by Josh Samman
I battled my own notions of natural selection, that partner choosing was part of evolution, and that she’d chosen a terrible one. I began to assess our lives thus far, wondered how many times we’d both put ourselves in harm’s way. I wrestled with Isabel being on borrowed time already. What was our life expectancy anyway? My life hadn’t been any safer. Why not me?
I grew close again to my hometown, and the people in it. I’d been holing myself up in Tallahassee, still at Lance’s. Leaving Tallahassee meant leaving my support system, and my comfort zone. Leaving Tallahassee meant leaving her there. Leaving town meant going home to her stuff, our stuff. Going home felt like putting the casket in the grave felt, another symbol of finality. I felt like a coward the longer I waited, and I let it eat at me until I could no longer stand it.
I had to do one last thing before leaving town. I had to talk to Landon. We both knew it. At this point, I’d stopped being so sedated around her family so that I could remember our interactions, and this was one I wanted to remember. I was sober, shaking with nervousness as I drove to his house. His approval was important, but more than anything I just wanted him to tell me what he really thought of me.
I expected resentment, because how could I not? Someone had to be held accountable for all of this, and I was convinced we’d agreed I was the one to fill that role. With each and every family member, I expected resentment, and with each, I felt none.
Landon greeted me warmly, with a hug and a smile, and invited me on his back porch. He was a much bigger part of my life than I was his, and may have been realized it lately. I knew the feeling, being looked up to without being entirely comfortable with it.
We sat and exchanged stories. He addressed earlier times in our life and joked about my lack of approachability. He told me anecdotes of their family growing up, that only he remembered. He told me stories of how Isabel would hide as a child, getting the boys worried sick, before revealing herself and telling them to stop crying because she was okay. We all had our memories turned into nightmares, it seemed.
He explained that while all the grandparents had a hand in raising them, Dallas’ parents were the ones to drive home that everything happens for a reason. Landon knew I didn’t believe in that. He admitted that sometimes he wondered, too. I wanted to tell him it was okay to not believe, but I just kept listening.
He told me I’d find another. He was the first person to have brought it up. We both cried when he said that. The notion that there was one person for all of us was an illogical one, but one I subscribed to. I’d have liked to think that he, of all people, knew what it was like for his heart to beat only for one.
His eyes teared as he spoke. He had Sue’s eyes, the only other one in the family whose weren’t dark and piercing. He told me that life would never be the same, but that things would eventually normalize, and I’d find a new level of that word, normalcy.
He stopped himself midway, wondering aloud to himself if he was the one to be giving me advice. He didn’t know what it meant to me. He was the one I truly needed it from.
"I have a good feeling about you," he said. “And I think a lot of us do. That church wasn't just full of our people, they were there for you too. Our people are your people. You are our family now.” He told me what I needed to hear, and it was the last thing I’d do in Tallahassee before leaving. It was time to face the music.
92.
“What the hell are you doing there?” Gerard asked. The date was October 30th, exactly a year after I was celebrating my first Ultimate Fighter victory in Vegas.
Trying to turn back time.
“I had to see.” I’d sent him a picture of the wreckage. There was still some there. I was at the crash site, trying to visualize where it all went wrong. Up until then, I’d constructed it only in my mind, based on what Owen had told me. I was standing right in front of the tree. That was my crash site as much as it was hers. That was the place I died too.
Fuck that tree. I wanted to cut it down, burn it, find the person who planted it and curse their existence. I never realized how many miles of guardrails there were on the interstate until my world was turned upside down by a lack of one. It was a matter of inches to safety, fucking inches, and it was one more thing to drive me insane.
It was horrifically ironic, the culmination of things that killed her. It wasn’t the Hepatitis. It wasn’t the drug overdose. It was things she was drawn to that were her demise. Trees were symbolic of life to her. She wore the one on her bracelet from Venice Beach, from the day I bought it for her, until the day she died. She loved the rain. She embraced it. And she was always texting me, telling me things on her wandering mind. Together, the three of us were her downfall.
The tragic irony was everywhere, like the pieces of her car around me. The last place Sue wanted to eat lunch before I left town was Hopkins. On the way to the crash site, I’d bought Isabel a bouquet of roses to lay. “Must be a lucky girl,” the lady at the register said as I was checking out. I couldn’t even answer her.
One of our friends was an inspector for Department of Transportation and had told the state, months before the accident, that the area where she crashed was problematic. I was so angry with her for even letting me know that. Everything piled atop one another until my insides collapsed.
The rest of the way home was awful. Driving in itself became an arduous task. I had four more hours before I’d be home. Many times I’d let go of the wheel, veering off the road a bit, hitting the gas. I don't know what I was doing. I was playing Russian roulette again, trying to wrap my mind around what her last thoughts may have been.
I got home and sat in the driveway for over 20 minutes before dragging myself in the house. It felt like a negative magnet, pushing me away as I tried to muster the strength to walk in. When I finally did, memories overwhelmed me.
