“I can’t make that promise,” I whispered.
“Then at least promise that you’ll try.”
35
“I DON’T know if I can go through with this,” I said, standing in front of Tyler with a bottle of pills clutched between my hands as I waited for the phone call that was supposed to be my alibi so I wouldn’t be held responsible for what Tyler was about to do.
“All you have to do is remove the lid, sweetheart,” Tyler said slowly, reaching out with a shaking hand to take a hold of mine. I sat beside him in the bed, struggling to look at him and know that soon, he wouldn’t be here anymore.
I slowly blew out my breath, looking at his hands – his perfect hands with his perfect oval fingernails, and I placed mine against his, my smaller one getting dwarfed by his size. I missed him already.
The phone rang.
“It’s time, sweetheart,” he whispered, and I released his hand then gripped tight to the bottle, not wanting to do this one simple thing because it was so monumental – take the cap off the bottle, answer the phone – they were my jobs.
“Tyler,” I cried, my eyes stinging as the phone continued to ring, reminding me with each bleat into the quiet.
He placed his hands on mine. “This is what I want, sweetheart. It’s the last choice I will ever get to make.”
“I know. But it’s the one choice you can’t undo.”
“I know. But I’m sure. I don’t want this body anymore. It’s broken.”
Silence cut through the air as the phone stopped for a moment, and in that split second, I felt relieved, as if maybe I wouldn’t have to go through with it. But then it started again, and I shook my head.
“It’s OK, if you can’t, sweetheart,” he murmured, rubbing his hand and up down my back.
I shook my head, and against all my better judgment, I pushed down on the cap and twisted it off the bottle before setting it on the bedside table, covering my mouth and racing out of the room.
“Hello,” I said, picking up the phone and holding it to my ear, my hands shaking along with my voice.
“Are you holding up OK?” Susan asked immediately, and I pressed my hand to my forehead as a wheezing sound escaped my throat.
“No,” I forced out, shaking my head. “I’m not OK at all.”
“Do you want me to be there? You don’t have to do this on your own, Sarah,” she said kindly.
“Yes,” I cried. I had thought I could go through this with him on my own, and Susan had said her goodbyes to him earlier in the day when they’d spent some time together with just the two of them. Then she had left and was to call me so he could take the pills without me being a witness then wait until I called her again when it was over. But I couldn’t be here on my own.
“I’ll be there as soon as I can,” she said, and I nodded, even though she couldn’t see me.
“Thank you,” I whispered, before disconnecting and standing in the kitchen for moment to calm down before I made my way back to Tyler.
My eyes immediately went to the bedside table where the pill bottle was. It was gone and I didn’t want to know where he hid it, and I didn’t want to know if he took them all. I just wanted to sit lie on that bed next to him and talk until one of us fell asleep, and I didn’t want to think about what that meant.
“Hey,” I said, climbing on the bed and slipping my arm around his waist as he turned to me and looked into my eyes.
“Hey, sweetheart,” he said, his voice sounding clearer than it had in weeks. There was a softness in his features, and I knew that he was relieved his pain was about to end, and as much as that hurt for me to be the one left behind, I knew that this was what was best for him. All he had ahead of him was agony. At least this way he could skip the worst part and go out while he could still control his own thoughts.
“I have so much I want to say to you, Tyler. So many conversations that it would take a lifetime to have them all. But we don’t have a lifetime, do we? So, I’m just going to tell you the most important stuff.” I reached up and ran my fingertips over his brow then down over his eyes, tracing his cheekbones and finally his lips. “I have loved you in the most pure way I possibly could – with every molecule of my body. I have ached with love for you, and it’s been the most beautiful pain I’ve ever felt, because you are the most beautiful man, with the most beautiful heart, Tyler. I don’t know what I did to make you want me, but I’m glad it was me you chose to spend your short forever with. It has been an honour to love you, and an honour to be your wife, and I’m grateful to you for holding on this long for me. I know you didn’t want to get to this point, and I hope the extra time was worth it for you, because it was for me.”
