Last chapter, folks. It's long, so I broke it into 2 parts. Enjoy!
"I'm really sorry I haven't been back for a long time," she said between bites of ham-and-cheese on white, "It's… well, you know it's been hard. I couldn't stay here after all of that, there was just too much for me to take. Too much bad stuff. But there hasn't been a day that's gone by in all of these years that I haven't thought of you; you've been my inspiration so many times. Oh, I almost forgot," she turned to her large handbag and brought out the other half of the sandwich that she was already eating and a small bag of assorted jellybeans.
"Here," she said, setting them down in front of her, "my friend Yusaku – he's from Japan, I mean, I met him there, and he is from there too – he suggested I bring you a little something. It's what they do there, and I thought it was a nice idea. You'd never believe it, I lived in Japan for a whole year! And so many other things…" she trailed off again, trying to make sense of putting the years past in order, what to remember, what to forget. She pushed a few curly locks back behind her ear, her hair shorter now than she used to keep it, with wisps of grey appearing here and there, though not enough to notice at a glance.
"But I'm getting ahead of myself. Maybe it's a little silly, but I want to tell you where I've been, what I've seen. So I guess I should start where we left off…"
She sat in the slightly damp grass, her billowy linen skirt splayed out around her like a fan. She pulled her knees to her chest and wrapped her arms around them, resting her face on top. She rocked back and forth for a while, trying to find her voice again. The beginnings of tears welled up in her eyes, causing the glow of the four tea lights she had set out to make an orange and yellow kaleidoscope in her vision. She blinked the moisture away; there was not enough there to make a tear fall, but enough that had kept her from seeing the stone marker on the earth in front of her for a little while, long enough to wish, as she had wished for so many years, that it had never need be laid. She felt her fingertips with her thumb, as if she could feel her hand trace over the name engraved on that cold marble as she had done nearly ten years ago.
The candles flickered in the light May breeze, throwing shadows about, of left-out bouquets of roses bound in ribbons, a pinwheel from a nephew that never met him but had always heard fond stories of childhood pranks and brotherly friendship. A mother's grief that can never be quenched, the sorrow of losing a child manifested in dark lavender lilacs. A sandwich and candies from someone who knew him better than he knew himself.
"Jim… oh, Jim…" she began. And try as she might, she could not hold back the tears that had waited for years to be let out again. "I hoped so hard that night… waiting for you. If my will alone could have had the power to fix you I would have used up the last ounce of my strength and given it to you. To just have seen you smile again, to have heard you say my name one more time…"
She closed her eyes again, hearing the words the doctor had told her. "Best of surgeons… despite transfusions… so grievous the wounds… tried to resuscitate… too much blood loss… were not able to save."
Sharply, she looked back down at the headstone before her; a simple marble wedge, low to the ground. She made herself read it again:
James Halpert
October 8th, 1979 – May 18th 2008
Beloved son; dear friend; forever missed.
She had hated that stone since the moment she saw it laid. It had become a part of the grieving process that she had never been able to shake. That stone was to her a constant reminder of where her love, the one man she had endured so much to finally know and cherish had been taken -- far off between grass, earth, air, and eternity.
"It was the longest moment in my life. I felt like a years passed between the words that the doctor said… I knew you were gone from the time he began to elaborate. Miraculous recoveries don't get minced words; death does."
Her mind saw the hospital halls, dark and surreal, rooms with metal tables, strange blinking lights, powered-down monitors. A blue-uniformed police officer behind her and an intern in front. A quiet room with equipment not yet cleaned and put away. A white sheet draped over a still body with droplets of black-red beneath it. The intern lifting the sheet. She heard her own awful grief-stricken at the sight of his ghostly pale, cyanotic face, too still. She had felt his hand, and would never forget the despair she felt finally realizing that it was true – just a touch felt different, felt cold, felt lifeless.
