Bittersweet

I had been walking for hours setting one foot in front of the other, letting the traffic lights dictate where I would go. No coherent thought needed. If the light in front of me told me not to walk I abruptly turned and continued the way that I was allowed. When the lights were transitioning, leaving that awkward space of time where no one is allowed to move, I turned down the sidewalk away from the crosswalk and kept on moving. One foot in front of the other. No conscience thought at all. I didn't pay attention to anything but the sound each of my footfalls made as I just kept on moving.

The people around me lessened, the noises silenced, the traffic slowed and then stilled, as the shadows around me grew deeper. I tightened my arms around my middle where I had been holding them and kept striding onward. I couldn't stop moving. I didn't want to stop moving. I didn't want to start thinking. I didn't want to join reality again. I just wanted to simply exist. Not as anything even, I just wanted to be. Be a single person walking down the street. Heading nowhere in particular. Blank and faceless. I didn't want anyone to see me, I didn't want to be noticed. I wanted to become one of the people that you are aware of but only with a passing glance. Only for that second remembered then instantly forgotten.

I kept walking at the same brisk pace that I had started with to get away from it. My feet were sore, I had blisters, and still I kept walking. It got colder the darker it got and I wrapped my arms around myself tighter. Slowly rubbing the goosebumps forming on my skin, not to warm myself but just to feel that I was alive. That my body was still reacting even if I couldn't anymore. Blood was still pumping, legs still moving, my lungs were still filling with air, the only process that had stopped was the firing of neurons that had anything to do with thought. I could not and would not think. There was nothing and no one who could make me. This was something only I had complete control over. Something that was wholly my own. I didn't want to think. I didn't want to remember.

I kept walking until I reached the path along the river. Then I veered off the paved path and created my own to the waters edge. I stopped abruptly, the water gently reaching for the tips of my shoes but not quite making it. My arms fell to my sides and I looked up at the sky. It was black, there were no stars and clouds covered the moon smothering even the defiant gleam that usually shone around their ragged edges when the moon was full. I didn't know how I made it to the water without tripping over anything, but I didn't really care either. I crumpled to the ground where I was standing, still staring at the sky, the water eagerly attacked me. It soaked my jeans as I laid back down and rested, my legs crumpled at the waters edge.  I just kept staring at the sky as my eyes adjusted and the sky lightened a tiny bit, lit from the cities around the pocket of wilderness I was tucked into. I began to pick out the shapes of the clouds, seeing how they were layered in the darkness. Working together to block out the moon.

When I fell asleep I don't know, but I finally did if I dreamed it was only of that same sky until morning. When I looked up again the sky was the pink orange glow of dawn just starting to beat the night. I was soaked completely now, the water having leeched up through the fibers of my clothes during the night. I shivered and wrapped my arms around my middle again. When I looked at the river it all came crashing down on me and I began to sob. I began to feel and remember and think. I didn't want to but it was too late. The floodgates had opened and reality was back. I was alone. Completely alone, there was no one who would understand me anymore. No one I could tell my thoughts to without fear of shame or chastisement. My partner, the one person I loved above even myself was gone and he wasn't coming back. I would never see him smile, or hear him laugh. I would never be able to get wrapped up in his arms and feel complete and safe ever again. I wouldn't be able to kiss him and convey how much I loved him with the press of my lips against his. No more touching, no more feeling.

I couldn't feel any more than loneliness and grief. So I sobbed there soaked and crumpled by the river. Feeling nothing more than absolutely broken and alone. I clutched at my middle and buried my face in my knees. My breath came in tiny desperate gasps broken up by huge gulps of air. I wanted to stop breathing I wanted to drown in my sobs but my body wouldn't let me. Slowly I stopped crying, my breathing returned to normal, and when I looked up again the sun was high in the sky. My back was in agony, my skin felt too tight, my throat dry, and my stomach cramped. I looked around me slowly and got to my feet. I looked at the river and waded in. My clothes had dried as I sobbed except for where my tears had fallen. Water seeped back into them as I waded further and further into the river. I slowed until I felt the edge of the drop off under my shoes. I was only up to my waist in the water.

I crouched and sprung forward into the deep water after the drop-off, submerged completely I opened my eyes and stared up at the sky. The sun's rays broke into tiny drops of gold under the water and I held my breath. Flickers of gold that had nothing to do with the sun popped at the edge of my vision and I swam to the surface. My head broke the water and I gasped and blinked water out of my eyes. I was close to the island now. I swam forward to its rocky shore and climbed out of the water and over smaller rocks onto the largest rock. I laid there on my back in the hollow naturally created by erosion letting the sun dry me again.

