Golden goodbye

Your hands are blurry on your lap in front of you. Why are they so blurry? You blink, and wetness falls from your eyes, down your cheek onto one of your hands, Ah, that’s why. You reach up and wipe your eyes, underneath your glasses, more tears, more pain, it’s never ending. Another deep breath in, another deep breath out. My body feels so heavy, I just want to lie down. As soon as you think it, your body leans forward, ready to push you through the inevitable. Stepping forward, you reach the mirror, your face is already puffy under your glasses, and the creases in your black dress show how long you’ve been sitting on the side of the bed avoiding this moment. Your eyes look you over, there’s pity and sadness there, and you’re not ready. You’re not interested in today. There’s so much sadness and anger, and the world still keeps turning, despite the fact that your heart has stopped.

A knock on the door. A soft, emotion-laden voice from the other side of the wood. “Billie? It’s Mum, we’re ready to go, love. I don’t want to rush you, but we will be late if we don’t leave soon.”

Your mouth opens and your vocal chords try to create a response, but there’s a world of pain sitting in your throat, and so your voice cracks a little: “Yeah I’m almost ready Mum, just – give me another minute.”

Her footsteps fade away down the hallway to the main living area. You have to do this, you don’t have a choice. Grab your clutch, grab your phone, grab your sunglasses, they wont be able to see how much you're hurting if they cant see half of your face.

You walked down the hallway, and straight passed your siblings in the lounge room. The least amount of talking today the better, I don’t have anything to say to anyone. Mum starts following you towards the car, and you can tell you have interrupted whispered concerns, but they are of no consequence, they’re not going to help you, no one is. Opening the screen door, walking down the verandah stairs and towards the passenger seat of your mum's car, you stand there waiting for her to reach you, assaulted by the sight of your mournful, sorrowful self again. Some anger boils a little higher than the sadness: I cant believe this is what today is. The sadness floods a little higher than the anger again. The waves of emotion are constant and ever changing in their direction. You're struggling to contain them, and they keep overflowing as tears.

The car unlocks, and you instinctively reach forward to open the door, the same time as your mother reaches the driver's door. Dad’s walking towards the back seat, he’s been quiet but strong, and everytime the pain shows on your face, he sees it and does something gentle and simple, like just putting his hand on your shoulder, a small and reliable presence reminding you that you're not alone. Mum is different, she’s constantly bubbling around, moving so fast to take care of everything that you don’t have the strength for. She's been doing housework, cooking, making all the phone calls for you so that you don’t have to. What would you do without them right now? That’s right, probably fall into a pit of despair and never climb out.

You’re all in the car, and your siblings are in their cars. Everyone looks formal and morose, elegant and put together, the opposite of how you feel. You don’t even know if it’s the opposite of how you feel actually, you still haven’t figured out anything past the abyss you're floating in. Sure there are feelings floating around you, anger, sadness, denial, frustration, so many feelings, but they don’t describe how you feel. That’s a different concept entirely. You feel like an empty house, whose occupants have vacated without packing their belongings. There's light shining on everything, because you’ve lived a good life and you were very happy, but there's dustmites in the sunlight, and there's dust all over the belongings because no one is home anymore. No one is there, your home is gone.

The car is moving, you hadn’t felt it reverse, change direction and then start driving forward. The movement is somewhat comforting, in the sense that it’s drowning out the world around you that is still moving and not caring about how your world has come crumbling around you. There’s an emptiness in your soul that feels so heavy that each breath is hard work, and each heartbeat is echoing throughout your body. Just keeping your eyes open, and keeping your heart working is the hardest task you’ve ever undertaken. It's all such hard work. It’s now glaringly obvious how easy your life was when your husband was still walking the earth, and there's a nasty voice in the back of your head berating you for taking advantage of the life you once led, of the life that you took for granted. So many insignificant arguments, or bickerings, or discussions about every single thing you thought was important, but in 14 years, not once did you stop and genuinely appreciate the man in front of you that made your life so easy. What a waste. There’s some hatred coming to the surface, self hatred that makes you feel disgust in yourself for not seeing the joy and the privilege and the happiness you had. And then it turns into sadness again, because hating yourself for taking Joey for granted is even more hardwork than staying alive. The tears come again, and your breath shakes again, and the emptiness in your chest gets heavier still. Dad must have noticed a moment, because his hand touched your shoulder from the backseat, reminding you that you are still alive, and you are still surrounded by love. It’s a very small comfort.

Mum has pulled up at the funeral already. That trip was such a blur. How are you already at the exact moment in time where you are burying your husband? 14 years was not enough time.

“I’ll go speaking to the coordinator, you just come in when you're ready,” you think that’s what she said anyways, as your legs numbly pulled you from the safety of the vehicle. Dad followed slowly and stoically, he never left your side, and he placed a hand gently on your back to guide you forward.

People stopped to talk to you, and behind your sunglasses, you couldn’t even see them, distinguish them, or acknowledge them, as you mumbled generic responses. Dad took the lead and thanked people for coming, shaking hands, and proffering one armed embraces, never letting go of you, because you both knew that he was preventing you from drowning.

Your Dad and your legs guided you, without your consent or awareness, into the chapel, where you were assaulted by the sight of the pine coloured coffin laden with orange and golden marigolds, red roses, yellow sunflowers and pale lavender. This wave hit you like a tsunami against a city, and you could feel windows shattering within your body. Your legs shook a little, threatening to demolish the structure you were trying to maintain. Dad’s hand moved to your side as he intuitively linked your arm within his, a support that held you up.

“I got you Bumblebee, we can do this.” Dad’s voice cracked a little and for the first time, you realised how strong he really was. Joey was one of his best friends, and having him as his son in law made him so proud. And here he was holding it together because of how much of a wreck you were. A sliver of guilt pushed its way through the rest of your emotions, putting them down as it stalked past them, however, it had the unintended effect of providing a small amount of strength. You leaned against your dad a little and took a deep, steadying breath.

“I know Dad, we have to.”

He led you to the front of the chapel, proferring the opportunity to stand at the coffin in a moment of quiet before the proceedings, which you gratefully accepted. He stepped back as you stepped forward, reaching to touch the closed coffin, the sunny array of flowers atop the lid smiling at you. It was cruel, wasn’t it, such beautiful flowers, that shine bright and bring hope and happiness, adorning the coffin where your husband lay, without any breath. You lifted your sunglasses to the top of your head, in an effort to take in the bright tones, and the soft look petals. The florist had done a truly wonderful job, but that was not a care for you at the moment. The colours, the vibrancy, the fullness, the joy of the marigolds and the sunflowers. The love and the peacefulness, the harmony and the contentedness of the lavender and the roses. Maybe it wasn’t so cruel. Joey’s personality shined through these flowers, the brightness they exuberated. Your hands caressed the pine, and then reached upwards to the blooms, and you feel shocked by how soft and careful they feel. Tears started streaming down your face, they were constantly upon your skin, so you rarely felt their presence. He’s here. He’s still with me. A dagger pierces through your heart as you come to the realisation that he is no longer here, but he is still here. It’s bittersweet and it hurts, but it starts filling up some of the emptiness in your soul. You whisper to your love that you miss him and you love him dearly, and you turn to sit with your father who is waiting for you in the front row. On second thought, you turn back to his coffin, and you pull a golden marigold from the side of the arrangement, one that no one will notice missing, and you take it with you to your seat.