The Dead Wife's Handbook

by Hannah Beckerman

  ‘That’s very generous of you, Harriet, but we both know that my brother doesn’t exactly top the emotional literacy charts.’

  ‘Well, you need to talk to someone, Max. You can’t keep all of this bottled up.’

  ‘Why not? I thought I was doing everyone a favour by keeping quiet. I think most people would rather talk about any subject under the sun than listen to someone whine on about their grief. I remember when Rachel first died, and it was as if those words – death, dead, died – had been obliterated overnight. People kept saying how sorry they were for my loss as though Rachel were a puppy I’d mislaid in the park and if only I’d put up posters offering a reward perhaps she’d be returned to me. Or they’d say they were sorry that Rachel had gone, as though she’d popped to the shops for a pint of milk and decided on a whim not to come home. It was shocking, really, people’s inability to face reality. I was the one dealing with her death and yet no one else could even cope with saying the word out loud. So I think I realized pretty early on that it was my job to make sure other people didn’t feel too awkward about the fact that my wife had died.’

  Max’s voice is seeped in frustration and I want so much to be able to hold him, to soothe him, to stroke the back of his neck until I’ve caressed away the resentment that’s so out of character for him.

  I know exactly what he means, though. I remember having the same feelings when my dad died. Half my school friends couldn’t even look me in the eye any more, let alone speak to me. Even their parents seemed wary of me, as though death were a contagious disease and proximity to me carried with it the very real danger that their own loved ones might die prematurely, abruptly, in tragic circumstances too.

  ‘Max, don’t ever feel that you can’t talk to me about Rach. Really. You know how much I miss her too. I’m not suggesting for a second that it’s anything close to what you’re going through but I can cope with you being miserable now and again.’

  ‘I know, I’m sorry. I suppose I just still haven’t got used to the general indifference. In the early days especially I remember the sense of shock that the world could carry on as normal, as though nothing terrible had happened. I couldn’t believe other people could go on with their lives ignorant of what I was going through. I’d look at the kids in my classes, or the other teachers in the staff room, or just random strangers walking past me in the street and I’d want to shout at them for going about their daily lives while I couldn’t imagine surviving the next second without her. So I suppose I’ve learnt to shut myself off, keep those feelings private, become indifferent to their indifference.’

  ‘But I’m not indifferent, Max, and I’m not the only one. There are loads of people who’d happily talk to you about Rachel if only you’d let them in.’

  ‘I know you’re right. But sometimes I worry that if I start talking about her I may never stop. Every day there are so many things I want to tell Rachel. Things that I know would make her laugh or that she’d find interesting. And then I get angry that I can’t switch my brain off, that it keeps allowing me to forget for a few seconds that she’s dead, only to punch me in the face with a renewed rush of loss all over again. It’s like a Groundhog Day for the grieving.’

  ‘God, I’m not surprised you’re exhausted, Max. It sounds exhausting. But it will get better. You know that, don’t you? I’ve no idea when, but it will.’

  ‘Will it? Isn’t that just an empty platitude so that people like me have the prospect of a respite from it all? I can’t imagine a time when I don’t miss her so much that I can barely breathe. It’s like I’m living a life in suspended animation, that nothing’s real because Rachel’s not here to share things with. I feel like I’m in perpetual limbo.’

  That’s one thing Max and I have in common, that feeling of being stuck in a place we never agreed to go to and from which we can’t now escape. And that feeling, too, of needing to share every experience with one another if those experiences are to have even a semblance of verisimilitude.

  ‘You know what you need? You need a change of scenery. Or at least a change of scene. When was the last time you went out for an evening?’

  I can answer that. It was, as far as I know, a year ago to the day.

  ‘I haven’t felt much like socializing, Harriet. I’m not sure I’d be great company. And anyway, I’ve got Ellie to think about.’

  ‘Ellie would be asleep if you went out for an evening, Max, and it’s not as if your parents wouldn’t babysit. Hasn’t Connor tried to get you out with him? Do I need to have a word with that brother of yours?’