Everything was exactly as she had left it. I tiptoed through the house, as to not disturb a single speck of dust. At the entrance was a pair of her tiny red Indian shoes, she called them. In the fridge, the single coconut water she’d promised to leave me. In the DVD player, the copy of Ray that she’d forgotten.
I moved into the bedroom. Recently hung pictures of us decorated the walls and dressers everywhere. The bed was perfectly made, her laundry still on the couch, and a bottle of hot sauce on the dresser that she’d bought for us but forgot to bring. Her clothes dominated the dresser, bathing suit drawer still slightly open. The ironing board was left out, as if she couldn’t wait one more moment, gotten fed up mid-pleat while waiting for Matt, and left for Tallahassee.
Senses sent my emotions into overdrive as I opened the bathroom door and became flooded with the scent of her shampoos, lotions, and bath gels; all those fragrances that companies made sure to douse their products in to make sure shmucks like me never forgot the girl who wore it. Her thin pink robe still hung on the bathroom door.
I sat carefully on the edge of the couch and cried. I felt the urgency to preserve everything exactly the way she left it, knowing it was among the last things she did on her final day. Any time I unfolded something, or moved a bit of her jewelry back into her box, or lit a candle she had left, it was as if I felt a piece of her melting away with it.
Her clothes still hung in the closet. Weeks later, a friend would ask why I still had them there. I was so hurt at the question. “That’s her closet too,” I said, without thinking. It begged the question, of if the deceased could own things. I supposed they could, as I still felt like I belonged to Isabel. I wondered if there would ever be a time when I didn’t feel like that.
I went through the series of night terrors again; sleeping in our bed brought them all back. For weeks, I tried and couldn’t do it, sleeping on the couch instead. I woke up countless times, tossing and turning, drenched in sweat. Many nights resembled the ones I had in the hotel room in Tallahassee.
When I finally began sleeping in the bed again, I couldn’t bring myself to even lay on her side. I didn’t even face it. I could still smel
l her there. I left her half of the bed untouched, pillows and all. I realized it was the pillow talk I missed the most, the feeling of having the world in between my arms, telling her things I’d never told anyone. If ever I was dreaming of her and woke up, I would lay there for hours with my eyes closed, trying to recreate whatever world I was just in.
Juice spent much of his time in the bathroom. I think he missed her scents, too. It was there that I struggled most, because it was there that the most morbid took root. Under the sink was a hazardous waste basket for discarded interferon needles. In the shower was her hair, all collected at my feet, waiting for me. I was paralyzed by it.
I thought this moment would pass, that I would be able to kneel down and clean it up one day soon. I had about as much of a chance of reaching down there as I did taking the pictures off the wall, or removing her clothes. It was the most confusing thing I’d ever gone through. I’d always thought I was a strong person, but there I was, haunted by a clump of hair at the bottom of a shower.
93.
It was December, nearing Isabel’s birthday, and I did not want to spend it alone. It wasn’t long before I was on my way back to Tallahassee. For all my apprehensiveness about going to our house, I had just as much difficulty leaving it.
Cathy had invited me to join them for the day. When I got there, it was only her, Sue, and Aunt Jo. They lit candles, and sang happy birthday, and it was the most depressing scene I’ve ever been a part of.
My life had split into two worlds; the one I was living in, and the parallel universe I desired, the one where she still makes it to Tallahassee that day. Particularly painful were times when I would ponder what we’d be doing, only to have no doubt. Combat Nights became insufferable, times when I would know details, down to the very place she’d be sitting, right next to me. Never was her loss more present than in the company of Mitchell and Brandi, and our relationships suffered because of it. All of mine did. The tribulations of the time did not make me closer with the people around me, it was the opposite. I had jealousy, disdain, resentment, all sorts of negative feelings, directed everywhere.
Being around couples was worst of all. There was a succession of our friends getting married and babies being born, and I found it impossible to not be loathsome towards those who still had their lovers. Every display of affection was another stab to the heart; every kiss, every stroke of hair, every embrace. There were boiling points where I just could not take it anymore and I would go to my car, to scream and cry.
I didn’t feel like socializing, I didn’t feel like being in crowds, and most of all I didn’t feel like being with anyone else. I had zero energy to pursue women, and I didn’t have to. Girls threw themselves at me, in attempts at being the one to bring me out of my funk. I slept with many to satisfy physical needs. I would sometimes wake up, and not remember who I was in bed with. Many times I left them in the middle of the night. I never brought girls to our home. I suffered from episodes of crippling guilt. I’d never been a forgiving person, and that character flaw extended to self-forgiveness as well.
I didn’t want people to think I was moving on already. I didn’t think I deserved to. A girl I met out one night asked me if I had a girlfriend. “It’s complicated,” I told her. “Oh, one of those guys, huh?” “No. She’s just dead.” I realized how crazy I sounded. I tried to convince myself that it was a noble thing to be committed to one person my whole life, no matter the circumstances. I gave feeble attempts at dating. None were fruitful. They were all the same. They were all not Isabel.
