Gone

Images. There are the ones in your dreams which are very vivid. People walk and talk in them but even whilst asleep you know they are not real. Then there are the ones made of paper, photographs, that you can hold in your hand that capture moments forever, like time standing still. Freeze frame. Neither of these are real because the people in them are not moving or reacting in real time. They are not aging or changing. You cannot hold a conversation with them, or laugh at their jokes. So there are times when images are not enough or can even cause pain.

When I was three I'd wanted to be a ballerina, then a nurse, then to play with flowers all day. My mum said the last one wasn't a real job but all of these things felt real to me as a child and I often acted out all three. My mum was wrong as it was the last of the three that came true. I ended up half-owning a shop which was part crafts and part florist. I'd always loved flowers, all the colours, shapes and sizes, the way the petals were different on all the varieties but most of all I'd loved the smell of carnations. It is said that of all our senses, smell is the one that can recreate a moment in time. Grass clippings, burnt toast, a fragrant type of alcohol, an aftershave bringing a certain person to mind, All can recreate memories, good and bad. Yes, smell is very important indeed. It can even reduce you to tears if the memory is strong enough.

I could have lived with my burden so much more easily if none of these things applied. Even if freeze frame had been good enough there was no photograph of what I'd lost that I could bear to look at. I suppose on some level I may have dreamed of you and what we might have meant to each other in the future, but if I did have dreams I never remembered them and for that I was thankful. Day to day living was hard enough without dreams that might promise happiness I could never, ever attain. 

One day I was looking in a shop window when, reflected in the glass, just out of the corner of my eye, I could have sworn I'd seen you, and it made me gasp. Just a freak occurrence I thought but then it happened again and again and again though each time what I saw was slightly different, you at different ages, with different hairstyles, in different clothes. You never smiled. After a while I had to stop looking in shop windows. I couldn't even risk looking up when I was working on an arrangement of flowers in case I saw you reflected in my own shop window. Before long I found that I couldn't look in mirrors either in case I saw you there too. My appearance suffered as a result and my depression deepened despite the really high dosage of anti-depressants I was on. I felt dead inside but it was the only way I could survive. I accepted I was no longer in a fit state to work so I retired from the shop and passed the running of it to my business partner. 

My friends backed away because they didn't know what to say, how to help the mess that I had become and then I was alone, not knowing or caring how to climb out of the pit I had fallen into. 

The alternative was to skip the drugs and allow myself to feel my overwhelming grief but that was far too dangerous to contemplate. I feared literally losing my mind and being locked up in some sort of psychiatric ward or institution. I never left the house, never got dressed, never brushed my hair, even forgot to eat most of the time. I just lay around all day, every day with the same two words running through my mind, over and over again. My mantra.

Time passed and before long it had been eleven months since both our lives had ended. In that time my feelings for you had not lessened at all. I missed you so much. It was an unrelenting ache that filled my body. I believed I would remain like this forever. Had I thought of ending my own life? Many, many times. The only thing that stopped me was the strong sense that I'd be letting you down. Also I felt that I deserved to suffer for what I'd done. 

I knew that I must do something in an effort to lessen my grief but what? Your ashes were still standing in the same place on the mantelpiece as they had since I'd brought you home. Maybe if I released you then all my disturbing thoughts would disappear and I could finally go on with my life without you. I made a plan to let you go on our wedding anniversary.

The flashback was vivid and sudden and I had no idea what triggered it. It was supposed to be me in the driving seat that night, when we went to Bernie's birthday bash. I had been the designated driver but had gotten carried away, as I often did, and drank too much. Fortunately you, who was never much of a drinker, were sober so you took my place. 

When the other car came out of nowhere on the drive home and smashed into your door you didn't stand a chance. We'd been hit hard and fast by a much bigger car. A hit and run. I was completely unharmed.

Two local men wrenched your door open and got you out, away from the car for safety, but you were covered in blood and died in my arms just three weeks after our wedding. Internal injuries the paramedics said. I can remember hearing a woman’s voice screaming your name over and over yet not registering that it was mine. At the age of twenty four your life was over and it was all my fault. My fault, my fault. Those words had run riot in my head since the accident, my mantra that I used to block the memory, had suddenly stopped working. I was sure the timing was no coincidence. Nor the fact that the strong scent of carnations, which had tormented me since the accident, suddenly went away. My wedding bouquet.

So, on what would have been our first wedding anniversary, as I got dressed for the first time in months, I made a decision about where I would scatter your ashes. It took all my strength to pick up the urn that had been your final resting place for nearly a year. Not because it was heavy, but because I knew what remained of you was inside and I had to let you go. I hoped that seeing you in reflections would stop. They'd only haunted me because I couldn't bear to live in the present.

The idea of having your ashes in the car with me made my stomach turn over. I would have to secure the urn in some way. Just driving for the first time in months and the memories that it might bring up would be stressful enough without having to worry that the urn might tip over.

I had chosen Flamborough Head to let you go. A high rockface, an almost sheer drop into the sea, it had always been one of your favourite places. I must have driven there on autopilot or so it seemed, as one moment I was at home and the next, I was standing near the edge of the cliff at Flamborough, the birds wheeling and calling above my head as they always did. Tears, which had been stuffed away since that night on the cold tarmac when I had cradled your broken, bleeding, lifeless  body on my lap, rolled relentlessly down my cheeks and I screamed your name again and again, the noise drowned out by the seagulls. 

I tried my best to find your favourite spot. I closed my eyes tightly, kissed the urn imagining it was you then, with an overwhelming pain in my heart, I threw it outwards into the cool, clear air. 

Afterwards I leaned forwards to watch it fall into the waves below. I probably leaned a little too far forwards than was safe but I felt it would have been so wrong if the urn had ended up trapped on the rocks below. Once I was happy that you were in the sea I took a step back. 

Deep in my heart I accepted that you had finally gone. I felt lighter somehow as if prior to this moment I'd been dragging you around with me. Joined at the hip, we used to say in the glorious early days of our relationship and the thought of that made me smile. It was as if my face was cracking as I'd totally forgotten how to do it. The mantra had gone but as I turned to leave, with feelings of promise that I might be able to start to forgive myself, the cliff edge beneath my feet began to crumble and fall away………….