The breakup

“You just don’t understand,” Allan said, his hand firmly grasping Ella’s with tender tenacity. The sun beamed down on them and the adjacent seaside.

They were both dressed in black, fresh from mourning, and she felt the weight in both of her hands: one holding his, the other carrying a heavy clutch. It was packed full of lipstick, her wallet and keys, snacks dispensed into Ziploc bags, and 3 packs of Kleenex.

He was not wrong, she thought. She had not suffered a loss so proximal, and she knew that losing his brother had changed him. His demeanor had flattened, like part of his soul had gone too when his younger brother had taken flight.

Charlie had simply sailed away after the diagnosis, literally disappearing on a 31 foot Catalina in the middle of the night, sails expanded in the cool evening breeze headed nowhere and with no belongings.

It had been Allan’s yacht. Allan had found the rope untethered from the dock where his boat had rocked gently back and forth for months now, but no Charlie, no vessel, and no indication of a plan or when he’d return.

Ella could not fathom any of it: the fraternal connection between Allan and Charlie, the cavernous void left behind, the grinding guilt of doing nothing even when nothing could be done, and now, in this moment, how she might reconnect with Allan across the vast separation.

She wanted to. She hoped it might be helpful. She knew it would help her, to know him again.

“I’m so sorry, Allan” she said, turning towards him. The back of his head was in full view as he turned away, staring toward the sea. She wondered if his face had darkened like it sometimes did recently, full of despondency. She so rarely allowed herself to feel grief, even avoiding movies and stories that plumbed the depths of existential themes or losses that she could not recognize how deeply human his experience was, how it might be hers.

“Do you want Thai tonight?” she said. They both heard the tight tenor of her voice, but neither could tell that it masked her terror of having to explore that which she was not ready to face.

She’d wanted so badly to see him, his deep brown eyes glistening against his chocolate skin, but when he turned back to face her, she could only see anger. It was red.

“I don’t want to talk about dinner!” he said sharply, dropping her hand with the gravity of his next statement.

“This isn’t working.”

It was true; in that moment, they both knew that it wasn’t.

In the chasm of her inability to empathize and his need for it, perhaps it never would again.

Still, they continued walking anyways, side-by-side in silence, the sun providing its warmth like it always had, the sea splashing cheerily at the foot of the dock like a gentle reminder that the world would go on whether they did together, or not.