  ‘Please don’t, Harriet. I’m really not up for a night out right now, particularly of the Connor variety. I’m fine, really. You’re just catching me on a particularly bad day.’

  ‘You’re clearly anything but fine, Max. Imagine I was telling you about someone who’d lost their wife, who hadn’t socialized for a year and who was feeling like their life was stuck in – what was it? – suspended animation. What would your advice be to them? You’ve got to break out of the limbo, Max. Trust me. You need to try and have some fun.’

  ‘Harriet, I know you mean well, really I do, but believe me when I say I’m just not ready for fun. Not yet.’

  ‘That’s because you haven’t tried. I think you’d feel guilty if you even contemplated having fun. I think you’d feel it was some kind of betrayal. But it’s not. I know it’s probably hard to imagine right now but you’re going to need to start thinking about moving on – or at least beginning to move on – at some point in the not-too-distant future, Max.’

  Max is beginning to disengage from the conversation, I can tell. It’s his way of avoiding conflict and it was, I’ve no doubt, the reason he and I hardly ever rowed in our ten years together. I’d ask him sometimes how he managed it, how he so rarely rose to whatever bait was dangled before him. He’d just smile and tell me, matter-of-factly, that he couldn’t see the point in arguments because, in the end, they’d almost always be resolved, so why not just skip the row and head straight for the resolution. I loved him for that logic, and even more so for being able to act successfully on it, time after time.

  ‘Who else other than Connor could you go out with? I’d invite you out for an evening with my friends but we both know you’d hate it. What about all those people who came to Ellie’s last birthday party?’

  I know what Max is thinking even before he says it.

  ‘They’re not people I want to see, Harriet. Please, can we just drop this now?’

  ‘Why don’t you want to see them? They all seemed perfectly nice. Not necessarily my cup of tea, admittedly, but just what I’d have thought you need right now.’

  Max takes a few seconds to respond. I think he’s unclear as to how candid he wants to be.

  ‘I don’t want to see them, Harriet. They’re people I used to see with Rachel. They’re people who remind me of some of the best times I had with Rachel. They’re people whose perfect relationships and perfect families make me so envious that I don’t even want to be in their presence right now. Do you have any idea how many kids’ birthday party invitations I’ve turned down in the past year? I can’t be around other families’ happiness right now. I just can’t.’

  Harriet has the good grace to give Max’s outburst a moment’s contemplation. But only a moment’s.

  ‘Well, in that case, you know what you need? You need some new friends, people who don’t remind you of Rach, people who you can go and have fun with and forget about everything else. You know what we should do? We should sign you up to a website where you can meet some new friends.’

  Max looks at Harriet incredulously.

  ‘Do you mean a dating site?’

  Harriet raises an unintentionally disdainful eyebrow.

  ‘God, Max, stop being so 1990s. They’re not just about dating. All those sites are for people who want anything from long-term relationships to friendship. You’d only have to tick the friendship box for now.’

  For now? What’s Harriet
playing at? Isn’t she supposed to be my best friend? Why’s she encouraging my husband to think about a time when he might be ticking anything other than the friendship box? If this is her idea of providing emotional support, I think both Max and I can survive without it.

  ‘Harriet, I’m sure that works for some people but I can’t imagine anything I’d like to do less right now than meet a total stranger in some random pub and spend an evening exchanging dull, polite small talk with them. I find it exhausting enough spending a lunchtime with you, for goodness sake.’

  Harriet laughs. I’m not laughing.

  ‘Well, I know you think that right now, but that’s because you haven’t tried it yet. You’re so hopelessly out of the habit of interacting with grown-ups it’s no surprise that the prospect of spending an entire evening in the company of someone who’s not related to you by blood and is legally old enough to drink scares the living daylights out of you.’

  Max allows Harriet a smile. He probably doesn’t realize how dangerous that is, how much encouragement it will give her.

