"Lately I feel like a piece of my soul is hanging around for everyone to hold."
~ "Fooling Myself" Grace Potter & The Nocturnals
Haley gave him a number to call and a pamphlet that listed the five stages of grief, each with an explanation of what he should expect.
He knew what that number was for too. She had told him, her words low as she stared at him with careful eyes. He knew she was waiting for him to break, to fall to pieces but he just smiled told her he was fine and he'd call if he needed someone to talk too.
But for now he was fine. Sawyer was fine.
But who he needed, all he needed, was Peyton. He wanted her to walk through the front door of their home and hear her call his name. He wanted to sit on the porch and watch as she'd pull up, their daughter on his lap and a smile on her face at the sight of them waiting for her.
He wanted to hear her tease him about the tears. See the look of worry in her eyes from his lack sleep. He wanted to see her roll those green eyes over his need to sit for hours in her car going no where.
He just wanted her and he wouldn't care about the teasing. No he would give anything to just have her back. To see her before him, his wife, his friend with her smile, her walk, her touch, her heart and her eyes.
He'd give it all away to be holding her hand instead of those pamphlets about those fives stages.
Stage one – Denial
This first stage of grieving helps us to survive the loss. In this stage, the world becomes meaningless and overwhelming. Life makes no sense. We are in a state of shock and denial. We go numb. We wonder how we can go on, if we can go on, why we should go on. We try to find a way to simply get through each day. Denial and shock help us to cope and make survival possible. Denial helps us to pace our feelings of grief. There is a grace in denial. It is nature's way of letting in only as much as we can handle.
He still acted like she was there.
He spoke to her, asking her opinion on things like; was this the right shirt with these pants or did he dress Sawyer in the right clothes for picture day, was it the right dress she had wanted her to wear.
He still brought her coffee in the morning. Setting it beside her side of the bed and ignoring the fact that he knew it was Brooke who took them away, tossing the cold coffee down the drain and repeating the same actions everyday behind him.
He would text her during the day, answering replies he never really got but in his mind he heard that familiar tune, read her words that weren't really there. He'd call her cell and listen to her voice, never leaving a message. He'd just hang-up and redial just to hear her voice all over again and knowing she hated that the most.
He'd walk to her office, climb those stairs and sit in front of her desk, his mind seeing her sitting there before him with that smile that told him all he really knew; that she loved him. He'd sit there for hours, talking with her until Haley led him away and back to their home.
In the afternoons, he'd take Sawyer to the park, her small hand in his left and the feel of hers in his right. He'd watched Sawyer as she swing, her eyes dull and he'd lean into no one, softly whispering that she should talk to her, find out why she seemed so sad. He'd sit there for hours on that bench, watching Sawyer and believing she was there beside him until Nathan would sit down beside him, watching that little girl with the sad eyes.
It was always then at that moment with his brother sitting beside him, that she'd fade away and the truth stared him in the eyes.
She was gone.
Stage Two – Anger
Anger is a necessary stage of the healing process. Be willing to feel your anger, even though it may seem endless. The more you truly feel it, the more it will begin to dissipate and the more you will heal. There are many other emotions under the anger and you will get to them in time, but anger is the emotion we are most used to managing. The truth is that anger has no limits. It can extend not only to your friends, the doctors, your family, yourself and your loved one who died, but also to God. Underneath anger is pain, your pain. It is natural to feel deserted and abandoned, but we live in a society that fears anger. Anger is strength and it can be an anchor, giving temporary structure to the nothingness of loss. At first grief feels like being lost at sea: no connection to anything. Then you get angry at someone, maybe a person who didn't attend the funeral, maybe a person who isn't around, maybe a person who is different now that your loved one has died. Suddenly you have a structure – - your anger toward them. The anger becomes a bridge over the open sea, a connection from you to them. It is something to hold onto; and a connection made from the strength of anger feels better than nothing. We usually know more about suppressing anger than feeling it.
The anger is just another indication of the intensity of your love.
He'd explode for no reason. Yell when Sawyer would run down the hall, her feet thudding against the hardwood floors and he'd scream. Telling her to stop, his eyes blazing and then after she'd had gone to her room; he'd slide down the wall with tears in eyes, angry with Peyton for leaving.
Angry with himself, for believing it was her fault.
He punched Dan one night after seeing him walking down the street. Yelling that it wasn't fair he was there and she was gone.
That it should had been him because she was good and he was evil and he needed her. Sawyer needed her.
He yelled at her one morning, after he couldn't get Sawyer to get moving. He threw her picture across the room; it's glass shattering against the wall, angry tears falling from his eyes and words he wished he never said, filling the air.
He screamed at her, yelling if she had loved him she wouldn't have left him because after all she had promised.
He threw things, pulled her records from the selves and watched them scatter across the floor, his screams fading at the look of sadness in the eyes of his daughter.
And he cried as he rocked her in his arms, with Peyton's record scattered around them.
Stage Three - Bargaining.
Before a loss, it seems like you will do anything if only your loved one would be spared. "Please God, " you bargain, "I will never be angry at my wife again if you'll just let her live." After a loss, bargaining may take the form of a temporary truce. "What if I devote the rest of my life to helping others. Then can I wake up and realize this has all been a bad dream?"
