Two Years Ago
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2 Years Ago
-Liza-
A knock on the door. Or was there?
Trying to decipher whether or not the sound I heard was real or a remnant from my dream I glanced over at the clock on my bedside table.
3:54am. Clearly it was from my dream, but wait…there it was again.
Instinctively I reached over to Brian’s side of the bed, arms out and ready to give him a shove in the direction of the front door. My arms found a cold sheet.It took me only a few moments to remember that he was out of town again and wouldn’t be back until…when?
My mind struggled to gain the awareness needed to put together a timeline in my head. It was Thursday, well, actually Friday now, and I swear the message he left earlier today had said I would see him Thursday around midnight.
I glanced at the clock again.
3:55am.
Another knock.
That one was absolutely real. My heart started to beat a little faster, working toward bringing me to full consciousness, as I began to think through all the reasons someone would be knocking at my door at four in the morning.
Hurrying to put an end to the noise before it woke my kids, I swung my legs out of bed and pulled Brian’s old t-shirt, which hung down just past my hips, a little further down my body and headed out of the bedroom, down the hall and to the front door.
Through the small window to the left of the door I could see an unfamiliar car parked in the driveway. I unlatched the dead bolt and opened the door with one hand, the other still tugging at my shirt. Only a small light shown on the outside of the house, otherwise the night was a starless, moonless, dark.
Maybe because of the lack of light, or maybe because the door was only open an inch, but more than likely because my head still hadn’t completely cleared itself of my recent slumber, it took several moments for my eyes to focus on the faces of the two men who stood in front of me. It took me even longer to realize that while one was in plain clothes, the other was wearing a police officer’s uniform. And it took longer still for me to respond to the single question they asked me.
“Mrs. O’Neil?”
“Yes,” I was finally able to answer, though my throat was dry and my voice scratchy. I felt oddly aware that my legs were naked from the thighs down, but they didn’t seem to notice.
“Mrs. O’Neil, I am Officer Carlson and this is Officer Benson. May we come in?” the plain clothed one asked me.
I answered by stepping aside and letting them pass me. I closed the door softly behind me and trailed them into the living room where they had already seated themselves on the couch. Following their lead, I sat opposite them on the loveseat, pulled a blanket over my legs, and waited for what came next.
“Mrs. O’Neil,” the one in plain clothes began. He spoke softly and slowly, his eyes a mixture of fear and sympathy. “There was an accident earlier tonight.”
My mind, although still slightly fuzzy, started shuffling through the thousands of ways that sentence could be finished. A thousand different ways, but only one way my brain wouldn’t entertain, not even for a second.
“Another car struck Brian’s and he was killed. I’m sorry,” he finished.
“What did you say?” I asked. I don’t know if I was still not truly awake after those three minutes since leaving my bed. I don’t know if my mind was already forming some type of defense mechanism or some sort of denial without letting the rest of my body in on it. But when that question escaped my lips, I sincerely did not know the answer.
Officer Carlson looked at Officer Benson and then again at me.
“Your husband was killed in a car accident tonight. I am so sorry. Is there someone we can call for you?”
That time I heard it. But it didn’t mean anything to me. Not yet. They were still just words.
“My mom?” It came out as a question rather than an answer. My mom, I thought. My mom who was several states away. But that was all I could come up with. I gave Officer Benson the number and he began dialing. Even as I listened to him repeat to my mom what the other officer had just told me, it still didn’t feel real. I still felt numb.
“She is on her way. Is there someone near by we can call to stay with you until she gets here?” Officer Benson asked after hanging up.
I shook my head no.
Of course there was. There was my sister, Brian’s parents, Brian's sister or my friend Suzanne. But none of those options occurred to me.
“Would you like an officer to stay with you until your mom arrives?” Officer Benson looked between Officer Carlson and me, trying to decipher my lack of response while looking for a signal from his partner’s eyes on how they should handle me.
“No, thank you,” I managed to mumble.
Officer Carlson handed me a card and began giving me information and asking questions that I can no longer remember. Something about identifying the body and funeral arrangements, but I must have answered them because they left soon after.
I knew how it was supposed to go. I’ve read enough books and seen enough movies to know that time was supposed to slow down to a strange slow motion blur. I should have fallen to my knees, sobbing uncontrollably, and someone, a friend perhaps, was supposed to rush to me, cradle me, stroke my hair, and through her own teary eyes tell me that things would be okay. That’s how it was supposed to go, but that’s not how it went.
I was alone. I stared at the clock above the TV, watching as the minutes ticked by. Time seemed to be carrying on just fine. My heart didn’t race. In fact, thanks to my numbness, I felt strangely calm.
I returned to my room and laid down on the bed. I didn’t look over at his empty pillow. I didn’t pull his shirt up over my nose to breathe in the remaining trace of his cologne. I didn’t even dot my damp eyes with a tissue. I would do those things several hundred times over the next couple years until eventually there was not another pillow next to mine to look at, until his smell faded from everything except my memory, and my body had completely and utterly drained itself of it’s ability to produce anything resembling emotion, including tears.
The house remained silent except for the steady beating of my heart as it feebly attempted to pump denial through my veins. I laid still, looking up at the ceiling, wondering when I would really start crying and why nothing had sunk in yet. Surely I was as awake as it was possible to be even if I still felt like I was in a dream.
But I knew the answers to those questions before I could finish asking them. In the morning when my kids woke up, came into the kitchen to find me alone, and asked when Dad was coming home, just as they did every morning he was away, that was when. When I had to look at their sweet faces and give them an answer, that’s when I would cry. That’s when it would sink it.
Knowing I only had a few short hours of numbness left I laid awake, preparing for how it would feel when my heart finally ripped in two.