  ‘I really am only thinking about what’s best for you, Max. What’s best for you and Ellie. And I do think you need to start focussing on the future, be proactive about your life again, start thinking about moving on. I don’t suspect either of us imagines Rach would want to see your life frozen in suspended animation forever, would she?’

  Forever’s a long time, Harriet. I’ve only been dead a year and I’m just not ready for Max to move on – whatever that means, to whatever that is – just yet.

  ‘Harriet, I know you mean well, really I do. But if you’re seriously asking me what I think Rachel would have wanted, I think she’d have wanted me to be allowed to grieve in my own good time. I’m not ready to embrace a life without her and neither is Ellie.’

  Thank you, Max. Thank you for knowing me better even in death than anyone else knew me when I was alive.

  ‘Okay, okay. I give in. For now, anyway. But I can’t promise not to mention it again. So do think about it. You don’t want to leave it too long or I may have to establish your social life as my personal project, and I’m woman enough to know that’s the last thing you want.’

  Max laughs. He’s never been one for holding grudges, even when his opponent is a Harriet-shaped bull in a grief-ridden china shop.

  ‘So, when are you going to come and see Ellie? It’s been nearly three weeks and she misses you.’

  ‘Well, if I forgive the blatant change of subject, it’s not going to be for a fortnight or so, I’m afraid. I’ve got a hellish case on at the moment but it’ll be over in a couple of weeks so some time that last weekend in May?’

  ‘Perfect – that’s the beginning of half term. Come for Sunday lunch. Ellie will love that.’

  The perfect Sunday lunch. What I’d give for just one more of those.

  There’s a sudden loud clatter, so immediate I assume it must have come from my world rather than theirs. I look around and above me, squinting my eyes in a bid to stretch my field of vision far into the void beyond, unsure whether I’m hoping to discover something or nothing, fearful of what an intruder may bring into my solitary, lonely, vicarious world. I call out into the vacuum, my voice filled with the ambivalent combination of hope and fear, unsure of what I’ll do should my entreaties be returned. But there’s nothing and no one there. Just another momentary fantasy that I may not be alone.

  When I return my gaze to the café below to investigate the cause of the calamity, I discover that the living world has disappeared, replaced by three hundred and sixty degrees of nothingness.

  Chapter 3

  Ellie and Max are standing in front of my gravestone. It’s a beautiful late spring afternoon, the cherry blossom only just beginning to scatter like confetti on to the grass, the sun still suspended above the trees as if auditioning for the months ahead.

  Ellie is clutching a bunch of pink peonies, holding on to them tightly as though they’re a newly acquired security blanket. I wonder if she remembers that they’re my favourite or whether her choosing them at the florist on the way here was nothing more than a coincidence.

  Max and I had peonies at our wedding – white rather than pink but peonies nonetheless. I’d have chosen peonies for my funeral too, had I had the forethought or the self-indulgence to write a plan for the final party I’d inadvertently host. Instead I had roses chosen by my mum, or rather agonized over by her, as if to pick the wrong flower might have undone a lifetime’s good parenting.

  I don’t think Max has brought Ellie here since the funeral. I think that’s the right decision. The funeral had overwhelmed her. I’m not sure she quite understood what was happening or why she was there or the fact that her mummy’s body was laid out inert in the big box at the end of the church. I think it was other people’s grief that had disturbed her, the sight of all those adults in tears turning the world as she knew it on its head. She’d clung, silently, to the hands of Max and my mum throughout, as though in the midst of an earthquake and all she wanted was for the ground to stop shaking beneath her feet.

  It’s one of life’s great paradoxical fantasies, isn’t it, the desire to be present at one’s own funeral? To hear eulogies composed by heartbroken relatives and read by fractured voices emerging from tear-stained faces. To discover the plethora of humankind’s virtues attributed to you and to learn your value to those who had so often failed to proclaim it during your lifetime. It’s supposed to be the moment, isn’t it, when all the various elements of your life coalesce to provide the one true, fully formed picture of you that will ever exist? A picture of life from the cradle to the grave.