We become lost in a maze of "If only…" or "What if…" statements. We want life returned to what is was; we want our loved one restored. We want to go back in time: find the tumor sooner, recognize the illness more quickly, and stop the accident from happening if only…if only…if only. Guilt is often bargaining's companion. The "if onlys" cause us to find fault in ourselves and what we "think" we could have done differently. We may even bargain with the pain. We will do anything not to feel the pain of this loss. We remain in the past, trying to negotiate our way out of the hurt.
He told himself if could write it differently, that moment, then it would change and she'd be here.
He'd sit there for hours, in front of his computer, replaying that moment in words. He'd write about the sound of metal against metal and how the car slid to a stop.
He'd write how it was she who climbed out of that car. How it was she who reached for him, calling his name. He'd put the words down; describe them in detail how she'd fall to her knees, begging him to wake and how she'd cry for him.
He'd write those words over and over, each time ending with her alive and him dead.
He'd stare at those pages, at those words until he'd find himself falling to his knees and begging the heavens above to turn the clock back. To give him the chance to remind himself not to have that one drink and hold her hand just a little tighter, if only.
He'd call Julian and beg him to make that movie, to make it right, to create that moment again and change it all, to help him correct the wrong and give her back her life.
To give back her happily ever after.
But it never happened and he'd sit there, night after night, before that computer, writing those words that would change that moment, if only in words because in words she was here and he wasn't.
Stage four -Depression.
After bargaining, our attention moves squarely into the present. Empty feelings present themselves, and grief enters our lives on a deeper level, deeper than we ever imagined. This depressive stage feels as though it will last forever. It's important to understand that this depression is not a sign of mental illness. It is the appropriate response to a great loss. We withdraw from life, left in a fog of intense sadness, wondering, perhaps, if there is any point in going on alone? Why go on at all? Depression after a loss is too often seen as unnatural: a state to be fixed, something to snap out of. The first question to ask yourself is whether or not the situation you're in is actually depressing. The loss of a loved one is a very depressing situation, and depression is a normal and appropriate response. To not experience depression after a loved one dies would be unusual. When a loss fully settles in your soul, the realization that your loved one didn't get better this time and is not coming back is understandably depressing. If grief is a process of healing, then depression is one of the many necessary steps along the way.
He'd find himself crying, mostly late at night after he'd reach for her and find her side of the bed, empty. He'd lie there staring at the ceiling, telling himself she was just checking on Sawyer but then, like a whisper he'd hear her voice in his ear, telling him it would be all right and he'd cry.
They'd spend hours at her grave, he and Sawyer. He'd tell her stories about how they met and whisper that she had her mother's laugh and cry when she'd turn in his arms, with tears in her eyes, asking for her mother back.
He locked himself away in her office, sitting in the middle of the studio with The Cure blaring through the speakers, with tears in his eyes as he saw her laughing before him, telling him she always knew he secretly loved The Cure with that look in her eye, that told him she loved him.
He drank it away, that look in her eye. Buried it beneath the hazy of alcohol and the attention of some girl who sought his. He masked it with another shot of tequila, a drink he hated but one Peyton had loved so he tossed it back, grabbed that girl's hand and led her from the bar and back to her office and needing to bury the pain away.
But with the slamming of the door, a picture fell from the wall, with words she had told him once, she had long ago stop believing in, stared back up at him from the floor; People always leave.
He sent that girl away before falling to his knees and letting the sobs rack his body for memories he had chased away.
For the memories he was letting himself forget.
Stage Five - Acceptance.
Acceptance is often confused with the notion of being "all right" or "OK" with what has happened. This is not the case. Most people don't ever feel OK or all right about the loss of a loved one. This stage is about accepting the reality that our loved one is physically gone and recognizing that this new reality is the permanent reality. We will never like this reality or make it OK, but eventually we accept it. We learn to live with it. It is the new norm with which we must learn to live. We must try to live now in a world where our loved one is missing. In resisting this new norm, at first many people want to maintain life as it was before a loved one died. In time, through bits and pieces of acceptance, however, we see that we cannot maintain the past intact. It has been forever changed and we must readjust. We must learn to reorganize roles, re-assign them to others or take them on ourselves.
As we begin to live again and enjoy our life, we often feel that in doing so, we are betraying our loved one. We can never replace what has been lost, but we can make new connections, new meaningful relationships, and new inter-dependencies. Instead of denying our feelings, we listen to our needs; we move, we change, we grow, and we evolve. We may start to reach out to others and become involved in their lives. We invest in our friendships and in our relationship with ourselves.
He was becoming good at letting the world believe he was okay. That he was fine and moving on but he wasn't and as he starred at that pamphlet and that last stage, acceptance, he wondered if it really existed because accepting that she was gone, meant she wasn't coming back.
So he went on making believe he was okay. Continued to talk to her in the afternoon, cursing her at night and begging for her forgiveness in early morning hours. He'd sit there, at that desk, writing those words about her until he got them just right.
He'd take Sawyer to the park and to that spot where she said I do and promised him forever. He'd lay there, late at night waiting for the sound of her car, waiting for the moment she'd walked through that door, calling his name.
But she never did that and he started to realize he was living through those stages and she was gone and he was alone in a world that seemed to large, to empty and cold without her.