Destination

“There is not a guidebook for knowing how long is long enough to feel OK after someone passes on. There should be, it would make everything so much simpler and provide a clear and obvious goal to work toward. It is infuriating that such a set marker doesn’t exist. It’s not that I cannot stop mourning, it’s that I don’t know when I’m allowed to put it down and stop picking it up. I was at our bar last night; it was trivia night, and I was sitting in our booth, and everyone knew it. It took a little while, roughly 3 beers and two trivia rounds, I couldn’t tell you what that equals in time on a clock, but I don’t have to do I? You know exactly how long that is.

“Anyway, it took that much time, but I was having fun you know, the category was sci-fi films and literature, I was kicking all of the ass, and I had a good buzz going. I laughed at a question, got it right in less than 3 seconds and secured the win for the round. So, of course I did a fist pump and whooped and called for another beer. The looks I got… these are our friends and I know they miss you, but it feels like I’m supposed to carry the collective grief of the room every time I’m there. All of them were laughing and cutting up just like always and as long as I had my long face on and gave an occasional sad smirk, they were fine. But as soon as I cut loose it was like I had violated your memory and the energy in the room changed from sympathy to anger. They were actually pissed off at me because I was having fun while you’re rotting in the ground, I don’t know what to do with that.

“Oh well, screw it all anyway. It’s been a year today and your ghost just keeps lingering. I’m not mad about it, it’s nice having you here to talk to about you not being here hehe. I’m going to call it long enough, if you ever have to mourn me go ahead and knock a few months off the requisite period, give me 9 months. If a human can grow from conception to birth in that time frame, surely you can grieve adequately and send them back to the stuff they came from in the same window. It feels incredibly stupid to drive all the way out to the canal to meet you tonight, but you always were half stupid, so I packed a bottle of Jameson and the good ice, and I’m headed that way. I guess I’ll see you there, if you have some haunting lined up it better not be lame. I want some proper floating specters and flickering lights to make the trip worth my while.”

…

“Was it always this dark out here? I could have sworn there was a lamppost or two along here once upon a time, but my memory has been through too much for it to be a reliable witness. You know what’s really unfair is that I don’t even like Jameson, this is your whiskey. Why didn’t I bring some gin and tonic, why didn’t you recommend it? Selfish bastard. Well, I’m here now and here’s to you. What do they say in the movies? Pour one out for the homies.

“You know what I don’t get, and what you were too preoccupied with breathing your last to tell me, is why 10pm. I guess I can understand the canal, we spent the worst parts of our youth out here being shitheads, I told you things I swore I’d never tell anyone sitting right here. And you told me about the diagnosis sitting right over there. It’s a fitting place to celebrate a year without you. But you didn’t die at 10pm, you shuffled off midmorning. And try as I might, I cannot for the life of me remember anything of significance that happened at 10pm specifically out here, or anywhere for that matter. It’s such an odd thing to be so insistent about and to tell you the truth I almost didn’t come tonight. I’d rather have driven out here in daylight and I’d much rather drive home with some illumination. In the end I decided to camp out in the truck and that’s the only reason you’ve got me out here in the middle of the night. Damn it, I really should have brought the gin, or at least something to mix this swill with. Not only does it taste like Irish piss, but it’s also going to give me a righteous hangover, I can already feel the headache. Your taste in alcohol is as bad as your taste in women.

“Did you know that the old gal found herself a new man not two months after the funeral? I saw them at Chili’s snuggled up in a booth bold as you please. She pretended not to see me when I walked by, and I returned the favor. I guess that’s hypocritical of me, I was just bitching and moaning about people’s expectations of my grief. But listen, maybe there isn’t a set time but certainly it’s more than two months, right? Oh well, she never was as good for you as you thought she was anyway, she just had a fantastic ass and a wardrobe to accentuate it and you’re simple enough for that to work.

“OK, listen up I have to tell you something and I know you’re not going to like it because I hate it. I told you earlier that I had made up my mind, that I have decided to call an end to my period of mourning. I have a confession to make, I didn’t come to that conclusion on my own. You know I’ve been talking to someone to help me sort through this mess. She’s a pretty sharp lady and if I wasn’t paying her good money to help me out, I’d even say she genuinely cares about me. Yeah, yeah, I’m a nasty minded cynic and she probably does care, at least a little bit anyway. Stop changing the subject, I have to get this out. I told her you and I have been talking, that we never stopped talking, that you just vacated your corporeal presence in favor of a mystical vapor. She didn’t laugh at the joke, said it wasn’t a joke and that was OK but that I needed to consider something. She said you were a coping mechanism and that was OK too, but that if I kept coping forever the limp would become permanent. She said I had to let you go Lee, that I have to say goodbye again and this time for good. I didn’t say anything sooner because I had no intention of listening to her. I told her where she could stuff it that day and I missed several meetings after that, dodged her calls, blocked her number, so on and so forth.

