Lost In Service – Survivors and their Grief
The sign was simple. Black block lettering on a white card background. Hung on a closed door like an afterthought.
George was standing in the hallway outside, fingertips pressed into his closed eyelids, long fingers tented over his face, rocking back on his heels. With everything in his body he did not want to be standing in that place. Wished he could unread the sign. Considered obliviating himself. Was that even possible? Fred would have known or would have attempted it and found out. And why in the name of all pigeon hawks was he thinking about Fred now. He laughed softly, sadly, because he always thought of Fred, that's why. And if one followed the truth in that then one could quite possibly drown in the sea of tears wept by the survivors of those lost in service. Suddenly, he wanted a drink. He needed a drink. Obliviate in a bottle. And if that didn't work he'd find the muggle smoke and forget for weeks.
It was Thursday evening. He had agreed to this during a better part of the day. The sun out, birds singing somewhere, and he distracted by how damned well his week had been going. When Ron's owl had delivered the message about the meeting it had all seemed so innocuous and the message had really made it sound as though this meeting was for Ron and Ginny and he was going to support them. But now that he was standing alone outside the door, voices on the other side, the bitter smell of urned coffee, he could feel, he could actually feel the dangerous and sharp fact of the place open him from stem to stern, revealing the bloody viscera of his emotions quivering. He opened his eyes and leaned back against the wall. Maybe he could just leave. Slip out quiet-like, apparate to Diagon Alley and begin his own self-guided pub crawl. Let Ron and Ginny bleed out their grief in this horrible place, he'd keep his inside his skin, thank you very much. He pushed off the wall and began walking, directionless, but away from the door, the sign.
The voices of his brother and sister echoed from down the hall, around the corner. He stopped and shoved his hands deep into his trouser pockets. Two years back and he would have kept moving, turning his face away from them, shouldering out the door and into the endless night.
Regardless of his decision to stay, this was going to be a colossally bad idea.
The chairs were cold and uncomfortable, the room stale with its limited use, smelling of dust and tears. He sat bookended by his little brother and baby sister. His hands were locked in his lap to keep them from flying into fists, he was looking down, his right knee next to Ron's left knee, his left knee beside Ginny's right knee. He was considering them. Grown now, with children of their own, they were tied to the family of their childhoods only by swollen knots of memory and loyalty instead of physical necessity. But he had that backwards. He had abandoned the family he had begun to create with Angelina, left them through a massive hole in the structure and walked until his feet gave out.
He had chosen Fred. Refused to pull himself out of the quicksand of the first twenty years of their lives. Those years weren't stored like memories inside of him, as they were for the others, those years were the skin he lived in, the clothes he wore, the face and figure reflected in the glass. His was not the existence of the survivor; his was the life of the lost.
They were introducing themselves. Speaking briefly, as though each was the sum of name and occupation and the terrible loss of a beloved gone now two decades. Beside him, Ginny's soft voice repeated the structure of it, the cadence, and he laughed. The room quieted at once and all eyes swiveled between his face and the facilitator.
"It's normal to be a little nervous in a setting like this one. We haven't seen you here before." She looked at him kindly but he knew if she had a wand in her hand she'd be tapping it into her palm.
"Champion." He nodded. "But you know who I am."
She blanched then blushed. "Yes, that's true, Mr. Weasley."
"No need for these barmy introductions. We all know one another, maybe not to have over for a game of Exploding Snap, but we know each other." He stretched himself in the chair, long legs moving forward into the circle, ankles crossing. "We know who each of us mourns."
She looked at him, mouth opening and closing slightly. Ron jabbed him hard in the side with his elbow.
She cleared her throat. "That may be. And I'm sure you're correct. But this is the way group begins and I would appreciate you staying on task." She looked around the room, smiling reassuringly, then back at him. "Mr. Weasley. It's your turn."
He kept his gaze leveled on her. He didn't like her. "Pass."
Ron began to speak but the facilitator held up a quick hand. "Please, Mr. Weasley, that Mr. Weasley." She indicated George with her palm. "In a group of this nature we deal with very sensitive subject matter and it requires a kind of trust."
"I earn trust by trotting out a string of basic facts you already know about me? It's the things you don't know that should have your guard up."
She stood, smoothing at her skirt, still smiling but the corners of her mouth were twitching. "May I speak with you out in the hallway perhaps?"
"No. I don't think so."
Across the room, a stocky man with a shock of black hair spoke. "It's alright. 'Course we know him. And he's on, eh? None of us is strangers and the like."
