Goodbye 390 Knightsbridge … thanks for the memories.

If you’re new here, this was mine and Gregory’s home. I am involved in a probate court battle with greedy urchins and was forced to move out and sell the home by the court. This was in October of 2010. The house finally sold today. So the wheels on the probate bus, while not going round and round, are at least getting a little air in their tires. However, a long battle still awaits. It’s a bittersweet feeling. Glad for the progress, sad for what should have been.

 She stood for a long time at the foot of the bed, watching her love. The rhythm of his

chest as it climbed and fell with each breath, the sheet fluttering around him as it rose

ever so slightly, settled, then rose again, like some loyal soldier marching a repetitive

cadence across his broad chest. His dark hair was tousled, his lips dry and showing

signs of chapping despite the balm she had applied almost absent mindedly, as if it was

her duty to do for him which he could not. Which, she assumed, it really is my duty now,

isn’t it? How long had she stood here, staring, lost in her thoughts of him? Had it been

hours? Minutes? She didn’t know, but it felt like days. Days since she had heard his

voice, seen his eyes change magically from green to blue as they often did when he

stepped from shadow to sunlight. Days since she had felt his touch, heard his laugh, felt

his voice laughing in her ear across their magical electronic telephones that connected

them, wherever they were, whether just minutes or just miles apart. Always connected

somehow, these two, from the very beginning. A bond no one but them understood or

approved of. Their own bond, one that they had joined together, approval be damned,

and one that no man could tear asunder, until death do they part.

  And now, Death was here. Death was in this room, in him, surrounding him in the wires

and tubes that snaked out of him like Satan’s own serpents, crossing the bed and the

floor, leading them to their beeping masters. Death surrounded her in this place, in

the cries from other rooms, separated by glass doors and flimsy curtains, in the faces

of doctors and nurses, the looks on their faces as they passed in and out of the room,

waiting, waiting, waiting. On what? The chaplain had come, and he stank of Death and

the words that God had a plan and planted the feeling within her that he might be a bit

of a buzzard, especially when he returned again with the woman from a place called

organ donation. She pretended to listen to them all as they came and went. She

pretended well. She nodded her head, pursed her lips and put just the right amount of

effort into a facial expression that could be construed as thinking. Yet she only thought

of him. Staring at his face, his hands, the celtic cross pattern on their shared wedding

bands as it shined beneath the harsh lighting that comes standard in a hell on earth

such as this. They didn’t take it off of his hand, and she certainly never intended to. He

was still her husband, after all. Still her husband, connected to tubes and wires and

machines that breathed for him, felt his heart beat, collected his fluids. Still her husband,

this shell on the bed in front of her. Not the body that could stop a room with a laugh or

light up the darkness with his smile, but a shell that looked like him but couldn’t possibly

be him, could it?

  Couldn’t they just leave them alone? She liked it best when they were alone, when the

machines hummed and beeped quietly and faces weren’t looking down at her, mourning

for what they already knew she had lost. She could talk to him then, as much as she

wanted to without feeling like a foolish girl talking to an imaginary friend you’ll never see,

because he wasn’t imaginary, he was right there, wasn’t he? That was her husband

lying in that bed, and any minute now he was going to open his sparkling Irish eyes and

laugh at her and tell her that he was ready to go home, let’s just go home.

  But he didn’t. And the faces streamed back and forth, doing what nameless faces do in

places like that, day in, day out. She would close her eyes, just for a moment, just a

moment to rest, and then before she knew it another face was shaking her awake,

questioning, comforting, worrying. Finally, they stopped comforting her and started

consoling, explaining, preparing. Trying to make her realize that Death was here,

with them, and that they would never again be alone together because Death wouldn’t

allow it. His charges came in white coats, armed with sheaths of papers and a silver

pen, offering it to her like a contract, a promise that soon, things would be better for him.

The beeping would stop and Death would take over, freeing them both from the faces,

the serpents and the constant static wash of the fluorescent lights. It was the best thing

she could do, the faces said. It was the only thing to do. Nothing would change, and

Death wasn’t leaving. Ever. She silently took the silver pen, and whipped it like a sword

across the papers, signing everything away to Death. As easy as buying a car. Or a

hearse.

  And then, when the beeping finally stopped and the sheet moved no more, she

realized that it was her. She was Death. And all it took was the stroke of a silver pen.

I didn’t sleep so well these last few days.

My mind, it knows too much.

It keeps me subconsciously alert with what I can only describe as some abstract slideshow of the last days of my “before” life, with images flashing in and out like some weird View-Master  montage.

I’m fully asleep, but I wake up sweaty, discombobulated, thrashing and tangled in the sheets.

The night before last I woke up with my feet brushing the floor, face down on the bed. Just like Gregory was the night I came home, opened the door and saw him sprawled strangely across the couch that was just so wrong, making that weird half-snoring/half-gurgling sound. I see myself trying to wake him up while stifling the panic inside me, because I think I knew it was as horrific as it would turn out to be.

How could I not know? I’d been there so many times. Wearing the badge, being on the other side. Disconnected.

And now? Now it was our time. Connection made.

911.

What is your emergency?

I don’t know what I said, but in the movie of my mind it’s something like “Hi, I’m pretty sure I’m having a nightmare and everything will be ok so just ignore this call cause when I wake up we’ll all be just fine and we will laugh and laugh about this crazy dream.”

The ambulance, the first hospital. Hours later, the ride to the big brain hospital, where they’d fix it all.

Isn’t that what their commercials always say?

And then, the neurosurgeons and their “oh well, too bad for him” indifference. You don’t see those assholes on their billboards.

Not a nightmare.

No such luck there.

Friends, family. In, out of the room. The nurses, the beep beep beeping and hissing of machines. I still hear the rings on the ICU room curtain squeak. Back and forth, open close, open close. I hear them again every time I use my shower curtain, so don’t ask if you come over and there’s a wet towel on the floor outside of my shower and the curtain is missing.

The fact that for two and a half days in the hospital the most vivid memory I have besides my Gregory dying was the exorcist style hurling I did whenever anything besides a small sip of fizzy cola passed my lips.

I remember thinking having a dead husband would be the best diet ever.

That didn’t quite work out like I thought.

I guess something that starts like that never does, does it?

It’s also made me a nasty bitch in terms of the Grief Olympics. I overheard a friend talking about how it would have been he and his partner’s 5th year anniversary this weekend. I actually managed to stop my mouth from blurting out “Oh yea? well here’s an anniversary for ya”,  because why is my pain better or worse than his? Why is his hurt less just because his partner didn’t die but is instead alive and all and thriving? Why am I comparing in my mind instead of comforting my friend in person? Why am I ill because he isn’t spending more time hanging out with me at my lowest point?

Why am I being such a bitch about EVERYTHING within a five mile radius?

I’m like Hurricane Kim.

What the hell is wrong with me?

Is that a question anyone can answer?

Or wants to?

Today I leave for the beach.

I’m taking my brain and my memories and all of the crap that goes with them. I’m hoping the salt air will clear my head and my heart and make this, the start of the third year, the year where I will finally be able to say I’m ok.

I’m hoping it does the same for my smart mouth, but I’ve been to a lot of beaches in my 42 years and so far, no luck.

But I guess I’ll go anyway.

I’ll never lose the love or the memories. But I’m ready to find me again.

Now that I don’t have him, that crazy bitch makes me whole.

“I thought I knew what love was, what did I know? Those days are gone forever, I should just let ‘em go…”