click (part 2)
A week after the funeral the ashes were collected and put “somewhere safe” until it was time to take them to the coast. Life carried on and on and on and on and the ashes stayed in the bag in the box on the shelf in the cellar. She sat there. Occasionally managing to push something else off the shelf in the hope that someone, anyone, would hear the noise and remember that she was still there, waiting.
She had spent the last years of her earthly life in mourning. Praising and adoring those that had passed. Their lives and their sacrifices and waiting for the time when she could embrace them and kiss them again.
So where were they?
She was supposed to have been reunited with them. She was supposed to have been rewarded for her commitment and her loyalty to their memory. Friends and remaining family had all slipped away and she had stayed faithful through all of it. She had given up all earthly things to build that temple to them.
The temple had been decimated as soon as she was gone. The council wanted their house back and gave two weeks notice for her family to empty the property. In the end some strangers came by in a huge van and took most of it away. None of the photographs or school reports or ashtrays had been kept. No-one wanted the bookmarks or the expired morphine from the fridge. It was all taken away or returned to it’s “rightful” place and all that was left was her ashes. Waiting to be taken to their rightful place.
Two years passed. She sat on a stone shelf in a dark cellar guarding what little remained of her biological self. A measly paper bag filled with ashes and a faded sticker showing her name and the date her body had given in to the grief. And then they took her down from the shelf and put her in the car.
The living sons, along with their wives, took her ashes to the sea. They lovingly scattered the dust into the water and thought about how nice it was that she was reunited with those that she loved the most. They pictured her happy for the first time in so many years. No more tears and no more complaints. She would be satisfied now that she was where she wanted to be. It was a mostly solemn event. There was laughter and tears and the four of them did their best to leave it all on the beach. Bring nothing back. Not even the box that the ashes had been kept in.
The waves came up and gratefully received her. The same waves that had collected her husband and her son. They were finally together again, just like she had always wanted.
The car journey there had been joyful. Bright smiles and dark humour, a specially curated playlist of music interspersed with long stretches of quiet. The journey home was not so bright. As the sun set, the quiet stretches elongated into vast gulfs of silence that consumed the car and its passengers. The four of them did not say it, did not acknowledge it, but they all felt the presence in the back seat where the ashes had sat. Sobbing and asking why she was still here.
And none of us had an answer.
As I write this, she is sitting here beside me. Her face is bloated and waterlogged and her questions are bubbled out through sea-salt ravaged vocal chords.
Why can’t I go?
All she ever wanted was to be reunited with her family and we are still keeping her from them. Just like when she was still here, we are selfishly getting on with our own lives. We stubbornly refuse to follow her into the ocean so that she can be whole again. We are still here trying to enjoy our lives and get on with things. Trying to forget for any length of time.
And still, it is apparently my fault that she is alone. I refuse to go with her. I refuse to walk into the sea and end it all for her. So that she can be a part of her complete family once more.
So she sits and she waits. She waits with me and she waits by my brother’s side too.
We refuse to go with her and so it is clearly our fault that she has to wait. Our fault that she is separated from her idols. Our fault that she cannot be complete.
And until we go with her, we will hear her questions and her promises. We will hear her walking behind us, grabbing at our sleeves. We will know she is there, pleading with us to let her have what she wants.
“Why won’t you listen?”
click
And it will not stop.
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“Don’t you want me to be happy?”
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It will never stop.
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“I promise it will be painless.”
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Until we do as she asks.
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“Just follow me...”
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