She sat, defeated, and the introductions finished. Ron was whispering violently beside him but he was deaf to it, the clamour inside of him loud and beginning to swell uncontrollably.
The facilitator had stood and was now standing beside an old-fashioned chalking board that lined the wall like a primary school classroom. She had her wand out.
"In this group, we are working with the five stages of grief." She tapped the board, murmured, and a loopy feminine cursive began to enumerate a list in large white lettering.
1. Denial and Isolation.
After each number, she tapped her wand and spoke to the room. "At first, we tend to deny the loss has taken place, and may withdraw from our usual social contacts. This stage may last a few moments, a few months, or longer."
2. Anger.
Tap. "The grieving person may find they are furious at the person who inflicted the hurt even if that person is dead. Or they may find they are angry at the world for letting it happen. The grieving person may be angry with himself for letting the event take place, even if, realistically, nothing could have stopped it."
3. Bargaining.
"Now the grieving person may make bargains with the universe asking, "If I do this, will you take away the loss?""
4. Depression.
"The person feels numb, although anger and sadness may remain underneath."
5. Acceptance.
"This is when the anger, sadness and mourning have tapered off. The person simply accepts the reality of the loss."
She turned away from the board, walking back to the circle of chairs and sitting down, crossing her legs comfortably. Behind her head, the five stages of grief glowed with a white illumination against the black background.
George forced himself to read the words over and over, silently singsonging them inside his head until they jumbled into a nonsensical chorus. He spoke. "Are you telling me that you lot have been staring at this waffle once a week for the past nineteen years?"
She was on her feet instantly. "Mr. Weasley, that is enough. More than enough. I'm going to ask you to leave."
He stood. "When are you going to ask exactly?" He stepped out of the circle and walked over to the blackboard. His own wand drawn now, his mind filled with molten fire, his guts churning. "This? This is what the group works out every Thursday evening here…" He looked around the room. "What in the name of all that's magical is this place exactly other than what it is - a damp and dismal left luggage for emotions you don't want to lug around the rest of the week. No one gets healed in a place like this."
The circle of faces looking at him were filled with every variety of emotion he could put a name to, he looked from one familiar face, one familiar emotion, to the next and the next and the next until he came to the furious face of the facilitator.
"I am truly sorry, luv. But I look at you and I have to ask myself if you've ever lost anything. A galleon? Your pride? Your virginity? Nothing like the first seven degree relatives."
Her mouth had fallen open and her eyes had narrowed nearly shut.
"I thought so. Father, Mother, son, daughter, brother, sister, spouse. You haven't lost anything quite like that." He shrugged. "It doesn't really matter. Not really. You will. Eventually. That's how it works, you know. And this," he tapped the board and the letters turned red and ran like blood off the surface and pooled ugly on the floor, "this is the daily experience of those who have already been crushed by the cogs and gears of life. Every moment of every day of each month and all these years….I," he mocked her now, "work with the five stages of grief." His voice became softer, apologetic. "Denial, anger, bargaining, depression, acceptance. It sounds a bit like a maths problem there, doesn't it? Add this, subtract that, multiply these and divide and you've got it. Or a recipe, measure that, mix this, blend together and bake until the knife comes out clean. It's not like that. It never ever gets better. Time does not heal all wounds. The equation is always more complex than the answer. The knife is stained with blood. And if we forget then we kill something to do it. Only the insane fight acceptance but it traps claustrophobically."
He breathed out hard and looked around the room. Survivors were sitting like stone, faces slack with listening; a few had un-wiped tears on their cheeks. George knew they were listening hard and he wondered how often they had heard what he had to say.
"I don't just mourn Fred, you know. I grieve for all of them that were killed in the Second War. I drink myself to sickness thinking of each one of us left to carry on. We're really the soldiers in it, aren't we? Not the dead. They're gone, we're here, and we're marching forward. Well, some of us. I opted out of that soft parade. But if this," he indicated the room, "gives you comfort then don't turn away from it. Merlin knows you've got to take what comfort you can in the arms of whoever or whatever holds you. I do. Goodnight."
He turned and tucked his wand into his front pocket and left by the door he'd come in. The hallway stretched long and cold and silent in both directions. Outside the night was cool, winter promising its secret sleep all along the edges of the world. He let his feet carry him, he wanted to walk himself to exhaustion. He was not going to smoke his brains to ash. Not tonight. Tomorrow was Friday and he was going to Hogsmeade to sit a few hours with Oliver Wood.