The Lake

* Trigger warning: Graphic depictions of suicide*

The night it happened, I knew something was wrong the second I opened my eyes. It wasn’t just that you weren’t in the bed beside me; that would have been normal enough. We’d both been fighting the battle against insomnia, and hadn’t won yet. It was a feeling. It was in my gut, buzzing electricity that said something isn’t right. Our cottage was silent. Too silent. I moved to the living room and began to look for you. The door to the back patio, and eventually, to the lake, had been left open. I’ll always remember how still that night was, without the hint of a breeze. How even a touch of wind might have sent that door banging, and if I’d have woken up an hour earlier, how things might have changed.

I stepped outside, hearing only the crickets singing their nocturne to the night sky. Your flip-flops were still beside the steps. You never wanted to track any sand into the cottage. The opaque darkness clouded my vision as I looked towards the water. My legs started moving of their own accord, and the closer I got to the lake, the more that thought began to pop into my head. It was the thought that you never want to think about anyone, let alone your wife. A thought that I had assured myself would never happen, after all of the therapy and medication and meditation and self-help books. To be honest, I wouldn’t have believed it if I hadn’t had seen the moonlight reflecting off of your pale skin. If you had just disappeared, I would have accepted it, whatever the reason.

But the moonlight doesn’t lie.   

…

Funerals are a testament to human resilience. Even in the face of immense grief and pain, we somehow manage to delve into ourselves and provide the loved ones of the deceased with compassion. Things get interesting when it’s a suicide funeral, though. When it’s a suicide funeral, people’s resilience is tested on a different level. Their faces get really tight and they search for the right platitudes: is I’m so sorry for your loss acceptable? Or should I say she’s in a better place now? Anyway, everyone still came. The white placard that read Patterson seemed a beacon, attracting all of our loved ones from near and far. Your mom and dad, your brother, my parents, all of our friends. I shook hands, accepted hugs, and tried to make it seem like I was there. I wasn’t. Whatever small part of my consciousness that was still tethered to my body had drifted off in the moments after I had run into the cold water of Lake Muskoka to flip you around and listen for your breath. The service ended, they put you in the ground, and everybody went home. There was one less person on this god-forsaken planet, and that was that.

…

The time that followed the funeral was weird. You’d be surprised at how generous people can be. I would smile and accept their food and company and live in my own head. It wasn’t one of those things where I wished I could say something different to you in our last moments together. What I had been thinking about is what you were thinking when you did it. Not why you did it. Only a fool would ask that question. We’ll never know. But I kept wondering what was going through your head as the water crept up over your chest, your breath held then slowly releasing so you would sink, the water rising steadily until it started to flood in through your nostrils, your body fighting for life, natural buoyancy kicking in, water filling your throat, the fight against life, until eventually your lungs would fill, weighing you down as you sank into that murky blue grave. Did you feel like you were going home? Was it a relief? I’ve heard of the last seconds being filled with regret, like a person going down in a plane and wanting to talk to someone one last time before it all ends. Or maybe you just thought about the moon, and how beautiful it looked floating peacefully above you.

…

 They say there are people to help with the pain. Counselors, therapists, and family, all a different angle. A different pill, both literal and figurative, to tranquilize everything. I’m not saying that the people tasked with helping are useless; far from it. I’m sure that for a lot of people, the talking and the stages and the metacognition of it all works wonders. But I’ll be honest with you, Sam. I always was, wasn’t I? After the hour-long sessions and the awkward phone calls, the well-meaning sympathy cards, and the emails just to see how I was doing, it was only me and you. Well, parts of you, I guess. The parts you left behind. Your scarf wrapped around the railing, your favourite coffee cup- it said I woke up like this- your shoes- there sure were a lot of them. Everything was still there. But I’m not a sentimental guy. All that stuff is just stuff. It wasn’t you. None of it really mattered. No, the part of you that I couldn’t shake came to me in the middle of the night. It was an emptiness, not just in our bed, but of us. Of what we once were. Of you. An empty cup, a recipe that was missing the key ingredient. The idea came to me one night after hours of tossing and turning. I thought a glass of water might help, so I went to the kitchen. Through the back window of our modest house, I saw the moon. And I knew there was a way to see you again. I just had to go back.