  I’d been unprepared, though, as I’d hovered above the altar with a bird’s eye view of a congregation in mourning, for just how wretched it would be, witnessing the people I most loved and cared about in distress. Particularly when one of the distraught was my six-year-old daughter. Far from being a moment to revel in the collective approbation of my all-too-short existence, it had been a day on which I’d cursed my access ever having been granted.

  ‘How are you doing, munchkin? You’re not feeling too scared are you?’

  Ellie shakes her head unconvincingly, reduced to shyness in these unfamiliar surroundings.

  ‘Do you want to give Mummy the flowers you got her? She’s going to love those, you know – they’re so pretty. Shall we put them on her grave?’

  Ellie doesn’t move except to cling ever tighter to Max’s leg. Max hauls her into his arms, where her head rests on his neck and the peonies embrace him.

  ‘I think Mummy would like it if we gave her the flowers. Do you want me to put them down for you?’

  Ellie nods, tentatively, unsure whether that’s the right answer. Max prises the flowers from her fingers, bends down with Ellie still in his arms, and rests the flowers against my headstone.

  ‘They look pretty, don’t they? I think Mummy will think you’ve chosen really well.’

  Ellie pulls her head up to look at Max.

  ‘Will Mummy come to look at the flowers later, after we’ve gone?’

  Max lets out an achingly pained breath, seeming to fill the air around him with the sorrow of someone who knows they’re destined to disappoint.

  ‘No, sweetheart. Mummy can’t come back any more. Do you remember? That’s why we had the funeral, when we came here last time with Granny and Grandpa and Nanna and all our friends, so we could all say goodbye to her.’

  Ellie looks thoughtful. I wonder whether she’s trying to remember or trying to forget.

  ‘But if she’s not going to come later then how’s she going to see the flowers?’

  Max eyes Ellie intently, as if assessing the avenues of response open to him.

  ‘Well, some people believe that after you die, some part of you still lives on and that maybe, although we can’t see people who’ve died, they might still be able to see and hear us.’

  ‘Like ghosts?’

  ‘Not really like ghosts, no. Because you’re scared of
ghosts, aren’t you? Whereas you’d never be scared of Mummy, would you?’

  Ellie looks confused. I wonder how long she’s been contemplating these questions, whether they’re only coming to mind now because of the gravestones surrounding her, or whether she’s been bottling up these existential enquiries for the past twelve months.

  ‘Do you think Mummy can hear us?’

  Max hesitates, and I wait to see which path he’ll choose: the path of honesty, a route which he knows will make Ellie even sadder than she already is, or the path of benign reassurance.

  ‘It would be nice to think so, wouldn’t it? The thing is, sweetheart, we can never really know, so we should keep on talking to her if that makes us feel better, don’t you think?’

  Ellie runs her hands absent-mindedly through Max’s hair, her head still nestled against his shoulder, her eyes darting rapidly from one impossible question to the next.

  ‘Why did my mummy die and other mummies don’t die?’

  It’s a question asked in the most plaintive of voices, as if Ellie knows even before Max replies that there’s no comprehensible answer.

  ‘We’ve talked about this before, haven’t we, sweetheart? Do you remember? Mummy had a poorly heart and that’s why she died. But I don’t know why her heart was poorly when other mummies’ hearts are okay. It was just really, really unlucky.’

  Ellie pauses for a second, as if to digest Max’s uncertainty and contemplate her response.

  ‘Georgia at school, she said that her mummy says mummies don’t die if you’re good because God only punishes bad people. Did Mummy die ’cos I did something bad?’

  I’d weep if my anger didn’t intervene. Instead, the shock of other people’s insensitivity continues to astound me, even from an entire lifetime away.

  ‘Which one’s Georgia? Do I know her?’

  The tensing of Max’s jaw betrays the fact that he’s as incensed as I am. I remember Georgia, not because Ellie’s particularly good friends with her, but because her mother was always a domineering force in the playground. The kind of parent who views all other children as impediments to their own child’s success. I never liked her.