“It was worth it, sweetheart, every moment with you was worth it. I’m just sorry I didn’t have more to give you. But we had fun, didn’t we? It was a wild ride, and I have loved you so, so much, and even though this disease has been its own kind of hell, having you by my side has made it a beautiful one, and because of you, sweetheart, I’m going to leave this world feeling like I lived the life of a king. You made a life without meaning, become one so full of it that I didn’t want to let go either.”
Pressing my lips together, I tried so hard to keep in the torrent of tears that were just waiting to pour from my eyes as I continued to looks into his eyes and study his perfect face, knowing that I needed to commit every single pore to memory in that moment.
“God, I’m going to miss you,” I whispered, moving closer to press my lips to his, kissing him softly as I cried and held him, pulling back to stroke his hair and touch his skin, feeling his stubble beneath my fingertips – all once last time.
“I’m going to miss you too,” he whispered, his breathing growing heavy as his eyes began to droop. He closed them.
“Not yet, Tyler, please not yet,” I begged, watching him fight the effects of the drugs as they pulled him under.
“I love you, sweetheart,” he breathed, the words barely audible as his body relaxed and my heart became a lump in my chest.
“I’m not ready,” I whispered, readjusting on the bed and pressing my ear to his chest like I had so many times before, listening to his heart beat as the breath moved in and out of his lungs, slower and slower with each passing minute.
I held onto him, my fingers holding tightly onto his shirt as I lay there, listening to his life as it slowly slipped away, beat by beat, breath by breath, until there was nothing, until he was still, until it was over, and he was gone.
“I’m not ready,” I cried, releasing my tears as I sobbed over his body, wishing that things were different and this was some horrible dream that I was going to wake up from and Tyler would be sitting next to me, smiling and telling me that he booked a holiday for us to hang glide off the side of a cliff, or go diving with great white sharks. This wasn’t supposed to happen. Tyler was supposed to be bulletproof. He was supposed to… “Tyler,” I wailed, shaking him, and wishing so much that he’d just wake up and tell me this was all one big joke. “No.” The word bounced along with my sobs as my grief caught fire in my chest and needed to come out as noise. “No.”
“Sarah,” Susan said from the doorway and I looked up to see her with her hand over her mouth and tears in her eyes. She walked to the side of the bed, her shaking hand reaching out to gently brush through the hair on Tyler’s forehead before it ghosted over his face then landed on his chest above his heart. “Oh, my sweet boy,” she whispered, leaning down to press a lingering kiss to his forehead. “My sweet, sweet boy, suffer no more.”
Reaching down, she took his hands and placed them together across his chest before letting out her breath and allowing her eyes to rake over the length of her eternally sleeping son.
“This was the right thing to do,” she said. “He deserved better than what was ahead of him.”
“I know,” I cried. “But, it doesn’t stop it hurting so much. I feel like my heart has been ripped out of my chest and I can’t…” I struggled to breathe, a panic grippi
ng my heart at the finality of all this. He was gone. He was gone. And there was nothing I could do to change it. Nothing I could do to reverse what he’d done. “I wasn’t ready.”
“None of us were,” Susan said, slipping her arms around my shoulders before urging me to stand so she could lead me from the room. “Come, we have a phone call to make.”
I didn’t want to leave him, but I allowed her to guide me out of the room and by the time she sat me on the lounge, I think I’d gone into shock, as I couldn’t cry anymore. All I could do was sit there and stare straight ahead, as images of Tyler danced in front of my eyes. It was like a montage of him pulling me against him and kissing me on the head, of him smiling and laughing and generally filling the world with his own brand of magic. And now, that magic was gone, and I was the one left broken with a rock in my chest where my heart used to be.
