Museum

Dear Laura, 

There are many things that words can’t seem to express. Loss is one of them, isn’t it? We make up all these words to go with emotions, and some spin colors into their work, calling sorrow blue, grey, or even black. It’s transformed into the missing piece, a form of emptiness, and I suppose that’s true. Nobody could do this awful feeling justice, but I’ll be damned if I won’t try. Besides, the therapist said it might be good to write. She told me not to write to you. Ha! I used one of my many skills, and tuned her out. Just like you did to me, you ass. As much as I’d love to say I hate you, we both know that isn’t true. Anyway, the letter. Shall we?

The house feels like a damn museum. I don’t want to touch anything, I don’t want to erase what little I have left of you. The cups with lipstick stains around the rim remain untouched. So do the blankets which I lifted you from. All of your research is left scattered around your desk, covered in the shorthand that only you can read. I haven’t even slept in our bed, I haven’t even slept at all. Everything is the exact way that you left it, the door knocker leaned to the left, the blinds pulled halfway open, the dishes in the dish rack, all stacked to the left.

Our room still smells like your perfume. 

Everything, including me, has you written all over it. In fact, the barista at that coffee shop you loved so much asked after you the other day. I told her you passed, and she began to tear up, as did the owner when he heard the news. ‘Passed’. What a stupid word. It is, simply put, a cushion for dead. But I can’t exactly tell this poor, sweet girl that, now can I? I can’t start sobbing and screaming about how you’re gone, how you’re dead and buried in the cold and lifeless ground, and how your body will decompose, and how in forty years nobody but me will remember your name. So instead, I lower my eyes like a cowed dog, and I say that you’ve ‘passed’. 

I still got you your coffee, though. Of course I did. 

The walk to the lab seems a lot shorter when I can’t push your wheelchair. I still take the ramps by habit, but you’re not there by my waist to tell me to hurry up. The frogs in the bushes don’t sing anymore, because they know that I’m not you. The city sidewalks are plain and bare, with faceless people doing pointless things. 

And yes, as I said before, I still walk to the lab. So far, I’ve managed to step inside the building, and stand in front of the elevator. I stand in front of those silver doors and pretend that I’m waiting for the elevator to take me up, so that I can walk the tiled hallway and find the door with the criss-cross glass that opens into our lab. You know the place. The room with it’s silver tables and all the equipment, with medical diagrams and test results scattered all over, and the coffee machine with the sticky notes above it. It’s here, standing outside the elevator, where I re-create the whole space in my mind’s eye, blissfully glossing over the fact that you took your own life there. 

I also pretend that your wheelchair isn’t still there, left by the paramedics who scooped you up and put you on a gurney. It was useless, anyway. You were gone before they got you anywhere near the stairwell. ‘Gone’. Gone, like you’re off on another business trip, making speeches and attending conferences, waiting to get home to me and our coffee-and-perfume scented apartment. But you’re not that type of gone, it’s a whole new ballgame in a whole new stadium. Again, I want to shout. But I don’t. I shake out my shoulders and try at a deep breath, pivoting on my heel and taking the walk home, the same route you loved.

The communal gardens feel empty now, without you sitting near the fountain and telling me which flowers to pick. The graffiti in the alleyways has lost all appeal without you pointing out each color in the lettering and exactly what style the artist used. People wave to me and offer their condolences, but I can’t place their faces, let alone their names. 

Somebody brought chili over the other night, alone with a bottle of wine. The food is untouched, but the bottle’s gone, and maybe that’s why I have a headache. Either that, or maybe it’s because I slept on the floor. I can’t- no, I won’t sleep in our bed. I won’t mess up the imprint of you in the mattress, and I certainly won’t mess up the way you left your blankets. 

For some reason, I keep thinking you’ll come back. Is that selfish of me? I… I know you didn’t like it here. I know you were in pain, and that all the treatments and doctor’s appointments terrified you. I know that you were sick of the medication, and I know that the wheelchair devastated you, and I know we spent our whole lives searching for a cure that doesn’t exist. But please, Laura. Please let me be selfish.

The entire city feels like an empty carton without you, worn out and void of purpose, waiting by the door to be thrown away. I haven’t broken our routine, and I’m not sure that I will. I walk the same ramps, pass by the same shops, and feel the same freshly stale air on my face. It reminds me of you, everything does. It’s like a cheesy movie, where I can see you in every inch of this whole damned place, but just as I get close enough to say something, you vanish. 

I’m sure people think I’m on drugs. I could be, If I tried. 

But now, I’m nearing the bottom of the back of this page. Does that make sense? You know what I mean, don’t you? Of course you do. That means you also know what that bottom of the page means. It means that once I finish these last few lines, the small tie I’ve managed to stake between us will sever, Laura. It means that I'll be left alone in your museum of a city, and you’ll be left alone in… I don’t know. I don’t know where you’ve gone. I hope that there’s nettles, crowflowers, and long purples there. And no wheelchairs, doctor’s appointments, or medication anywhere in sight. I also hope that one day I’ll see you again, you ass. Maybe I’ll even get the courage to go up the elevator and down the tiled hall. 

With as much love as possible, 

Alec.