by KL Kreig
The love we have lights the darkest of spaces. It will do so for eternity, regardless of if I am here or somewhere else. When I take my last breath, know I will never be far away. I will come back to you some way, somehow, in the most unexpected of ways. We will see each other again; of that I am certain. How can we not? Our love transcends even the cruelty of time.
I love you today, Roth Warren Keswick. I love you today, but I will love you even more tomorrow and the tomorrow after that and the tomorrow after that and…
Your whimsically alluring, fish whispering, mustard hating wife,
Laurel
When I finish with the last word, I hang my head and weep until my tears run dry.
28
I’ll Follow You
Roth
Present
December 8, 2:23 p.m.
Laurel’s mother arrives shortly after Carmen and Manny leave. She spends several hours at Laurel’s bedside and when she emerges, she is an absolute wreck.
“She didn’t open her eyes.” Candice clutches me as if she’ll fall to her death without me.
“She knew you were there.”
“I hope so. I hope so. I made so many mistakes with her.”
I am losing my wife, yes, but I have to say that no matter the water under the bridge between those two, Candice is losing a second child and I can’t even fathom the pain she is having to endure.
Well, yes, actually, I can.
“She did,” I assure her.
“I don’t know what I’m going to do.” She buries her head in my chest, sobbing uncontrollably.
Neither do I.
Laurel is our anchor and without her, we are untethered and doomed to float aimlessly forever.
I hold Candice through the worst of it, anxious and woozy. I want to be supportive and empathetic, but I have this blistering need to get to Laurel before it’s too late.
I catch my mother’s eye and hand Candice off so I can be with my wife.
“Go.” She clasps my hand. My throat closes. Her eyes brim with tears.
“Thank you, Mom.”
I turn and walk toward our bedroom. It could take me an hour to get there or two clicks of a second hand. I don’t know. I’ve lost all sense of reality, except for one. Each step I take is singular. Agonizing. Leading me to an inevitability I’ll never be ready for, no matter the time allowed to prepare.
Josh Emory, a high school friend of mine, was killed on his way home from basketball practice when he was seventeen. He was captain of the debate team. Honor student. He volunteered at the animal shelter. He was a great kid with a bright future who happened to cross the center line and get hit head-on by a Dodge minivan. His death was tragic and unexpected and all we could talk about at his funeral was how we didn’t get the chance to say goodbye.
But what I’ve come to discover in this process is that goodbyes don’t give us closure. There can never be “closure” regardless of the circumstances.
Goodbyes taste bitter.
Death is absolute.
Gone is forever.
The door to our bedroom stands wide open. For several moments, I am frozen in the entry. The stench of lavender oil, sickly flowers, and vast, immeasurable grief threaten to level me flat.
Laurel lies stone-still in her hospital bed. She’s the color of paste. Her eyes are closed. Her lids don’t jerk with the tell of sweet dreams. They’re silent.
It’s time.
I want to be anywhere else but here.
I want to be nowhere else but here.
I want to take us away from here.
I enter the room and close the door behind me.
I sit and take Laurel’s cool hand between mine and work to clear the dam of grief that is buried miles deep in my chest. I can’t find the end of it.
“Hey,” I croak. “Busy day, huh?”
She doesn’t move. She doesn’t giggle. She has no witty comeback. She doesn’t even flinch.
I am broken.
Today will be our final entry. Our last stamp.
I know it.
Time has come knocking and She won’t take no for an answer.
I can barely breathe. My chest hurts. My stomach hurts. My everything hurts.
I don’t say anything for a while, not knowing where to start. When I finally do, I don’t stop.
“You have made me the man I am today, Laurel. You’re my greatest accomplishment, my only love, my favorite swing partner. Thank you for taking a chance on me and for teaching me to fish. Thank you for making me laugh. For being my rock. Thank you for making me better than I could have ever been without you.”
I’ve told her all this before, of course. But it all bears repeating. And repeating.