…

When I got there, I didn’t even bother unlocking the front door, I just went around back and walked straight into the lake. Somehow, I knew where I’d found you. Call it muscle memory, or death memory, but I could just feel it; like the water itself was different. Maybe the water knew what had happened and was aware of the balance of all things great and small in this great spinning wheel. Or maybe I was wrong and I was half a kilometer away. Either way, I floated, my running shoes poking up out of the water, and looked at the moon. What happened next even caught me by surprise. I really wasn’t thinking about anything until it hit me: it was that internal click that comes from somewhere none of us can really explain that tells you, without telling, to do something. The feeling that would make things go away. So I did it. I thought of you holding your breath, and then inhaling when the water was everything and did the same. I admit, when I started sinking and the water-filled me up, I expected to feel the fear. The panic. But it didn’t come. Instead, I felt relief. The further I went down, the darker it got. Until I saw the light.

…

I don’t expect to open my eyes. How do you know what to expect when you die? Isn’t that the question that has allowed every artist that has ever existed to muse with impunity since time immemorial? When they do open, they open slowly, and the first thing I see is the sun sitting cloudlessly on a blue horizon. I’m laying chest up on some shore, and it is the middle of a beautiful afternoon. My memory is intact, and in my mind’s eye, I can see the moon shining down on my sinking body, hear the vibrations underwater as I go down, and see the darkness closing in. But this? I wasn’t expecting this. It’s too early to hypothesize, so I sit up instead. Things seem to be working just fine as far as the brain, heart, and lungs are concerned, so I try to stand up. I turn around and see our cottage. It looks different in the sun, with the green of the trees and the dark red of our Muskoka chairs against the dark brown of our cottage. And then you walk out.

…

You’re wearing your cottage dress, and I see the long, red fabric with the swirling patterns as soon as you step onto the patio. You open the door with your hip, because you are carrying a platter of enchiladas that you place on the table. Your eyes look out at the lake and you shout, “Jamesssss! Dinner is ready!”

I’m still struck by how surreal this all is as I walk towards the cottage. The fact that my feet make imprints in the sand is a good sign and tells me that whatever realm I’m in still obeys some of the laws of physics. I’m in my bathing suit, and as I ascend the stairs, I see you holding out my cottage beach towel. I look at your face as you hand me the towel, and see your dark green eyes that always seemed so at home underneath your crimson hair. There was a freckle just to the right of your left eye, and that was still there too. You smile, kiss me on the cheek, and sit down. I follow suit. 

“Are you… are you alive? Am I alive?”

It’s all I can manage, and I feel as shitty about it as it sounds. After all of the sleepless nights and broken bottles, this is what I come up with? You look at me, your smile unbroken.

“Of course, dear. We both are,” you say.

I look around, and everything looks real. Like any of the many summer days that we had spent in the very same place.

“But I thought you… well, you… You know…”

“Oh, James!” you said. “We don’t ask questions here. We just are.”

You begin to pour your patented red sauce over your enchiladas and look back at me, anticipating understanding.

“Okay. So this is some sort of like, purgatory? Like, a waiting room? Or is this the real deal? Like, the H-word?” 

“You can’t bring all of that stuff from there to here,” you say. “Just enjoy it.”

I nod my head as you gesture towards the red sauce, which I thoroughly cover my enchiladas with. There are chilled glasses of pinot grigio on the table that we sip as we eat. Eventually, I ask: “What’s it like being here? I mean, is it weird? What do you remember?”

Your eyes narrow, and I can tell your thinking really hard, as you chew and swallow.

“Well, I remember… things. There was a lot of darkness there. Things were cloudy, you know? But here? It’s always sunny. I’m telling you, Jim, just give it a chance. You’ll get used to it.”

I sip some wine and decide to stop worrying so much about the state of things. We talk. It feels good. We reminisce about the old days, like how we met in university at that one party you almost didn’t go to because you were too hungover. We laugh at our first date and how awkward it all was, how I went to kiss you but you turned it into a hug, and I walked away embarrassed. But you texted me later, saying we should totally hang out sometime. After dinner, we leave the dishes on the table and we walk along the beach with a glass of wine. We talk about our parents and how funny they were at our wedding. About our friends and how even though we sometimes hate each other, we always had each other’s backs. You go back inside and grab another bottle, this time a red. We bring it to the beach and we sit, asses in the sand, watching the sun go down. You say that it looks like a flaming tear-drop falling into the horizon and I agree. We hear the crickets, and I say they sound like a symphony, and you agree.