"I hardly remember the rest of that awful night. One of the police officers had somehow gotten a hold of my mom. I know that I went home with her, slept on my old bed with nightmares of the past mixed with the present horror. I knew before I left that your body was now evidence of a crime, a murder. That you were to be transported to the county coroner's to be autopsied as evidence. I felt sick. I dreamt of you being cut up in a lab and would wake up screaming.
"Roy… they caught him that night, too. Ran his truck into a tree not far from Lake Scranton, they said with the intent to drive in and drown himself. I had become so cynical so quickly; I wished that he had just shot himself before, that I had not stopped him. The police called to tell me the next day that he was in custody and had confessed to it all. So guilt-ridden. Later on, when I had to identify him in person as your murderer – such a formality! – he had pleaded for forgiveness. Jim… you'd be disappointed with me… I never could. I wished he had died instead of you,"
She saw the penitent face of Roy Anderson, the man that she had once dreamed of marrying and fathering her children. She hated him. She shouted to him that she wished he were dead, wished that he had shot her too. She saw his face turn to the ground, haunted, tortured.
"He's still in prison. That's all I know, and all I ever care to ever know about him ever again. The end of your life, Jim, ended my life in Scranton. The few days before your funeral told me that. Memories of us seemed to be waiting behind every street corner, every park tree, the bedroom of my apartment. The office, too. Maybe that place was the worst. I broke down a lot those first few weeks, but I think the worst was when I took your mom over to Dunder-Mifflin to pack up your things from your desk. I had quit by then, and hadn't been back since the day everything happened, so I needed to gather anything I wanted from my station too. We went on a Friday about two weeks after you died, after everyone was gone, but before the janitor came by to vacuum the floors,"
Two women entered the darkened office suite. Both had dark circles under their eyes, pain and sorrow pulled at their faces, sleepless nights drew lines where there had not been before. Cardboard banker's boxes in tow, the younger began to throw items carelessly into hers. To look would be to remember: she did not have the strength to allow herself to remember anymore. She made the mistake of sitting in her old chair and looking across the room. She looked where she always had before and saw the empty desk where she would always find him looking back at her, a smirk ready at a moment's notice. How many times she had mouthed 'save me!' during a dull day. How she wished he could save her again. Instead, she watched his mother tearfully open drawers and go through pictures, papers, nick-nacks. Cry with those eyes that he had inherited from her, large, kind brown eyes.
She couldn't hold herself together anymore. She collapsed onto her desk and the pain flowed back into her like glass in her veins. She took the monitor in her hands and angrily screaming, threw it against the wall, kicking the chair, the sides of the cubicle, upending the shredded paper basket. She wiped everything off of the desk and the space above it with a crash, sending jellybeans and paper flyin. Her glass jar shattered to pieces on the floor and she stopped. She collapsed to the floor, sobbing.
"The last I saw of the Dunder-Mifflin folks was at your funeral. Hah… you would have liked it, I think it's funny to say. Everyone was the same there. Michael said something inappropriate to the effect of you being 'the coolest dead-guy' he's ever known. I did also have to send Dwight to wrestle the microphone from him when his eulogy went on longer than was needed. I think Creed stole a couple of the flower arrangements. Dwight got up to speak, and took Angela with him. I think that was their first display to the public in general as a couple… maybe they realized that there wasn't enough certainty in life to waste time playing silly games instead of just choosing to be with the people who mattered. Dwight only said a few words, but they touched me more than anything,"
Arm in arm, tall and awkward Dwight held onto petite Angela, who made no more attempts to make a façade that she was not in love with man next to her. Dwight's eyes were red, his face tense and contemplative. He picked up the microphone, turned and looked at the open casket, at Jim's body. He turned back around and said, "Jim Halpert was a good man. His name will be remembered by my family." He turned and gave a tender glance to his Angela, took her by the hand and returned to his seat.
Pam stopped in her monologue, having spied something strange next to the bundle of roses. She crept forward, and found what it was: a young beet plant with a small flower atop the green leaves. She smiled. "Looks like he meant those words, Jim."