Vignette: Mourning

There I stood, lost.

It had been so surreal the way the night coughed thunder and lightning on the eve of her death. Then, just a few minutes after she died, the rains came, unforgiving and relentless, pounding on surfaces so harshly it drowned the sounds of despair that followed the realization that she was gone. Truly, irrevocably, gone.

Tears fell then, countless to be certain, while people tried blindly to find consolation. There was none of course. Perhaps a hallow feeling of non-pain could be obtained from a few words or a hug, but none of that could change the fact that she was dead. None of that could change the fact that for the next few moments, days, years, people would be grieving. Mourning. Even dying a little themselves.

Some longer than others. A few, longer than most.

I was not one of those who cried.

But I was one of those that grieved, and mourned and died, and would grieve and would mourn and would die for years to come.

And how I wished I could weep. How I wished I could express my bitter anger at having lost her. How I wished I could grab desperately at the comfort offered by those who would have known what I had lost, how much I lost.

Instead, I stood with the rest of them, pretending to be sad, but not broken. For once, jealous of the man that was by her side. Her husband. My friend. The man who held her hand when she died. I never felt so envious of someone for something as I was with those last few minutes of her life. And yet, I had done nothing but stand by the hospital door, as near as I would dare considering our circumstance.

I saw him more clearly as I approached her coffin. He accepted my hug, hesitantly, painfully. And then softly, so that my husband would not hear, he whispered.

“Her last words were, ‘I love you Jenny’.” That was all he would say before he turned away.

And then, I cried.