“But that was a couple months ago and after a while I started to see the signs she was talking about. I don’t talk to anyone else anymore. Why would I? You’re always here, always listening and I always know what you’re going to say. If I’d known how much easier it was to be friends with a dead guy I would have killed you off a long time ago. Shit, see that’s the kind of stuff… I’ve gotten really dark and spooky lately Lee. At first no one said anything because it was just how things go when someone you love dies hard. But somewhere back there I crossed the invisible line and went too far, waited too long to get over it. I don’t know, maybe they’re all wrong, maybe she’s as dumb, or dumber, than I am, and this is exactly the right way to cope. But I suspect not, and I have decided that a year anniversary is as good a point as any to do something about it.

“You and I are going to finish this bottle tonight, Lee, I’m probably going to puke before it’s over because I don’t drink like you do and this shit is nasty. But I’m going to get utterly shitfaced, then I’m going to say goodbye to you and I’m going to climb in the back of my truck here and pass out. And tomorrow morning when I wake up and hurl again and squint at the bastard morning light, I’ll be alone. This is goodbye old pal, it’s time for you to head on your way and for me to stumble down the road on my own. I’ll never have another glass of whiskey I can tell you that much, it will be reserved for you for all time in my heart. Thanks for everything, for all of it, you were the kind of friend you only get one of in a lifetime and I got mine early, but I wouldn’t trade it for the world. Cheers and goodbye!”

The night crept along, the minutes crawling by and the whiskey did its job. Terrance toasted many more times, each toast involving more tears, less sarcasm and bravado. As the 10^th hour of the night approached Terrance was completely unaware, it had been roughly 8pm when he poured the first glass, and a guy can get a long way towards blackout in two hours. Most of the bottle was gone, half of it poured out into the canal but it was a large bottle and Terrance was, as he said, a lightweight. I want you to know that I had no idea that he planned to get liquored up out here, it isn’t the kind of thing he normally does, and I didn’t anticipate it. If I had I would have arrived early and saved him a lot of physical pain and myself a lot of repetition. But hindsight is 20/20 and I have only a limited capacity to view things from that vantage point.

I had not, of course, heard any of the things he had been saying to me in the hours leading up to the appointed time of our rendezvous. I hadn’t heard any of the things he’d been saying to me in the year since my death, but he had spoken them and in his mind I had been there for all of them. I could not know how hard this would make the next couple of weeks. He kept referring to conversations we had in his mind, and I would stare at him clueless until he realized it. Then he'd be mad, I don’t think at me, necessarily, just mad and I can understand that. But that meant that he was mad a lot and I couldn’t blame him, but I also couldn’t help him. Anyway, at precisely 10pm CST on the banks of a little canal off an abandoned mining road in East Texas I stepped back through the veil of tears. I am not the first to do so, though it is exceedingly rare. And it is even rarer that someone gets to choose the time and place of their return. But the job I had been given was as rare as this opportunity and to do it I needed Terrance. There is no linear pull of time on the other side, I can’t describe what there actually is because the concept cannot fit inside of a human mind, I only know it is entirely foreign to everything we know. There are inflection points that link that place to this one and the stability of one is dependent on the other. A stream that is in constant flux, flowing both ways. I was back here to nudge that stream in a critical direction. But first I needed to get Terrance back on his feet and in his right mind and that looked like it was going to be my first Herculean task.

“Terrance, why are you puking on that ant mound? Did they do something to deserve a vomit tsunami from the gods?”

I feel like I had the right to expect more of a reaction from him. All I got was a vacant stare with bile drooling from his mouth, followed by another round of dry heaving.

“I’m trying to decide if I’m flattered or insulted that you thought the best way to honor my memory was to drink till you puked. Is that all I was to you? The friend you got hammered with?”

I walked over and took hold of his shoulders and when I touched him, I finally got the reaction I had been waiting for.

“Jesus H. Christ! Who the hell are you and how did you get out here? God, Lee was a sick asshole, but this is low even for him! How long ago was he planning this? Did he pay you money? Cause if he did that’s messed up, he owed me three months’ worth of his rent when he died! Was he holding out on me so he could pay you to prank me a year after he died! God damn, what a sick fuck!”

“Terrance, I need you to dig deep now. I don’t know why you thought a bottle of whiskey was going to do you any favors, but this is not a prank, you are not hallucinating, and I am actually here. I’m sorry I didn’t tell you more, but I honestly didn’t know any more at the time, I don’t even know how I knew what I did. Those last weeks were strange, and they are blurred together with what came after. I need your help, but first I need you to sleep this off and shower. You smell worse than you look and that’s saying a lot.”

Terrance wobbled there uncertainly for several seconds, his mind kept grasping for sense and logic and kept missing, it was damn illusive. His therapist was going to have a field day with this one when he told her, if he told her. He bet it would end up with him on some powerful meds, he wondered if he’d like that. Lee took another step toward him, and he put out a warding hand, he had felt real physical hands on his shoulders when this guy grabbed him, that was impossible, and it was a first. He usually didn’t see him either, he was just a presence inside of his head that he talked to, how had he pushed that inner presence out into the world? How could he put him back in the jar he came out of? It was too much; he was too drunk. His warding hand came down to his knee and he doubled over in another dry heave spell. The last thing he saw was Lee rushing to catch him as he tipped forward and blacked out.