Sandy packed up the last of Kirsten's clothes and set the box on the floor. He stood looking out the window, looking at the same view that she had for the last few days of her life. He pressed his hand against his cheek to stop the tears that never seemed to stop falling.
"Dad?' Seth's voice interrupted him, and Sandy turned around to see his son leaning against the door with his hands shoved into his pockets. "The car is all packed up except for Mom's things." Seth walked a little farther into the room and placed a hand on his dad's arm. "Take your time. We'll be outside." Sandy nodded and Seth left him alone in his mom's room.
Sandy knelt down to pick up the box and his hand brushed against one of her sweaters, and the smell of her filled up his senses and he felt such a rush of overwhelming grief that he couldn't breathe for a moment.
He carried the box outside and both his sons were standing with Hailey by the car. He slid the box into the back and closed the trunk. Turning, he looked back up at the cabin, knowing that he would never come back here. Sandy knew that he would never be able to go back to the place where she died. Where she had drifted away from them. The sun was setting on the lake, and it was beautiful and all Sandy could think of was how much Kirsten loved this time of day. Dusk. She loved dusk.
"Are you okay?" Ryan asked, and Sandy could do nothing but shake his head. Hailey was crying again, and Sandy could hear her sharp intakes of breath as they climbed into the car.
Kirsten was dead.
She had been dead for two days now. Her funeral was planned, Julie had taken care of everything, knowing that Sandy would be in no shape to think about what needed to be done, who needed to be called.
She was right, Sandy couldn't think about anything but Kirsten, she overwhelmed him.
Seth drove home one car, and Ryan drove the other, and Sandy sat next to Ryan in the front seat and leaned his head against the cool window and didn't say a word the ride home.
Sandy wouldn't come out of his room for her funeral. Seth and Ryan stood dressed in the living room waiting for him. Finally Ryan went upstairs to find out where he was, and found Sandy crumpled in a heap in the middle of the room grasping on to what looked like Kirsten's wedding dress.
"She was so beautiful," Sandy whispered when he heard the door open. "She was so beautiful, and she loved me. Out of all the people that loved her, she loved me back." Sandy shook his head. "How do I…she said that she wanted me to be happy…how can I be happy? She's gone, Ryan." Ryan stepped closer to Sandy and kneeled down next to him.
"Sandy we need to go," he said slowly and softly.
"I can't."
"You're going to regret it if you don't go," Ryan replied.
"I don't want to say goodbye to her," Sandy said, and Ryan felt for a moment that he was talking to a petulant child, and the thought that Kirsten would know how to handle Sandy when he was like this crossed his mind.
"We need to go Sandy," Ryan said standing up and offering his hand down to Sandy to help him up.
Seth and Ryan sat on either side of Sandy at the ceremony. Sandy was bent over, openly sobbing into his hands. Hailey kept shaking her head, as if she couldn't believe that it was actually happening.
"Kiki," she whispered as she choked back a sob. When Ryan moved to console her, she shook her head and pulled into herself. Ryan himself was having a hard time understanding it all.
How could she be dead?
How could Kirsten really be gone? That wasn't supposed to happen. Ryan was constantly torn between denial and unbelievable grief. He and Seth had shared a bottle of whiskey the night before, sitting in the pool house going through photo albums, tears rolling down both their cheeks. They didn't say anything about it today, and Ryan figured that no mention of it would ever be made again. It had hurt, and it had helped to talk about Kirsten, to go through the Chrismukkah pictures, to go through the pictures before Ryan knew her. The ones of her when Seth was little, and the ones of just her and Sandy. Ryan had taken one from the pile. It was just of Kirsten, and she was their age, maybe a little bit older. Sandy must have taken the picture, or maybe even Jimmy, Ryan wasn't sure. Her back was to the camera, but her head was turned and she was smiling and her hair was being whipped in the wind, and she just looked so happy. Ryan had placed the picture in his wallet.
Julie was doing her part, keeping the Newpsies away from Sandy and the boys. She figured the last thing that any of them needed was fake condolences.
At the wake, Summer stood next to Seth, slipped her hand in his and gave it a squeeze.
"I'm here," she whispered leaning into him. "When you need to talk." Seth leaned over and placed a kiss on her temple and thanked her quietly.
Ryan spotted Sandy standing over in the corner, a glass in his hands. He moved over to him and placed a hand on his shoulder.
"Hey," he said softly.
"Thank you for making me come," Sandy said. "She would have been there to say goodbye to me." Julie moved over to where the two stood.
"Do you remember that time when Seth was seven and you went to pick him up from school, but didn't tell her that you had him? And she went to the school, and panicked and called the police?" Julie asked.
"They came by the house and I tried to explain to them that it was just a communication error, and Kirsten came running in the house, tears streaming down her face," Sandy shook his head. "She didn't talk to me for like three days she was so mad at me for putting her through that."
"How about the time that Mom tried to make ham for Easter?" Seth asked stepping into the conversation. "And she burnt it, and the fire department came? And they had Thai food with us." Sandy laughed slightly, and his eyes misted over.
"Her and her best friend ran away when she was sixteen to see David Bowie in New York City," Hailey contributed. "My dad freaked out when he discovered her gone. He went all the way to New York to drag her home. She kept saying, 'But I left a note!'" Hailey smiled sadly. "She set the standards for rule-breaking." Hailey frowned slightly. "I'm going to miss her so much." Sandy knew that there was no way to describe how much he was going to miss her. It felt like a part of him was gone.