36
I BARELY remember what happened after that, it was all a blur of paramedics and police and finally the coroner. People asked me questions. They offered me their condolences and they even tried to get me to drink some water. To me, it was like they were talking to me underwater. I couldn’t hear anything properly, and it was like my body didn’t want to move, or my mind didn’t want to make it.
I just wanted my husband back. I just wanted Tyler.
Eventually, another man came and sat beside me before shining a light in each of my eyes and checking my vitals. Then he turned to Susan and said something to which she responded, but again, it was a muffled sound. Then slowly, a warmth spread through my body and the world switched off. In the brief moment before I lost consciousness, I hoped that I was dying too.
I just wanted Tyler.
***
When my eyes opened, the first thing I did was look at the emptiness in the bed beside me. I was alone and the memory of Tyler’s passing washed over me like a wave of concrete, weighting me down so I didn’t even want to breathe. The pain was indescribable. I was simply…empty – a hollow husk of a human being.
I wasn’t even in my room, and I didn’t know how I’d gotten to where I was. But I didn’t care. I was past being able to care. I was numb.
“Sarah,” a female voice said, and I turned to find my mother, sitting not far from the bed in a lounge chair.
“How am I supposed to do this without him, mum? How am I supposed to get up and do things as basic as getting dress and eating? I feel so…so broken.”
“It will get better with time, darling. But, it’s going to hurt for a while,” she soothed, coming to sit by me and gently stroke my hair the way she did when I was a child.
I sat up and looking around the room, wiping at my face with my hands. “Where are we?”
“In a hotel room. Susan called me and told me about Tyler. She didn’t think you could handle waking up in the apartment without him.”
I nodded, she was right. “How is she?”
“Devastated but trying to keep busy calling everyone and arranging the funeral.”
“I should help her,” I said, moving to get out of the bed.
“I think that today, you should rest. You went into shock yesterday and had to be sedated. You shouldn’t push yourself.”
“I’ll be OK. I want to do this,” I insisted, pushing myself up on unsteady legs. Gravity felt so much more intense this morning. “Is my phone here?”
“Over there,” she said, pointing to another chair that had my handbag and an overnight bag sitting on it. Looking inside, I found my phone and called Susan.
“Sarah,” she said when she answered, a tone of relief to her voice. “It’s good to hear from you. How are you holding up?”
“I should ask you the same. I’m so sorry for freezing up like that yesterday and leaving you to deal with everything on your own.”
“That’s what mothers are for.”
“I’d…I like to help with the arrangements.”
“Of course. Why don’t I meet you at your place? There’s something Tyler asked me to give you.”
“I’ll be there,” I said, disconnecting the call and looking over at my mum.
“Anything I can do?” she asked.
“Drive me back to my place?” I asked with a wobble smile. “I don’t think I can do that on my own yet.”
“Of course,” she said.
***
Walking into the apartment that I’d shared with Tyler felt unbelievably surreal. Everything was the same, but without his presence, it didn’t feel like home.
“There you are,” Susan said, walking over to hug me, and then my mother in greeting. She was dressed in a simple pair of black slacks and a pale blue blouse, although she didn’t have her usual perfect hair or makeup. Her eyes were swollen and red rimmed, and her nose was red and shining, and her grief seemed to make her appear much older than her forty-eight years. “I know you probably don’t want to come back here so soon, but Tyler wanted me to tell you that it’s yours to keep or sell, or do whatever you want with. But most of all, he wanted me to give you this,” she said, moving to the desk he used to house his computer and various papers and files that he needed during his illness. It’s also where he kept his journal, which is what she was holding out to me. “He hadn’t wanted a new one after he met you. He said that this one was the book of you, and that he wanted you to have it so you could see how much he really loved you.”
With my eyes wide, I took the leather book from her hands and hugged it to my chest as I leaned down and breathed in its scent. It was like receiving a piece of Tyler that I’d be able to keep always. “Thank you,” I whispered.
“He also asked me to take down this,” she said, presenting me with a white envelope. “It’s in my handwriting, but they’re his words.”
