I wish I had kissed you one last time and told you I loved you. I would give anything to have those moments back. It was raining so hard that morning. I remember the flash flood warnings on my phone after you left. I was so worried about you.”

Her voice began to break.

“Then someone from your office called. They said you hadn’t shown up for work. I tried calling your phone over and over but you never answered. I knew something was wrong. I could feel it. Later that evening two sheriff’s deputies knocked on our door. I’ll never forget their faces. I knew why they were there before they said a word. They said they had found your truck overturned in a ditch a few miles from home. Someone had seen you lose control in the rain. They told me you were already dead by the time EMS got there.”

Her voice fell to a whisper.

“Most mornings, I can still hear your alarm clock at six fifteen. I can feel you get out of bed or enter a room. Other times I hear your keys. That silly trick you always did flipping them around your fingers like the cowboys in your favorite westerns. God how that used to drive me crazy.”

I stood beside her wishing I could hold her in my arms again.

“I feel you around me. And as much as I want you back as much as I want you to stay with me forever, I can’t keep doing this. Every time I hear you or feel you, I get you back for a second but then I have to let you go all over again. And I know you’re not at peace either and that hurts me deeply. I don’t know what happens when we die or if I will see you again, but I must believe there’s something beautiful waiting for you. A place where you can finally rest and not have to worry about work or taking care of me.”

She inhaled deeply and began to sob.

“I want you to be happy and I need to find a way to be happy too. So please Jim, if there’s any part of you that understands what I’m saying, I need you to do one last thing for me. Please, let me go.”

She closed her eyes.

Miriam held Claires hands in hers.

“James, do you love your wife?”

“More than anything,” I whispered.

“Then will you let her go? Will you allow the both of you to find peace?”

I looked at Claire one last time. She was crying softly, her fingers wrapped around Miriam’s hand. At that moment I realized my presence only brought her pain.

“Yes” I said. “Anything to make my Claire happy.”

I wanted to tell her I was sorry for everything. I wanted to tell her how deeply I loved her. But she couldn’t hear me. Maybe she didn’t have to. Maybe she already knew.

I spent a lifetime building a future for us and now I had to let her live it alone.

So be it.