Before Everything Is Over
because i am doomed to live with you even when i am
without you - you with your incomplete shoulders. you
with your rainbow colored lips.
you with your empty hands. your perfumed silence, your
perfect elegance. you, with the sunlight that leaks out of
your darkness and into my world.- Before Everything Is Over by George Wallace
One
She pulled her scarf a little tighter across her pale throat. Her coat while sombre and appropriate was not quite warm enough. Although she doubted her clothes would make any difference. It was not the bitter winter wind that left her feeling cold and empty inside. That was down to him, now he was gone and she could not bring herself to look past him. It felt as if her world should have ended when his heart stopped. Her life dragging on without him seemed impossible and cruel.
But then she had been accustomed to cruelty and she had lost him a long time ago, a little less than fifteen years because she was counting. But at least before she had the knowledge that he was still out there and safe placate her. Now he simply ceased to exist she felt his absence like never before.
When she first heard she had been disbelieving and then quickly hysterical, she had cried with such a bone shaking force she thought she might shatter before she stopped. She had cried till she was so exhausted she slept and then hours later she woke with a sense of crushing acceptance, something she was more familiar with. It makes her want to be sick.
Days passed in numbing ordinary routines. She worked and she slept and she ate, nothing changed around her even as she felt her chest constrict and the agony was beyond any physical pain she had ever felt. It felt like something should happen. His death should be acknowledged by the people around her. She wondered if their old colleagues at Holby knew and if they cared. In her frustrated haze she had lost her memories of the past two weeks only to wake for this impossibly solemn day.
No one had taken the time to inform her of the details of the funeral and she was not surprised but it still hurt. She had to read about his death in the cold and distant terminology of the announcement placed in a newspaper after all. The print had blackened her fingertips just like when she had been arrested and thought capable of murder. She had given up so much so that he might live but she stubbornly refused to let them steal her final goodbye.
She kept her distance from the huddle of figures dressed in thick wool coats as dark as the deepest night. The frost riddled grass crunched under her heels a little too loudly and although she knew she was far enough away that they would not notice it still sounded like an intrusion. She did not want to be filled with so much hate. She had spent her life being so angry and hate filled and now she just wished to feel her sadness. She wished to mourn and feel close to him for one last time. Only hate kept on getting in the way. She hated him for dying and she hated his mother for making it clear she had no place at the funeral.
She had visions of marching over and interrupting, of weeping and throwing herself on the coffin because he had loved her, she had more right to be there than any of the rest of them. And maybe the physical demonstration of the pain that tore her insides to pieces would make living seem a little more possible. Only she knew she would never do it, it was not in her nature and it would never be enough. But she needed some way to expel the bile that she thought might suffocate her.
Maybe it was right that she watched over the proceedings from a distance. It was fitting, after she had hurt him she had spent so long trying to protect him so he would never be so betrayed again. It had not always worked out the way she wanted but she hoped she had redeemed herself enough in his eyes.
The bitter wind brought tears to her eyes even when she thought she had none left. So she closed her eyes as the speaking began, too far away to make out the words she let gentle timber of the religious mans words keep her afloat and buried her gloved hands deep in her coat pockets. This time of year reminded her of when she had first let him go, the desolate coldness of early January, the promise of dark months of winter before the hope of spring. It had come full circle with the changes of the season only now it was as if spring would never arrive, not for her anyway.
She did not believe in any higher power but the clear ritual of the process was almost soothing. Joseph liked order and almost always did as expected and somehow she felt a little closer to him again. Sometimes over the years they had been apart she grew irrationally scared that she would forget just how clear and blue his eyes were or that his soft, brooding and so often clumsily demur would change and the distance would make him a complete stranger. But even after all these years she held on to him tightly within her heart, it was the one place she was determined never to lose him.
Her emotions washed over her like the tide, a strong gravity pulling her in directions that scared her rational mind. But then he had always been the only one to have that effect on her, he was the only one she was able to truly let go and feel around. She thought he understood that without her saying it, she hoped he did.
The coffin was a solid shape made from darkly polished wood, simple, strong and dignified. She wondered if his mother had chosen it and if she ever had the opportunity to be his grieving widow if she would have made the same decision. She stumbled a little when they started lowering the coffin into the solidness of the ground. For one overwhelming moment it was too final. She had never seen his body, it was a regret. If she had seen him, even all cold and still, then this might be easier to except.
Then before she knew it the proceedings were almost over. People she did not recognise started to slowly leave. Faye did not seem to be among them and she was relieved.
His family remained. A small smile pulled at her lips when she took a moment to register the rounded form of Elliot Hope standing shoulder to shoulder with Lady Byrne. He had always been there for Joseph, like the caring father he should have been blessed with. Out of all the people they had worked with while at Holby he was the one she had hoped to see present. Joseph would have been deeply touched.
Her breath caught a little in her throat when her grief numbed mind finally allowed her eyes to settle on the figure between the two adults. He was so very different, taller obviously, and slender as teenage boys could be before growth spurts, but there was something so fundamentally familiar about him. Harry Byrne. The boy stood at his father's graveside holding himself stiff against his grandmother's hand on his shoulder. He stared into the hole that was his father's final resting place. Something warm swelled inside, she saw so much of the man they had both lost in the way he stood, the way he held his shoulders.
She did not realise she was staring until the boy was staring straight back at her with startling blue eyes that she thought she would never see again. She had remembered them so perfectly.