Death Doesn't Stop For Christmas

Death Doesn't Stop For Christmas

by Lucy Rose

*Warning: Self harm/Mental health*

“I wasn’t going to do it,” she whispered, doe-eyes begging me to understand from her hospital bed, eyelashes long and wet and pleading. Her thick eyeliner remained unmoving. “Oh, it’s so embarrassing. I wish I was dead.”

“I know you weren’t,” I mumbled—she didn’t get it, and I was trying not to be frustrated—I took her good hand comfortingly and shot her a that’s-not-funny look. The nurse glanced over anxiously. “Be careful what you wish for, Sari.”

“Jeez, am I an ass. I always sort of thought of myself as a cutesy, girly sort of clumsy, you know? Sort of damsel-in-distress-y. But ‘turns out I’m just stupid clumsy.”

“Sari.” I began as kindly and steadily as I could, shaking my head. Her faded purple-blonde hair inched morosely back and forth in response. “I thought—therapy?” My voice sounded wet and nasally to my own ears. It made me faintly sick again.

“I stopped going months ago,” she admitted, not meeting my eyes, “Dr. Howie started to look like—like him.” Her normally sweet, clear, melodic voice was gruff and very sober.

“You can tell me what happened,” I said firmly, as if I didn’t know, couldn’t have guessed…

“I had the scissors—just some rusty kitchen ones. And I cut my split ends—” she reached for a lock of hair with her bandaged hand, and winced “--and I was just feeling it, the metal on my wrist, and I was thinking about it… but not really. I wasn’t going to do anything, I promise. I promise. My hand slipped. You have to believe me. They’re going to send me somewhere. They think…” she dabbed at her eyes with one blood-soaked sleeve.

I met Sari on the subway seven months ago. She was in a lacy black top and combat boots and red lipstick, and the mascara had dripped down her thin, beautiful, breakable face and collected in a pool under her chin—the kind of streams that only hours of crying could create; but her thick black winged eyeliner was perfect, and her chin was shaking gracefully, in a controlled way. 

And all I had to do was listen, and I got to keep her. Moreover, she got to keep me, and I knew I had to hold on to her. I followed her around, knowing she needed me. I listened to her talk for forty-five minutes, and we both missed our stops. I gave her my number and made her promise to use it. She did the next day, sobbing painfully into the phone. I found her a therapist and helped her call her Mom for the first time in weeks and helped her clean the depressed nest of her apartment. But mostly, I just listened. That was all it took. 

Sari’s boyfriend was in a major collision in Brooklyn last year. He was twenty-two, sober, and there was a little black ring box in his pocket as he made the commute to pick her up. He never showed up. She told me, later, through little gasps and trembling lips, that she would’ve said yes. I heard her say it over and over. “I never thought I would get married—but I would’ve said yes.”

***

It was very snowy when I met Santa Claus. Bill was old, retired, and choleric. He’d seen bad dreams at night and worse things during the day. But he was still Bill; he still dressed up annually in a big red suit and a beard and a hat and he sat outside the local Church in the snow with a bag of candy canes. Four kids showed. Two asked for the new iPhone. One wailed the entire time—there was always one of those, at least. One wanted a puppy.

“Oh, I’m sorry bud, but Santa doesn’t bring puppies. The elves don’t make those. Is there maybe a toy you want instead?” He asked the nine-year old, who proceeded to flip him off.

At least the bar would greet him warmly; it always did after a long day. He watched the game with a sort of separate-from-everything trance; not caring enough to truly pay attention, his eyes glued to the little screen that took up so much of everybody else with begrudging attention. I was the only one there who noticed when he started having chest pains. When the ambulance was called, he talked to me all the way to the doors. I listened. He talked about Dorothy and the wedding they’d planned and the kids they’d never had. “I wish I’d been better to her while I had her,” he repeated, a little stunned. I took his hands with the most comforting smile I could muster. “Maybe you’ll see her after you get out of here,” I said, gesturing gently to the stretcher. A smile widened over his face, mollified.

***

Gloria was the cutest six-year-old you’ve ever seen. Dark pigtails and rosy cheeks and almond-shaped eyes that turned down on the corners. Always smiling. I was sorry, so sorry, she had to see me.

Everything was right in her life, from coloring pages to cupcakes.

And I had to stay.

Her mom was sober. Her dad was sober. Her two-year-old little sister was sleeping, quiet, and happy. Content. Coming back from a Christmas party. 

The man in the little black car wasn’t sober. He wasn’t happy or content. He was reckless.

Gloria was the only one still alive when they pulled them out of the ditch. I almost wished, for her sake, that she wasn’t. Say what you want, but living is so much more painful. Death is numbing. 

Everything was right in her life. From velcro shoes to Disneyland.

I stick around the people unlucky enough to have close encounters with me. Death doesn’t stop for Christmas or holidays or things you never got to do or good days or bad days or weather. Rain or shine, smiling or crying, alone or in love, everyone will die. I can’t stop for anything. I listen, I wait, I smile, I bite my lip and cry and hold your hand; I do every damn thing I can. But I can’t stop. No matter how bad I want to.

I met Drew on the boardwalk three summers ago. He almost drowned trying stupidly to swim under the pier in front of some girls. I tried to keep my distance, but there was something so magnetizing about him; his pine sap eyes and freckles and the waves of his hair. He was someone I could listen to forever, yes; but he was someone I wanted to talk to, too. More than anyone else. I tried to keep my distance… he didn’t need me hanging around. But I did.

He told me about his dad and the stepmoms he’d never met. He told me about his older sister jumping off a bridge her senior year of high school. He told me about how he’d smoked anything he could get his hands on and poked himself full of holes and needles and swallowed every pill and he was still empty. He said he was probably the most messed-up person I’d ever seen, huh? I told him no.

He played guitar with fingers so scarred, so skilled. Like the strings never ended, just continued up into his veins, striking chords in his heart. The tips of his fingers sounded like wood when he tapped them against the table, from hours on hours on hours of playing. But when they hit the fretboard, they were as smooth and warm and burning as your first sip of wine; the sound was so rich and shocking and vibrant. It was the kind of music you could see in burning swirls of sunshine and stars. The kind of sound that shifted your soul irrevocably, and changed a little part of you permanently.

I would’ve listened to him play forever, but we didn’t have that long.

We had just long enough for me to see him love Emma.

She was blond. She was short. She was beautiful, I guess. I only saw her when he was staring at her, his eyes lit from within as if by two brilliantly green flames. I only saw her when he kissed her and she giggled and he traced soft hearts on her face with his fingertips. When he didn’t talk aloud to me anymore. When they walked down the aisle together, both of them glowing gold, her in the fluffiest white dress I’d ever seen. I only saw her when he came home on Christmas Eve, chocolate box in hand, and found her with the neighbor. When he went back to the drugs, for good, and never came back. When I carried him away from the bathroom floor of a motel.