"She tried to make me soup once, the first year I was here?" Ryan said. "Who screws up soup? It was disgusting. It tasted like ass."
"Ryan," Sandy admonished. "Don't say ass." Sandy's face crumbled and he covered his face with his hands, and Seth and Ryan each placed a hand on his arm and Sandy pulled them into a hug and held onto his boys.
The last piece of his wife lived on in these boys. These boys that she loved more than anything. And so Sandy held onto them. Held onto the little bit of Kirsten he still had.
Ryan and Seth had finally finished college, after taking a year off to be with Kirsten, and then to be with Sandy. Sandy had fallen apart after Kirsten's death. He had been unable to cope with her being gone. He didn't eat, he didn't sleep, when Ryan or Seth would come in to check on him, they would find him in her closet hanging onto her clothes, or watching their wedding video.
It had taken months before he seemed to start to pull himself together and rejoin the rest of the world. It had been Sandy who had insisted that they go to school starting that fall. He had said that Kirsten would want them to move on and start college, and that he would be fine. Absolutely fine, he assured them. He promised that he would start therapy, and that he understood that Kirsten wouldn't have wanted him to be wallowing in self-pity like this.
It had taken exactly three and a half weeks for Ryan to get the phone call from Seth. He could hear Seth crying on the other end as he told Ryan how Sandy had downed a bottle of painkillers with a bottle of whiskey.
"Oh God," Ryan said falling back onto the chair behind him. His roommate looked at him with surprise and concern as Ryan lifted his hand to his mouth. When Ryan had unpacked, he had taken out the picture of Kirsten that he had enlarged and framed, and his roommate had asked him who she was.
"That's my mom," Ryan had said. "She uh, she died of cancer." Ryan still wasn't used to saying those words, and they didn't come out easily.
When Seth called, and told him that Sandy had tried to kill himself, Ryan had rushed out of his dorm, and caught the first plane to Newport. Seth had done the same, and they both converged in front of Sandy's hospital room.
"Don't you think we've had enough of hospitals?" Seth sighed. Ryan had to agree. Sandy apologized to the boys after he had woken up.
"Dad, why did you do it?" Seth asked. It was obvious though why Sandy had done it. Ryan knew the reason, and Seth knew the reason too.
Kirsten.
"I just can't without her," Sandy said.
"Try harder, for us?" Seth pleaded, and Sandy nodded his consent and agreed to really get help this time.
Ryan had reluctantly returned to school, with Julie and Hailey's promises to look after him.
Ryan thought that Sandy had honestly gotten better. When they came home that year for Chrismukkah, he had almost seemed like himself again, joking around with the boys and talking to them about their classes and their respective schools. Ryan was almost hopeful that they could get through this.
Both he and Seth graduated from college. Sandy came to both, grinning proudly, and he watched as Seth married Summer, and as Ryan married a woman that he had met at Berkeley, Lisa. Both the boys moved back to Newport, close to Sandy.
Sandy was at the hospital when Summer gave birth to his first grandchild, a little girl named Kirsten.
He never remarried, despite both of his daughters-in-law trying to set him up on dates. Summer gave up first, knowing that it was a lost cause. She tried to explain it to Lisa.
"You should have seen the way that he used to look at her," Summer told her. "There's no way that he could find someone else. She was amazing, and no one can fill her role."
Sandy had loved his grandchildren, loved Ryan's boys, and Seth's son, but had a special place for his only granddaughter, his beloved Kirsten. She would climb into his lap, and he would tell her about her grandmother.
"She was beautiful, wasn't she Pap?" Kirsten would ask, tilting her head and Sandy could see his Kirsten in her.
"She was beautiful," Sandy agreed.
"Tell me about her," Kirsten asked.
"What about her?"
"Everything. Tell me about your wedding, and tell me about how she looked, and what song you danced to," Kirsten begged. And Summer would come to pick up her daughter, and find her sitting on Sandy's lap as the two of them watched Kirsten and Sandy's wedding video.
"You ready to go sweetheart?" Summer asked.
"Pap is telling me about Grandma," Kirsten said smiling up at her mother. "You knew her too, right?" Summer nodded.
"She was amazing," Summer said sharing a smile with Sandy.
"You better go Princess," Sandy said as Kirsten climbed off his lap and hurried over to her mother. "I'll see you soon, okay?" Kirsten nodded, her dark curls bouncing.
He wished that his Kirsten was there to see her. Their beautiful granddaughter. He wished that Kirsten would have gotten to see her grandsons, all three of them, wished that she would have seen her boys turn into such wonderful husbands and fathers. Sandy still grieved for her, fifteen years later. The nights still were the worse, when his chest would hurt, and he would stare at the empty spot in their bed where she used to sleep.
But he had promised her, he had promised to be there for their boys, and tell stories about her to their grandchildren. He had promised her that he would be okay, and try to be happy, and he was trying for her.
But he never got remarried.
Sandy knew it was ridiculous to even consider being remarried. He was Kirsten Cohen's husband. Forever.
And some days he would wish that his suicide attempt had been successful, and that the pain of losing her, of having her gone, would be gone. But he saw his sons, and his grandchildren, and some of the pain went away.
But was still there, lingering, always.
And he could hear her voice, when they had laid in bed, side by side, on one of her last few nights, her soft whisper,
"We'll see each other soon, right? I mean we have eternity Sandy, maybe this is good, some alone time for a little while." She had given him a small smile, her hand, cold and fragile slipped into his. "I know how you do like your alone time. We'll see each other again. I'll miss you though. I love you. I love you, I love you, I love you."