I recite as much of The Lion King as I can remember. I sing her “Some Kind of Love” by the Killers. I read her get-well letters from her former students and colleagues. I play her YouTube videos of cat shenanigans and our favorite scenes from Dirty Dancing, because nobody puts Baby in the corner. I turn on The Music Man and fast-forward to her favorite song, “Goodnight My Someone,” knowing the words are from me to her this time, not from Marian to Harold.
I promise her I’ll watch for stray cats.
I apologize I couldn’t save her.
Meringue joins us at some point. So do my parents and so does Candice. I call Carmen and Manny back. We tell stories. We cry. We even manage a laugh or two.
Laurel’s fingers twitch occasionally, and I let myself believe it’s to encourage me, to give me strength. But she doesn’t completely regain consciousness, and I decide that’s okay. I don’t think I could look into her eyes and tell her goodbye. I’m sure she feels the same.
When her skin becomes increasingly cool and mottled, and her breathing turns more irregular, I know we’re close. Alice warned me not to panic. It’s harder than I thought.
Dad clasps my shoulder.
The mothers softly cry.
Carmen and Manny start chanting in Spanish. A prayer, I assume.
“I am so proud of you, Laurel,” I tell her. “You fought so bravely, so fiercely. You were a gallant warrior, and you gave it your all, as you did everything in life.”
In that moment I remember the story Laurel told me the first night I made to love her. About how she held Esther’s hand and told her it was okay to let go even though she didn’t mean it. If a twelve-year-old can be that selfless, surely I can too.
Uncaring that we’re not alone, I crawl into bed with Laurel. Spooning behind her, I hold her chilled body against mine. Her breathing has slowed considerably now, and I swear I feel her relax into me. Instinctually I know we don’t have long.
I lower my voice and whisper what she needs from me.
“I love you, mi amada. You are the very light of my life. I don’t know what I’m going to do tomorrow when I wake up and you’re not here, but I’m going to figure it out. It’s okay. It’s okay to go now.” That hurt like a motherfucking two-ton boulder pinning me to a bed of box cutters. “Tell our baby girl that daddy loves her. Catch a walleye with your PooPa. Lie under the maples with Esther and watch whirlers fall. I will be fine until we are together again. It’s okay,” I assure her. I keep repeating this quietly. “It’s okay. It’s okay. It’s okay.” If I say it enough maybe I’ll believe it too.
Laurel’s fingers and legs twitch, which is more movement than she’s had in nearly twenty-four hours.
And then a miracle of miracles happens.
She opens her eyes.
They latch onto mine. I swear they do. They focus. I know she knows it’s me.
“Hello, my love.” I cup her cheek and stroke skin that’s so cold it chills me. “I’m here.”
She doesn’t blink. Her pupils don’t swell. Her lips don’t turn. The anxiety in the room is tangible. Everyone wants their opportunity to say goodbye, yet they gift it to me, not intruding. And I will look back on our last moment together always believing she heard it.
“It has been an honor to have been loved by you, La
urel.” Is that a tear? My God, I can barely breathe. She has a tear. “I love you. My heart will be yours for all of my days and nights, every second in between, and every second after.” I kiss her chastely on the lips, whispering, “It’s okay to rest now if you want. It’s okay.”
We gaze at each other for a few more slow beats of her heart. She uses the last of her energy to hang on, for me. I can’t stop crying.
Then she closes her eyes and gasps.
Everyone quiets.
She gasps again.
You could hear a pin drop.
She gasps a third and final time.
We wait, but she doesn’t make another sound.
She is gone.
My Laurel is gone.
Epilogue
Heaven
Dear Readers ~
I promised you I’d meet you at the end of our story, and so here we are. It was a rough ride, I know. It was rough for me as well. I have no doubt you fell in love with Laurel as much as I did, and that you are mourning her loss almost as deeply as I am. Laurel was one of a kind, don’t you agree?