I remembered when he and I had come out to this rock. We had stripped our clothes down to our underwear and laid next to each other curled together as we dried in the sun. We had laughed and talked and kissed without any worries or thoughts for the future. We were just there in that moment. I squeezed my eyes tight and tried to stay there forever in that perfect bubble of time. The droplets of water evaporated out of my clothes and I sat up knowing that everything was different. Nothing was going to be that perfect ever again. I took a deep steadying breath and hiked across the island to the mostly submerged rock trail set to cross the river on its shallow side. Then I walked all the way back home.

When I got back home I met several pairs of red rimmed eyes and silence. Our friends were there, all of them. Older now, different than we were years ago when we were never apart but somehow the same. Together again in tragedy, shocked into our old selves with new skins. I walked to the couch and sunk into it and was compressed with hugs from all sides. Tears fell from my eyes as we all silently told each other we loved one another no matter the distance and time. I don't know how much later it was when we pulled apart but when we did there was an officer standing in the room. Waiting, trying not to look uncomfortable just sympathetic.

I met his eyes and said as steadily as I could, “I'm ready to answer your questions now.”

He nodded and started to ask if we could move to another room I cut him off and said, “I'd like to only answer them once so I'd rather everyone be here.”

He nodded again and began asking me everything I knew about his patient, the one who had killed him. The man he was trying to help who had shot him when he was out at the store getting me ice cream. I answered as best as I could. I didn't know much. No, I had never met him. No, I hadn't known his name. No, I didn't know any specifics about any of his patients. I couldn't even tell you which stories I had heard went with which people with any certainty at all. He was very careful not to betray the slightest confidence of his patients. He was a man they could trust.  No, I hadn't seen any signs to show that he was concerned about something happening. No, I did not know he had stopped seeing the man. No, I didn't know he had received threats. No, I'm sorry. No. No. I stopped looking a the officer and he stopped asking questions.

He told me they would do their best to find the man who killed him. The man who shot the one person I needed most in life. I sunk back into the couch more, curled into a ball, and stared blankly at the wall. Thoughts filling my head. If I had only known. If only he hadn't wanted to worry me. He might still be with me. We could be sitting down to dinner, watching a movie. Him teasing me about how I was getting fat already, barely a month into my pregnancy. One of my friends, a nurse, got me to come to bed and checked my temperature. She had me drink water and take some vitamins. I ate a few crackers and fell asleep and didn't dream.

The next few days went by in a haze. I did everything I was supposed to. The arrangements were made, the suit picked out, the headstone, flowers, casket. The morning of the funeral I ignored the black dress laid out on the bed for me and wore his favorite. A simple purple wrap dress. I stood above his casket and dropped a handful of dirt on it. I stood and waited as our friends and family did the same. I walked with them to the edge of the cemetery and turned around watching from a distance as the groundskeepers buried him the rest of the way. My friends stayed behind me waiting until I turned to get in the car. They piled in with me and hugged me as I cried again.

I slowly woke up more and more each day after that. I had to. I had a part of him growing inside of me that needed me to live on. I went back to work, I got back into the routine of every day life. I nourished the child we had created together and lived for it. When I had my first ultrasound I smiled again. It was perfect. It was his legacy and mine. The officer came to me personally to tell me they had found the man. He had killed himself with the same gun he used to kill my husband and the father of my child. It wasn't what I wanted but it helped me heal more. My life achieved a semblance of normality, it wasn't the same as it was before but it was life. I was alive and I was going to keep on living. I was eight months pregnant, swollen, and absolutely could not wait until my due date when I felt like I had a completely normal day. Two weeks later my water broke. In the hospital I breathed and pushed and imagined him there with me helping me through it all. When my daughter was born I felt almost whole again. She was perfect in every way, she was ours, a part of me and of him, and no one could take that away.

The little blonde girl ran through the falling leaves her mom chasing her. Her mom caught her and rolled onto the ground tickling her. The little girl shrieked and giggled. They picked themselves up and wrinkled their noses at each other before continuing down the lane, the little girl skipping her mom grinning. Right behind them an invisible man walked and smiled happily as he watched his wife and child live.