And ever has it been known that love knows not its own depth until the hour of separation. ~Khalil Gibran
Dr. Timothy Turner stands in the front of the old house, key poised. He didn't think this was going to be this difficult. But it was very difficult indeed. He has paused staring at the all too familiar door, motionless. His younger brother had done his bit but Timothy had been putting it off for too long. His statute of limitations was running out and he had to follow through.
It had been a very long month since Shelagh had passed away and an even longer year since his father's demise. If he was honest, their passing had hit him very hard. He had tried to be present for her but the complexities of his own life prevented him from visiting as often as he might have wished. He had felt excruciatingly guilty about that. To cope with the loss of his father, he had completely isolated himself in his work. Ironically, it had been one of the most productive periods of his professional life. Everyone told him he had done the right thing but it hadn't been enough. The loss of Shelagh slammed the gates on his heart firmly shut.
He had yet to mourn either of his parents. He felt terribly guilty about it as if it were a dishonor to them but he felt nothing except a stifling numbness. If he were honest with himself, it was a self-inflicted numbness. If he froze himself in the past, he could hold on to it. The truth was that it was far too painful to feel anything. It was so much easier to feel nothing. Consequentially, his marriage was teetering on the edge and his relationship with his children had suffered.
He told himself that when Shelagh died, he had been so concentrated on the business of the funeral and estate that he had no time to grieve. He found it very easy to lock away his emotions and very difficult to express them verbally although he felt them passionately. How like his father he was, from his choice of vocation right down to his lanky build and the unruly hair that no amount of styling gel could tame for longer than a couple of hours. Not for the first time did he think that while this inbred reaction to the ugliness of life was a necessity for the surgeon he had become, it was not so very helpful as a brother, husband or father. This only compounded the guilt he felt until it turned into a debilitating habit of emotional non-action, as if he were a lab mouse navigating a maze with no outlets.
In the end, he had come as much for the job at hand as to try to shock himself out of his numbness. To find some kind of connection to them again, to plug back in to the heartbeat of their little triad and the strength that saw his parents through The Blitz, WWII and a life working together in the tenements of Poplar. Despite all they had been through, they made being happy look so easy.
He desperately needed to recapture the joy he felt as a child. He needed to bask in the shimmering nostalgia of their shared past. Maybe that would snap him out of this numbness. Maybe then, he would finally be able to cry for them, for all he had lost when he lost them. If he could cry for them, maybe he would be able to move on without them.
With a steadying sigh of determination, he lifted the key to the lock, placed it in the keyhole and turned it. As usual, it stuck. Bloody lock! He cursed to himself.
On many occasions, he had suggested to Shelagh that she get it seen to, but she just hadn't. In the end, she seemed to find everything just that much more difficult, that much more of a challenge. He understood completely. He felt exactly the same as she. They both desperately missed his father. Perhaps he should have taken matters into his own hands and called the locksmith himself but he had been so wrapped up in his own pain that he hadn't and she, always sensitive to his state of mind, hadn't complained. She never did.
She hadn't lasted much longer after his father peacefully passed at the ripe old age of 90. Within a year, the woman he came to call mother had succumbed to the liver damage that the tuberculosis drug regimen had inflicted on her body so many years ago. Doctors at the time didn't know better and the alternative was certainly much worse. Why it hadn't taken her any sooner was a testament to the love his parents held in their hearts for each other. His father had watched over her and cared for her with the greatest of devotion until he could no longer. Their connection had been so strong to the end that this came as a surprise to no one, especially Timothy. He had been there.
It was not a love full of striking revelations or grand confessions. It was quiet. They rarely strung more than 5 words together to each other. They always spoke with their eyes and their actions. He remembered several times, sitting at the family table at tea, his brother, ever the clown, would do something silly, and Timothy would catch them glancing at each other, sharing a confidential smile. He would have felt as if he were violating some intimate moment except that he had been a part of them from the beginning. He had seen their love germinate and flower into something that would have inspired The Bard himself. It was a connection that he had sought, and found, in his own married life. Until he had become his own worst enemy.
As if in response to this thought, the lock gave and he opened the door.
A/N: *Ducks rotten tomatoes being hurled at her head* OK, OK! I know it's depressing! How dare I kill them! But this one is about Timothy's journey so stick with me….
True confessions, one of the adverse side-effects the triple treatment drugs Shelagh would have been on was indeed liver damage, but for the short amount of time she was on it, would it have been a life-long chronic condition? I don't know. Suffice it to say, I took some poetic license on that one.
Do I dare request a review?