You probably never gave up hope that a miracle would be waiting for us, and in truth, I never gave up hope either. While we accepted Laurel had to leave us, there was no amount of time that could prepare us. Her death was a grievous, painful blow. One I have never quite recovered from.
You may feel robbed, or you may be cursing about how unfair life is, much as I did, but I would tell you that it’s okay. Grief is the souvenir of a great love, and I hope you are as fortunate as I have been to have the greatest of the great in your life too. You see, my hope in sharing our set of time stamps with you isn’t for you to see how Laurel died, for we all die. It is to witness how Laurel lived.
Make everyday a Tuesday. Dance under the moonlight. Stargaze. Watch fireflies. Learn a new hobby. Recite your favorite movie. Mourn your losses. Mend broken fences.
Die while you are living, the way she did.
I had ten wonderful years with Laurel. It was more than some, far less than others. What we shared, for the briefest of time we shared it, was beautiful and extraordinary. She was my perfection. She was mi amada, as I was hers.
I can truthfully say I have been blessed. I have lived a full and happy life. Some days are harder than others, of course. There is not a morning I wake that I don’t look at the empty side of my bed without stark longing for those puddles of mud. There is not an evening I turn out the light that I don’t yearn for the warmth of her body nestled against mine.
Laurel has been gone from my life for thirty-nine years now. Thirty-nine summer solstices without my love, my partner, my companion, my lover, my best friend. If you’re trying to do the math, let me help you: I am now seventy-eight, and my time has finally come to an end. I get to go home to be reunited with my love. My Laurel.
Death comes for us all. That’s a given, inevitable, the cycle of life. And my friends, I am ready. But before we bid each other adieu, if you’d indulge a dying old man a final wish, I’d like to share one last chapter with you. A remarkable, unexpected set of stamps I never thought would be part of my collection. These have not only completed it, they have made my life whole. Laurel was true to her word. She found me again in the most unexpected of ways.
Meet Esther.
~ Roth Warren Keswick
“You look like shit.”
I don’t reply. I give Manny my back and make my way over to the couch. I throw myself on it, staring at the picture of me and Laurel in the moonlight at Cape Cod, which rests on the mantle. I choke up. I register the faint snick of the front door closing, but Manny’s whistle is loud and shrilling. And fucking judgmental.
“Wow. When is the last time you took a dust rag to the place?”
He’s being overly kind. I’m ashamed to say he picks up a few empty fifths of vodka and takes them into the kitchen. He’s trying to shove them in the garbage, but it’s full. I know because that’s why the empties are lying around the living room in the first place. That, and I don’t particularly care. No one to impress.
The fridge door opens and closes.
“No Red Bull?”
Red Bull? That shit keeps you awake. I don’t want to be awake. I want to sleep and never gain consciousness.
Manny speaks in a low voice in a short, one-sided conversation, and I half wonder if he’s called my mother. My parents left four days ago after I told them I was okay. In retrospect, I’m not sure that was a good decision on my part or theirs.
It has been three weeks since I put my wife in the cold, hard, dank ground. Twenty-one days. Five hundred and four hours. Thirty thousand two hundred and forty minutes. I don’t know how many seconds. Each one is more agonizing than the previous one. I need to stop counting. I wish I would stop breathing.
“When is the last time you showered, bro?”
When my mother made me. That would be funny if it weren’t true.
“What are you doing about work?”
Work? Breathing is work. Living is work. Making it from the bed to the couch is fucking work.
Manny peppers me with a few more questions, “When was the last time you ate?” “Did your parents make it home okay?” “Did you know you’re out of trash bags?” before he gives up and busies himself picking up my mess in quiet. And I let him, unashamed, uncaring. Then he sits in the chair to my right and joins me in stilted silence. We stay that way for a long, long time. Or maybe it’s only seconds. Doesn’t matter much.
“You know,” Manny says carefully, almost as if he’s had some sort of epiphany, “Laurel wouldn’t want to see you this way.”
A thousand and one snide comments snap across my tongue, but the one with the biggest bite is, Laurel isn’t here, is she?