I didn’t want to be responsible for anyone again. I wasn’t equipped to. I was emotionally bankrupt. I didn’t want to care for someone again. I wasn’t just grieving the loss of Isabel, but the loss of my old self. Grief intertwined my every aspect of being, taking root and leaving nothing untouched. My attention span became weak, my irritability through the roof. It was a ball and chain that dragged me down everywhere I went, and I saw myself no different than the countless weak people I’d exiled from my life.
I felt old. When I looked back, I could see the moment that my youth ended. I could look at pictures of myself and could tell in an instant whether it was before or after August 30, 2013. I drove around Tallahassee, relishing in nostalgia.
I visited Isabel almost daily. I contributed towards her gravestone, the last birthday present I may ever be able to purchase for her. It adorned a picture of her face, on a bronze plate, the same photo used for her funeral programs. Beside that, an image of a beach photo that she’d taken near our house. The base of the plate was lined with bible verses that Dallas had chosen.
I played music for her on my phone and talked to her about things I was struggling with. It was the only place I felt remotely whole. Sometimes the Florida fire ants would bite me as I sat with her. They came from where she laid though, and may have been down there with her, before coming up to nip at my ankles and calves, so I let them bite as they pleased.
It occurred to me a strange comfort as I sat there one day, a revelation if it could be called that. I realized that a successful relationship could be defined by one thing, and that thing may be until death do us part. On a long enough timeline, someone has to pass away first. Part of me was jealous of her having the easy way out, leaving me here suffering. Part of me was glad that it wasn’t her left here in pain. I wondered how she’d have handled it, had it been the other way around. Probably with the same fortitude and determination she’d had her whole life. It was bizarre, and morbid, and boggling, but I took a comfort in knowing that we had plans to spend the rest of our days together, and that’s what she got to do.
94.
"Words are the weight that hold histories in place."
-Beth Kephart
I began to heal, one breakthrough at a time. I was learning to compartmentalize, on an enormous scale, but it was a step in the right direction. More importantly, I was becoming able to use different outlets to express myself, when I didn’t feel like hiding.
I kept writing, as Beth encouraged. I didn't want Isabel’s story to just boil down to a don't text and drive ad. I wrote small things, and long. I wrote about recent times, and old. I dug deep, to memories I didn’t know I still had; repressed resentment, rejection, bitterness, things I swore I’d never think about again.
I wrote to make sense of death. I wrote to immortalize her. I wrote because I could feel her as I did. It was love, still radiating out of Isabel, if I tracked it to the source. I navigated grief, mapped through it with painstaking detail.
I harbored a great cognitive dissonance regarding the need in which I had to tell our story, and how certain loved ones would feel about her tale being told. I was still waiting for them to tell me to shut up. I tried to be quiet. The frequency of my internet sharings subsided. I focused more on the words you’re reading now. I realized I had to tell a lot of stories that didn't have anything to do with Isabel, in order to properly convey just how much she changed me. I had to put things into context as to what was at stake. At times, I wondered if I should even be doing it, exposing myself to glorify her.
I had a recurring dream where Cathy would call me and tell me they found her, that she was still alive. In my dream, she’d relapsed and forgotten about us, and I had to write a book as a love letter to remind her. I would wake up in the middle of the night and type as fast as my fingers could move.
I’m writing. I’m writing, Isabel. I’ll get it done. I swear.
I picked back up my guitar. Play for me, she’d whisper, nodding towards the instrument in its stand. I wish I would have more. Now there was only Juice to play for. He would look at me and wag his tail and smile, and I would close my eyes and pretend she was in the room with us.
I wrote songs, and learned to play others’. I practiced things I hadn’t in over a decade. Music was a way for me to make something constructive out of being a drunk. It didn’t matter if it was good or not, I could worry about that later. I felt the catharsis I got from it earlier in life, and I
wondered why I ever stopped in the first place. I needed every tool at my disposal to get the empty feeling out of me. As long as I was expressing, I was surviving.
For all the instant and delayed gratification that writing provided, there was still a hollow desperation in it. Part of me was terrified that I was already delegated to telling stories about the glory days, at 25 years old. I wanted to be in the phase of my life where I was getting married and starting a family, not staring into a computer, reminiscing about nostalgic memories of what could have been.
My pivotal turning point came at the expense of another. I was at a bar, and had a bumbling drunk stumble into me, and pat me on the back. I’d known him most my life, and never particularly liked him. He was six inches from my face, slurring his words, spitting as he talked, and spilling his drink on me. I felt my temper flaring, anxiety rising, and I got up to leave. He asked me to wait. He was trying to explain to me that I was an inspiration to him, how he wished he’d done more with his life.
I couldn’t name one thing the guy had ever accomplished. I was aggravated that he used my tragedy, or hard work, or whatever the hell it was he was even referring to, as a drunk talking point. I was frustrated that he was a talker and not a doer. I wondered what the point was to proclaim inspiration by something or someone and not act on it. Motivation is empty, without action.
I told Matt about the incident.
“Aw, give the kid a break,” he said. “You ain’t never had anyone inspire you?”
The question baffled me. It infuriated me. Had he not been paying attention this whole time? How could he be such a fool, to ask me if I’d ever been inspired by someone?