Between You and Me.

Trigger Warning: Death, Grief.

The coffin wasn’t right. Austin raced through a mental checklist, assessing each detail of the wooden box before him. The ache in his shoulder confirmed it was oak. It’s dark stain contrasted beautifully with the purple flowers arranged on top. The curved, brass handles followed the lines of the timber perfectly. Everything was as she had specified, so why did it look wrong? What was out of place? Then it hit him, it was the trim. His eyes widened in realisation. It had the right swirls and beads, but the pattern was all wrong. Hazel would have been furious…had she not been the one laying inside.

That was the kind of thing his wife would have caught. The detail she would have raised hell to have corrected or compensated, despite it being all too late. Austin just didn’t have it in him to fight on her behalf in that moment and so remained silent, holding in his devastation. None of the other guests, lined along the age-smoothed pews of her favourite church, would know any different. Dressed in their best blacks, they likely wouldn’t even notice; they would be too focused on silently paying their respects. Hazel’s wishes for this day had not been a secret, they had simply only been known to her husband. He supposed he was now titled her widow and completely alone in the knowledge that he had failed to protect her vision of a perfect ending.

The wooden detailing Hazel had wanted on her final resting place was one of so many little things known only to the two of them. No matter how many friends, family and loved ones filled the echoing space beneath the stone arches of the old building, only he, solitary among them, could begin to grasp every nuance that made up her being. Austin stood at the centre of the front row, barely listening to Father Badelt’s droning sermon. He didn’t need to look behind him to see the familiar faces in their assigned seats; her carefully curated guest list was etched in his memory. He already knew who’s eyes would be falling on the back of his head and whispering about his welfare.

Her Mother and Sister were to his right, just visible at the edges of his vision. Though his eyes refused to stray from the invading timber edging, he could hear their heavy breaths and occasional sobs as they clung to each other. Neither of them knew how jealous Hazel had been of their bond, nor how many tears Austin had brushed from her cheeks after family gatherings, sparked by her exclusion from those who should have accepted her the most. All parents have their favourites, no matter what they say, but rarely had he seen it so blatantly displayed. Austin knew how fetid his beloved had found the second rate affection offered to her, like scraps from the banquet table. He had done his best to compensate with his own undivided love. It could never quite replace what she lacked, but the tear stained smiles she offered had always let him know how much she appreciated his efforts. Her unvoiced resentment, would now remain safe within him and he would become the guardian to her chosen silence on the issue.

Her high school friends would be in the back, those who still felt familiar enough to attend. Their knowledge of Hazel would be limited to irregular check-ins, months or years of silence stretching between them, accompanied by a growing distance. They had been as intimate with her life as a paragraph on a phone screen allowed or a rare coffee shop conversation could provide. Austin wondered if any one of them had spoken about Hazel to their own partners as often as she had to him. He hoped they understood how highly she regarded each of them and how much they had influenced her life. When he had suggested she reconnect with them in earnest, urging her to communicate the intensity with which she missed them, he had been met with pure amusement. These were not things, she told him, that one would suddenly gush upon an old friend. So there they remained, at the back of the room during her funeral, all too young for such an occasion and kept as distant from her as they had been during the last years of her life. Her longing for them remained shielded within him, for it would only bring them pain to know.

Work colleagues filled several rows, more than would have come for Austin had their roles been reversed. Hazel had always been instantly likeable, he a more acquired taste. He could clearly picture the segregated group, each careful not to overstep into the personal sphere. They had only been privy to whatever she had been willing to share over the top of a computer monitor or across an open lunchbox. While that level of intimacy would have made him uncomfortable, the comprehensive updates he received every evening about their lives more than made up for it. She had never hesitated to fill him in on all she had shared in reciprocation, so he had never been caught unaware when accompanying her to corporate functions and meeting strangers who seemed to know him intricately already. A tinge of guilt sank into his stomach, smothering the moment of relief he felt at the realisation, that he would never have attend another. The confidence she had placed in him to keep her true opinions about her colleagues private, remained intact. They would not hear it from him that day and he would likely never have another opportunity to share anything with them again.

The rest of the room would be made up of their mutual friends, neighbours and any number of other casual acquaintances Hazel had picked up on her journey through life. They may each have known a version of Hazel at one time or another, but the overriding thought that was gripping Austin, as he roved his mind across the faces in his mental picture, was that none of them knew her at all. Not in her entirety. Only he held the knowledge of who she was, as close to completeness as was possible now that she herself was gone. His red-strained eyes hardened at a resolution, doubling down on that damned trim, as he thought that perhaps none of them deserved to be there at all. They were all saying goodbye to false versions of her. Only he could appreciate the truest reality of her soul. A moment later he calmed, recognising the flash of anger as the insanity it was, she would have wanted her loved ones around her. They deserved a place here, as they had during her living moments. Even if not a single one had been by her side, when she had really needed them.

Where had all these people been when she was sitting on the kitchen floor, too weak to pull herself to her feet and return to the bed. Fetching a simple cup of tea reducing her to a sobbing mess, a ball of pain wracked flesh surrounded by broken ceramic shards. Had any of them seen her sweat soaked sheets from yet another sleepless night of enduring the agony that painkillers could no longer touch!? Which person there had stroked her hair and hummed her favourite tune, granting her the scant periods of rest she was allowed? What of the vomit he had mopped from the tiles or the lessening weight of her body that he lifted day after day. None. None had been present to her decline. Only he had seen that version of her. Only he had known every face of her persona, joy through to unbearable agony. Why? Because she had wanted none of them to see. She had wanted the memory in their minds to be of her healthy and smiling. Only Austin was to be trusted with the reality of her end, he was to protect the image of her held in the world. He was to stand fast between the ruined version of her and the eyes of others. 

He had done this gladly. He had always been guardian to their inner sanctum of shared, private thoughts. It had always been the two of them, safeguarded in their own bubble from everything and everyone else. Now he was standing alone.

Father Badelt finished his musings. Austin had not heard a word. His eyes remained fixed on the flawed wooden box that held his wife. Eulogies were read, passages and poems recited, music played. Everything was as she had planned, the days events followed her requests to the letter. Requests made in a soft voice while losing its strength to the disease. None of it changed anything for Austin. She was still gone and he still worked to hold on to the memory of everything that she was and to act as a wall between her secrets and the world.

The last song played and he stepped forward to usher the room past her defective coffin. Every hand he shook and hug he bore from the leaving guests chipped away at the biggest secret he sheltered. The shared action he took with Hazel that no one could ever know, for it would tarnish every version of her that existed in all those minds. Tears broke free, silently streaming from the corners of Austins eyes, each kind word uttered and hand shaken building the pressure on his resolve. He could bare it, he would always have to. If he could shoulder the vivid memory of the empty pain killer bottle that had ended their shared misery forever, then he could keep the lifelong secret with ease. Along with all the others.