Only, I don’t say it, because while it may be true, it’s still far too agonizing to give it sound. And if I say those words out loud, then that gives her death finality. It means I’ll never see her sweep through the front door again. I’ll never hear her snort when she laughs or go behind her picking up used tissues. Logically, I know I won’t anyway, but…
I am lost. Utterly, painfully adrift without her. A limb may as well have been chopped from my body. Hell, all of them may as well be gone. That’s how I feel…like an amputee with phantom limb pain that will never subside.
Though Manny is right…Laurel wouldn’t want this. She told me to grieve, but she also begged me to live. I don’t know how to do that. I don’t know how to honor her deathbed wishes by moving on with a life that was supposed to include her but no longer will.
I simply don’t.
“Uncle Roth!” tiny voices scream in unison moments before I have a monkey hanging from each leg.
“Hey, hey, careful,” I chuckle, trying to balance a gift in each hand without toppling over. Who knew two six-year-olds could wield so much momentum?
“You came!” Sofia yells up at me, head flung all the way back. Her round toffee eyes are alight with joy. She’s going to be a heartbreaker, that one.
“Of course, I came. I wouldn’t miss it for the world.”
“Look.” Lucia yanks on the bottom of my cargo shorts. “I lost a tooth.” She pulls her lower lip down to the bottom of her chin, exposing the empty space where a baby tooth used to be. The permanent one is barely peeking through the gumline.
“Mine is loose,” Sofia announces, trying to compete with her twin. She wiggles the same tooth back and forth that Lucia is now missing. It looks as though it’s hanging on by a thread.
“It’d be out by now if she’d just let me give it a little twist,” Manny says, stepping into the foyer.
“No way, Papa!” Sofia shrieks, running out of the room with both hands slapped across her mouth. Lucia takes off after her, calling her a chicken. I hear Carmen tell the girls to be nice.
“Thanks for coming.”
Manny takes the gifts I’m holding. I follow him into the dining room where he sets them on a long table. It’s already overflowing with birthday packages for
the girls.
“Why is everyone surprised that I’m here?” I grumble, irritated.
“Because you’ve been pretty antisocial.”
He’s not wrong. I think I’ve been out a handful of times since Laurel died. But being around other people, especially those who are happy, only makes that black hole Laurel left feel wider and emptier.
“My wife died.”
Manny pins me with stoic regard, ignoring my cutting snarl. “It’s been almost a year, Roth.”
My hackles rise. If this is the way today is going to go, I’m outta here.
“Don’t tell me to move on, man. That will never happen.”
“And I would never say it.” He looks me up and down, head to toe. “What I am saying, though, is that Laurel would hate this.”
This.
He doesn’t need to expand.
I know how I look. My hair desperately needs a cut. I’m now sporting a beard, but it is not trimmed and tight. It is shaggy and unruly. My shirt hangs from my thin shoulders and I’m not gonna lie…my shorts are held up by a belt that needs another hole punched in it. Hell, some may even compare me to a homeless man who was lured out from under the Jefferson Street Bridge by the Bridge Ministry for a hot meal. The heavy trials of life are carved into the sharp edges of my face. You can tell I’ve been through shit and that I’ve let it best me.
I’m not proud. In fact, I am ashamed of how far I’ve let myself slide.
Biting the inside of my cheek, I swing my gaze to the kitchen. Carmen is watching, listening. Worry lines frame her compressed lips. The girls have long gone outside where the party is being held. Through the window I watch them laugh and sprint around the yard, playing tag with several other girls. They are so full of life and wonder. So carefree. They remind me of all I will miss.
“Duly noted.”
“Beer?”
I don’t want one, but I also don’t want any more shit. “Sure.”
We mosey to the kitchen where Carmen kisses me on the cheek, whispering, “It’s nice to see you,” before handing me a Corona. I stare at it and am yanked back to the night Laurel and I sat under the stars in Moab, drinking by the light of the campfire. My chest feels heavy.
