Then there are the ones like me, where grief is a badge we wear, where it’s hard to let go because we don’t want to. We probably wouldn’t know how even if we wanted to. There’s unanswered questions, unresolved feelings. There is anger that this person could even conceive of leaving us behind. We are the furious ones, the ones that scream at the injustice and the pain. We are the ones who obsess and slowly lose rational thought, knowing it is happening but unable to find a way to care. We are the ones who drown.
I pass the Old Yard, those graves time is erasing, the names on the stones all but illegible. These people are forgotten. These people don’t have fresh flowers on the grass, no one who actively mourns them. Their mourners are likely dead themselves by now, on their way to being disremembered. How would it feel to live a full life and have no one remember it, to have no one remember the extraordinary things you accomplished, even if it was just waking up every day and finding the courage to get out of bed?
I see her, then. Even in the dark, even in the distance. She means something different to me now, with her stone wings and outstretched hands. She means so much more. She beckons me without moving, she calls for me without making a sound, even though in my head I can hear the flutter of wings and I see the color blue. I push it away before it can become something more, focusing on the stone angel getting closer. Her face is kind, but also sad, as if she knows what has happened to me, and what she must do. She hasn’t moved since I first laid eyes on her, always watching. Always guarding.
This last thought causes an ache in my chest.
And now, for the first time in weeks, I stand before my father.
Fifteen words:
EDWARD BENJAMIN GREEN
“BIG EDDIE”
BELOVED HUSBAND AND FATHER
MAY 27 1960—MAY 31 2007
“Hey, Dad,” I say softly. “Sorry it’s been awhile.”
When I first started visiting him, I felt foolish talking to him out loud. He can’t
hear you , I had chided myself. He’s not really there and you’re just sounding like a nut job. But I pushed on, and eventually it became easier, and I could even hear what I thought would be his replies, said in that gruff voice of his, buried deep in my mind. These days, there are times that I have to struggle to remember his voice just right. It seems to take longer and longer to find the cadence, to get the timbre just right. But eventually it comes to me and it’s like he never left, and he’s standing next to me, saying all the things I want to hear.
But it feels different tonight. Something feels… closer. Just out of reach. I scan the rest of the boneyard, but it’s empty, the nearly full moon chasing away
some of the shadows attempting to creep in. The hairs stand up on the back of my neck. I tell myself I’m just imagining things, there’s nothing here with me. I turn back to my father, the guardian angel still reaching for me, her palms up. Not able to stop myself, I reach out and touch her palm, the stone cool against my fingers. I raise my eyes to her face, and she’s watching me with gray eyes, her lips slightly parted. For a moment, I think she’ll speak. But, of course, she’s made of stone. She’s not real.
I let out a deep breath. “It’s been kind of crazy these last few weeks. I don’t… I don’t know if I’m doing the right thing here, Dad. I thought I was. I thought… God, I don’t know what I thought. Did you send him here? Calliel? I don’t know why I think that, but there’s a part of me that thinks you did. If you did, then I’m sorry. I’m sorry for messing things up. I’m sorry for making him go away. I’m sorry I couldn’t figure it out in my head. Dad… I’m drowning here, okay?” My voice cracks, but I can’t seem to stop. I have to get this out. “I can’t seem to keep my head above water anymore. Things are just snowballing and I don’t know how to stop it. Five years. Five years I waited for something to happen, and now that it’s all at once, I… I need help, Dad. Please. I need help so bad, and I promise, oh how I promise you, that if you send him back, I’ll do everything I can to make it right. I’ll do everything I can to help him like you asked me to. I’ll do it for you. And I’ll do it for him.”
I wipe my eyes with the back of my hand. “Fuck, do I miss you. There’s times that I find myself thinking something and I’ll turn around to tell you, and it hits me that you’re gone. It hits me all over again, because I could’ve sworn you were just here. Like you were standing right next to me just a second ago. Why can’t you be? Why did you have to go? Where were you going that day? You lied to me. I know you did. You weren’t going to see any friends. What did you do? What did you see?”
A sob rips my chest and I try to choke it back down. “I’m so angry at you. I’m so fucking mad. You bastard. You fucking asshole. Why’d you have to go? Why did you have to leave me behind? You promised me. You promised me that you’d always be there. I’m your fucking son, and you promised me! You fucking promised!”
My eyes are bleary and my knees feel we
ak. I reach out to steady myself and grab onto the stone angel’s hands. She holds me up as my body trembles. It hurts to stand here. It hurts to be here. Even after all the time that has passed, it still hurts. Everything about this place is—
blue
—pain and I just want it to stop. I just want it to be over. I just want to raise my head up and wake from this nightmare that I can no longer tell is real or not. There has to be an ending. This has to finish before it’s too late.
Footsteps, from behind me.
I whirl around, the angel Calliel’s name dying unspoken on my lips.
Standing ten feet away are the Strange Men.
I take an inadvertent step away, and the angel’s stone hands jab my back. The Strange Men cock their heads at me at the same time, mirror images of each other, light and dark. I don’t know if I should be frightened yet, but I’m well on my way. I try to keep it from my face.
“Hello,” I say evenly.
“Benjamin,” the dark man says. “Benji. Benjamin Green.”
“Out here?” the light man asks, quirking his head at the other. “It seems… unwise.”
“Why are you here?” the dark man asks. “What is it you hope to find?”