AN: Inspiration was 'Just a Dream,' by Carrie Underwood, and the movie, 'PS, I Love You' Enjoy.
She got the call on a Thursday. The dish she was drying fell and shattered, but she didn't pick it up until Friday when her mother forced her to eat. On Saturday she called his phone again and again, whether to hear his voice or hope that he was going to pick up somewhere in Heaven, she didn't know. She was in shock on Sunday, like the initial grief she had felt was nothing but a free sample of what the rest of her life was going to be like.
She was still in shock when she was getting ready for his funeral. As she put on the ring he gave to her, it sank in that he would never put it on her finger in holy matrimony. He had only had time to ask her to share his name, but he never got to see it through.
He would never be able to tease her about taking so long to get ready ever again, and she found herself taking an eternity in the bathroom, in hopes that he would appear in a ghostly form to tell her to hurry, or else they were going to be late. She stalled as she was drying her hair, took an unnecessary amount of time applying her foundation, and the grass would have grown faster than her as she was applying mascara.
He didn't show up. There was no impatient, beautiful, wonderful man to press her buttons and hurry her along. He wasn't there. He had left. Gone, and she could never touch him again.
The dress was an elegant, sexy little black number he had picked out himself for her, to wear on their upcoming honeymoon. The satin fabric was as rough on her skin as sandpaper, and her shoes felt like the spirits of the underworld were trying to drag her under. What scared her is that she would not have minded at all.
She caught a glance at herself in the hall mirror. If it weren't for the obviously working blood vessels in her eyes and on her face, she could have been dead herself. She was alone. It didn't matter that she had her family and her friends, if she didn't have him. She curled up in the hall for a moment, begging herself to get it together so she wouldn't embarrass him at his own funeral. In later years, she would say that she was glad she was nowhere near the kitchen knives.
The drive to the bar where they had spent many a game night with their dearest friends, where his funeral was being held, and where she was going to say her final goodbye, was lonely in a tragic proportion. She had driven this road, made these turns, all with him or to him. She kept expecting a phone call from him to ask if she was still on her diet or if she wanted some real food. In the moments where she was the least sane, she would open her mouth to ask him a question, only to find that the passenger seat was empty, like her home, her bed, her bathroom. She tried to turn on the radio, but every single sound that came out of the speakers had her expecting him to be waiting at the bar, to greet her with a grin that both infuriated and melted her.
But he wasn't going to be waiting at the bar for her, with her favorite dish already ordered and saving her a seat right next to him. He wasn't going to be there. He wasn't going to be at their home when she came back. He wasn't going to be asleep next to her tomorrow morning, one arm behind his head, and the other slung over her waist. He wasn't going to be there, and he was never going to be there anymore.
Later she would marvel and ponder over what force held her together during the "Not a mourning over a lost friend, but the celebration of his life." What a load of bull. He was gone wasn't he? He had left her here, alone. She barely recognized the faceless people that came to her to lie and say they were sorry for her loss.
How could they lie and say that? They were her distant 3rd cousins or whatever, they had never met him. They didn't know that he would sometimes make her breakfast in bed on Saturday mornings if she had had a rough week. They didn't know that if he told her something that happened at the office, it meant that it was bothering him. They had no clue about who he was or what he did. They didn't know that he popped the question on her birthday, or that he cried when she said yes. All he was to them was a man in a coffin that their estranged cousin was going to marry.
She wandered through the crowd, looking for a purpose, a reason, something to make her feel like she was actually existing. Whether she was crying or not was lost to her, and hunger was an unwelcome feeling. If she had not been hungry, he would not have offered to run get pizza. She didn't know at the time that it was going to be the last time she ever saw him.
She wandered over to their bar stool, the one he always sat in and pulled her in his lap. She ran her fingers over it, like she wanted to feel any sort of magical power it had to offer and suck it up to make her strong.
She would not remember the drive home, nor that their friends had followed her to make sure she wouldn't drive off of a bridge on the way. Luckily for them, she was not very aware of her surroundings, and made it home safely. She made it to her empty, silent home. She had a pantry stocked with his favorite foods, half a closet and a whole chest of drawers of his clothes. She had a bathroom filled with the collection of scents that made up his personal smell. What she didn't have was him.
It wouldn't matter what she wore or who she was with. It would never matter. She knew that she would always be alone. She would never truly exist in a room until he touched her or talked to her. She knew that no matter how many times she watched the scary movies he always wanted to watch with her, it was never going to bring him back, nothing was ever going to bring him back.
So, that night, when she curled up in bed next to a pillow with one of his shirts on, she cried and cried for the touches she would never feel again. She wailed and her nose ran, but it was an inadequate medium to convey her sorrow and pain. A pillow with a shirt was not enough for her to sleep, and it would never be enough. She felt her sorrow curl up inside her chest for a long stay.
She sobbed and gasped and hiccupped for the dip on the other side of the mattress that would never be there again.