Grief
“How much longer do you think she’ll be like this?”
“I don’t know. It took me almost a year to get over Kristy’s death. But she was my wife... a child? There is no telling how long she’ll grieve for him.”
I fell out of my sitting position onto my side on the couch, dragging the cushion over my exposed ear to muffle their voices. Will they ever stop hovering and whispering around me? They were like buzzing annoying flies circling my head. I’m sick of it already! Why won’t they leave me alone already, it’s not like I haven’t asked them to a million times!
“I understand what she’s going through—”
I didn’t hear the rest of his statement but that part irked me. Morris understood what I was going through? That’s a laugh! The man ran from anything that could tie him down. He ran like the hounds of hell were nipping at his heels from girls who thought they could change him into husband material and those who thought they could get a ring on their finger faster if he knocked them up. Why girls even chased after his selfish black ass was a mystery to me.
Everything inside me screamed for me to stand up and tell William and Morris exactly how they didn’t understand my pain. Tell them they’ve never lost a child and wouldn’t begin to fathom what that kind of pain did to a mother. It was me who would never get to feel my child again. I carried him inside me for nine months, fought to bring him into this world. I’m the one who cared for him from the moment he took his first breath. Cleaned him up when he got messy, held him against my chest and rocked him to sleep when he was restless. I was the one he called out to when he was scared or hurt. I cleaned his bruises kissed his booboos and picked him up when he fell so that he could try again when he started taking his first steps. And when he rode his first tricycle, I was the one who followed behind him with my heart in my throat and my arms held out ready to catch him even though it was practically impossible to fall over in a three wheeled bike that was a foot off the ground. I was the one who had a piece of myself ripped away from me cruelly so if I want to take a year or ten to get over it, I’ll damn well do exactly that!
Yes, that’s just some of what I wanted to say to them, to those who ‘understood my pain’ but the moment I tried to push of the couch to do just that, I would remember my baby was dead and it all felt insignificant. What was the use anyway, what would it matter? Little Eric would still be dead.
“Aunty Sandra?”
I groaned, pressing the cushion tighter to my head. Maybe if I just ignored her she’ll go away. But no, she was as determined as her mother used to be—in life and death. She tagged on the cushion and the tighter I held on the harder she pulled.
“Aunty Sandra!”
I let the cushion go and sat up, “What!”
Kristy stumbled back with the cushion in her hands. She took the two steps back towards me and placed it beside me on the couch, and then she turned to me with a smile. This little girl could disarm a monster with one of her smiles. From the moment she was born, her smiles warmed me all over. The best remedy at the end of a bad day. She had this joy that just came off her in waves, completely infectious. She was so like her mother in that way… my baby sister. But now, all it did was annoy me and remind me of what I lost. It just wasn’t fair!
“Mommy says she’ll take care of little Eric for you.” She beamed up at me.
Did I hear that right? “Excuse me?”
She nodded vigorously, her smile widening another mile, “She says not to worry. That everything will be alright and she’ll always be with you to take care of you… like she does daddy and me.”
“Take care of me?” Was this a joke? “Kristy my perfect little sister, now the perfect ghost wants to take care of me?”
Little Kristy’s smile shrunk and she looked behind me—probably at her father or her ghost of a mother.
I pointed behind, “Is she back there? Is Casper’s new best friend standing behind me?”
She shook her head, her smile completely shrunk.
I nodded, “Tell your mother, I don’t need her.”
“Sandra!” William reproached, rounding the couch to crouch down next to his daughter.
“What? Now she offers her help, to take care of me?” I laughed bitterly at the silliness of it all, “Where was she when my son was dying? Where was she when my son’s lungs filled up with fluid, drowning him from the inside in his own blood? Why didn’t she help then when I begged her to? When I cried for days for her to intervene on Eric’s behalf with God?” I grabbed her arms and drew her to me, “It’s because of me you are here, I made sure her daughter exists and how does she repay me? By letting my son die!” I yelled.
I felt my hands get pried open, releasing a crying Kristy into her father’s arms. I was then pulled off the couch and held caged against a hard body. I didn’t have to turn around to know who it was. His scent, the feel of his skin against mine, I knew them all as if they were my own. I hated it. I hated him. More so because even now as I mourned my son I yearned for him with a profound need. Over eight years and the craving for him just grew in magnitude. Not even my husband could stop or slow down this growing tumor in my heart that was Ronald Stanford.