I hold your hand. Aside from the crickets, it is silent, and this is okay. Secretly, I wonder if this is just a one-off thing, if I am just in transition if there is a different, hotter place for me to go. I’ve never been one for religion, and classify myself as a glorified agnostic, but have to admit I’m starting to wish I’d chosen a side, especially if it meant that I could stay with you. The sun is gone and dusk settles in with its shadowy essence. You lie back in the sand, balancing your wine glass on your stomach.

“Isn’t it amazing that we are just... part of it all? That we just sit here and exist, knowing that we are cogs in this great celestial experiment?”

Your eyes flash in the darkness and my heart flutters. I’m used to your existentialism, but this time, there is a decidedly un-angsty nuance that I appreciate.

“I ‘spose so, m’dear.”

You reach over and stroke the side of my face. I look into your eyes and see the pain is gone from them; believe me, I spent enough time looking into them to know. We kiss each other at the same time, and our bodies morph into one. We make love in the cool sand, with the tide coming in slowly, touching our toes with its frothy tongue.

…

I wake up in the morning in our cottage bed. You are there beside me, your dark, red hair absorbing the morning light. I feel the relief of things that I can’t even comprehend, of a life that is permanently suspended and potentially forgotten. I roll over and bury myself in the smell of your hair.

…

The days go by like this for a long time. Each day follows a similar routine, but is open to interpretation; it’s a bit like that movie with Bill Murray that we used to watch when we would both call in sick from work. You’ll make the coffee, I’ll make the eggs, and we’ll sit in the kitchen with the window open feeling the cool morning breeze breath life into our minds. Every day is the same, but only with the weather, which is a good thing if you’ve ever experienced a Canadian summer. Small things, like the type of wine we have or the sandwiches we have for lunch, will change, but for the most part, each day is the same kind of perfection as the last. Until one day. We were sitting together at the table and your face seemed to get blurry. It was only for a second, and you certainly didn’t seem to notice. The day went on as normal, and we made love in the sand. Afterward, we lay, looking at the stars and feeling our cells hum and vibrate with pleasure, and you held my hand. This was new. You squeezed it and crawled closer to me, holding me, like you knew something.

At that point, I think I had forgotten about the things that had happened before. Or maybe I knew, but they were stored away somewhere, deep inside. When I woke up in the middle of the night, I’d never expected to find the bed empty. When I did, I recognized the feeling that hit me. Instinct took a hold of me, drawing inspiration from some well-hidden well of trauma, and I raced outside, down the steps, and to the lake. I swam this time, thinking I’d make it in time. I didn’t. Except for this time, you weren’t floating on the surface. I thought there was still a chance, so I dove down. I kept my eyes open, the murky lake water stinging my eyes, as I looked for your alabaster skin that would surely pop amongst the gloom and the weeds of the deep lake. It didn’t. I just kept diving, deeper and deeper, until my lung capacity began to startle me. After a while, I gave up. To my surprise, I didn’t float to the surface. I just stayed there, feeling the darkness of the lake consume me as I looked upwards, searching for the moon, only to see a world of shadows and darkness closing in on me.

…

The machines in the hospital room beep at different intervals and the result is a sort of dissonant symphony. A young woman in scrubs opens the door and surveys said machines. Her demeanor is cheery, though her tired eyes would say different. Her name-tag reads Jackie. She walks over to the man lying in the hospital bed and says: “Well now, Mr. Patterson. How are you today? Seen any good movies lately?”

She chuckles to herself, a joke that she reserves for only certain audiences, and gets to work. She rolls him onto one side and rubs a cream onto the bedsores that are spreading around his hip, extends his frail knee out until it is straight, rolls him back the other way, and does the same to the opposite side. She changes his waste bag (the yellow kind) and his food fluid bag. She checks another bag, notices it is empty and reminds herself to make a note that the other bag will need changing soon.  

She notes that he is scheduled for physical therapy with Frances this afternoon and smiles. Frances is a sweetheart, kind of like her work-mom. Her checklist done, Jackie prepares to leave. She takes a look at the man in the bed, dark hair quickly fading to grey, muscles atrophying and features becoming gaunt… and feels something. It isn’t pity. You can’t be a nurse if you feel pity. But she knows it’s something written on his face. A sort of absence that differs from the usual next-to-non-existence of the typical comatose patient.

Like the guy is off somewhere in his dreams and might never be coming back.