“Oh, wow,” I breathed, my hand shaking as I held the letter and wondered if I could bring myself to open it. “Thank you,” I said again, not knowing what else to say and wishing I had something to give her in return. After all, he was her son for all of his twenty-three years.
“If there’s anything of his you’d like to keep, please, feel free to take whatever you’d like. I’m sure he’d want you to have something.”
Pressing her lips together in a smile, she stepped forward and placed her hands on my upper arms. “He gave me you, Sarah. You, are the daughter I never had, and just because Tyler’s gone, doesn’t mean we aren’t family anymore. I hope you’ll still want me in your life. I think we can both lean on each other as the world keeps moving us all forward.”
“I’d like that,” I said with a smile.
“I’m glad,” she returned, before my mother brought us all a pot of tea and we sat together going through Tyler’s contacts list to notify his many friends. Janesa arrived with Alex to offer their condolences and see if they could help. Together, they set up a memorial page for him on Facebook so it was easier to keep everyone updated about funeral arrangements, and it quickly filled up with his many friends, posting photos and reminiscing about the good times they’d had with him around. So many people didn’t even know about his MS, and we asked for donations to the MS Society in lieu of flowers. He wanted to be cremated, and he wanted his ashes spread in the ocean so he could keep travelling the world on the waves.
There was so much to organise, and between the five of us, we were kept busy all day. In a way, it was good to have something to do, being organised and focused was just what we needed. It was sitting still with the ability to think that was the problem.
When we had done all we could for the day, Susan said goodbye and headed home, and mum asked if I wanted to come back to the hotel with her.
“I think I’d like to stay here for a while if that’s OK. Can I call you though if it gets too much?”
“Of course,” she said, giving me a tight embrace. “Anything you need, I’m just a phone call away, always.”
“Thank you,” I said, watching her as she followed Susan out the front door.
“Is there anything else we can do?” Janesa asked. “I can ge
t a bottle of wine and get you drunk if you need to.”
“You’ve done plenty, thank you. But, I think I just want some time to myself,” I said, glancing over at Alex who had been incredibly quiet all day. “How are you holding up?” I asked, and he shook his head, his face crumbling even though he was still trying to fight his upset.
“It’s just bullshit. He was too young, and it happened too fast. I’m just so damn sorry, Sarah.”
Reaching up, I wrapped my arms around his neck and held him tight. “You’re so right, Alex. This really is the biggest load of bullshit on the planet. I kind of just want to wake up and have this have all been a nightmare.”
Wiping at his eyes, he nodded. “Some of us are thinking of going out to the dirt bike track to do a few laps in his honour. You could come if you like?”
“I think he’d like that,” I smiled. “But, I really just want to stay here. Thank you though.”
Sniffing, he nodded then Janesa gave me a tight hug and they both left. Standing in the middle of the lounge room, I looked around the place I called home and felt the pain on loneliness as the quiet set in. I clicked on the television for some noise and folded my arms across my chest before turning around to look at the dining room table where the journal and the letter still sat waiting for me.
Slowly, I walked over to it and ran my fingertips over the leather twine that tied up Tyler’s thoughts for the short time we were together. Then I picked up the envelope and slid out the letter he’d gotten his mother to write down for me.
Sweetheart, it started. I want you to know that I’m OK now. Wherever I am – whatever happens after we die – I’m OK, and if there’s such a thing as reincarnation, you can bet your life I’m jumping in the body of the first baby boy so I can make my way back to you. So don’t be surprised, if in eighteen years, some punk kid trips you over with a stick of gum then worms their way into your heart. But failing that, know that I want the best life possible for you, and if you ever meet some other guy who can make you smile again then I want you to go for it. I want you to live the best way you can, and I’ve organised to have everything that is mine signed over to you. I’m pretty sure you get it anyway since you’re my wife and all, but I wanted to make sure no one could take it from you, so I organised it early to be sure.
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