Valentine’s Day 2013

The days blended into weeks as seamlessly as if blurred by endless rain, snow, or freezing rain. In fact, rain was my companion those first months; meteorologists claimed it was the wettest winter we’d had in years. Beech Lake began to swell, pushing past its normal boundaries and annexing new territory around the shore. From where I sat at the cabin’s window, I could see a stump growing extra moss from all the moisture.

The weather helped me feel that there was a point to all my suffering. Tears falling, rain falling, everything on earth seemed miserable. Not that the word miserable could in any way convey the truth of my pain. Miserable was just a scratch on the surface.

We’d cancelled the rest of our tour. The Avowed was on hiatus, indefinitely. Kyle was furious initially, but that was probably just his attempt to get more attention from traversing the globe in an acclaimed rock band than it was concern for me. I was worried he was deeply addicted at this point, but grief sucked me into myself and my own problems, soon eclipsing my worries for my brother. Winston and Stevie tried to get me help, but I pushed them away.

I pushed everyone away.

I didn’t even get to take Ava to her mother’s funeral. How goddamn fucked up is that?

They’d seen the way I behaved, watched the videos and read the headlines, and social services concluded I was ‘unfit’ as a parent. Publicly making an example of a famous rockstar so that they could be seen as taking child welfare seriously.

So Ava was hurried away from me, custody revoked by the stroke of a pen while I was still reeling.

If I didn’t have Sarah and Ava, I was nothing.

Nothing belonged in the middle of nowhere, not center stage at a concert. That was how I found myself in my dad’s old place at Beech Lake, morosely shuffling from day to day. Gabe and I walked when the weather wasn’t inhospitable, which it was more often than not. Come morning, I’d check outside from the front window and thank the clouds silently for their steely, somber insistence when my plans had to be cancelled.

Plans. If you could call them that.

We walked, Gabe and I, from the edge of the lake all the way around, stepping through muddied paths and snowy pine-needle filled hollows on the forest floor. It was long past tourist season, so it was very, very quiet. Exactly what I wanted.

No one to ask me how I was doing. No one to try to tell me that it would get better.

Because it fucking wouldn’t.

And maybe I didn’t even want it to. To recover from a pain like that would be to admit hope was possible again, and without my family, I didn’t want that to be true. It was a betrayal of the deepest, most despicable kind. I thought I would rather fade into a horrible obscurity than let myself regain a place in the world.

It was because of this attitude that I left the world behind, travelled to the quietest place I’d ever lived and holed up in my childhood home. Dad had been gone for years now, but he’d left dusty coffee mugs and countless vinyl albums. The carpet still smelled of his brand of cigarettes. So I wasn’t entirely alone.

I took to walking every day, stepping through nature by the light of the sun and then retreating to the world of forgotten childhood favorite albums at night. Gabe would stare at me balefully as I turned up the volume past reasonable levels and then laid on the floor trying to absorb the power of the songs. Trying to regain any sense of purpose.

Music had been a way of salvaging what had initially seemed like a life I’d never fully inhabit. Stevie and I had wanted to get out of the woods, away from Beech Lake to live real grown-up lives outside the shadow of who we’d always been to those who had known us. The Avowed had let us have that fantasy, and then some.

Fame was just a perk to the ability we’d found to leave our hometown and be someone independently. That was the thing about growing up in a small town, everyone thought they knew you. People thought they knew you when you were famous, too, but you didn’t have to talk to them every day knowing that they felt that sense of kinship.

It mostly just followed you in the press, gossip blogs and videos proliferating with chatty commentary on our outfit choices, potential love interests, financial missteps.

I had once loved going through that kind of press and laughing at the absurd things they said about us. It had been a competitive sport for me: show that you aren’t hurt, show that you’re still grounded. They can’t pierce the hide of someone so thickly prepared for their attacks.

But all that changed when Sarah died, leaving me naked and easily wounded by the most well meaning comment on a video in the news. Even if someone said they were sorry for my loss, it enraged me. They didn’t know what it felt like. They didn’t know what I’d actually lost.

Sarah would have understood why it made me so angry, but she’d have been just as mad to see them talking about our daughter like she was better off in the care of strangers than with her father. When I thought about how Sarah would have reacted to that news, it made me glad she was dead.

At least my most broken moments weren’t ones she knew about.

At least Sarah never saw Ava’s tear-stained face as she had to fall asleep in a strange bed somewhere far away from me.

That was a small, fragile mercy.

There was nothing else.

* * *

One morning, I woke to hear Gabe whining at the door. After a few more whines punctuated the silence, a clatter of sounds told me that mail had been delivered. All of my bills were electronic, and there was no delivery of spammy coupons and flyers out here this time of year.

I shuffled to the entranceway, calming Gabe with a few pats to the head as if to say that I knew what he was concerned about and would take care of it. The mail slot was crammed with a packet of letters, some of which had spilled onto the floor while others remained stuck in the opening. It was about 20 pieces of varying sizes and shapes. A few envelopes were bright colors, vivid against the muddy brown of the carpet.

“What’s this, Gabe?” I said. It’s a sad day when you find yourself talking to the dog like a human.

To be honest, that was most days.

Gabe huffed, perhaps frustrated he didn’t get to chase the mail carrier down the wooded pathways that led to our door. He liked chasing, even if the mail delivery folks didn’t.

As I stooped to collect the pieces of mail, I noticed a small white note attached to one envelope on the top of the pile.

It was from Stevie.

“Hey Jack,” it read, “I know you need your time alone, so I won’t bother you with a call. And no worries, man, I won’t show up at your door or anything like that. But I wanted you to know that fans are thinking about you. We’ve gotten ten times this much mail, daily. Since it’s Valentine’s Day soon, thought you shouldn’t be alone. Love you man, Stevie.”

Fucking Stevie had probably gotten the delivery person to stick that thing on top. Goddamn, Beech Lake was such a small place.

A man couldn’t escape anywhere.

I crammed the envelopes into my shaking fists and then threw them onto the kitchen table.

Some envelopes were decorated with stickers, others had the delicate loopy handwriting of older fans. I’d seen my share of letters from people who liked The Avowed before.

This time was different, because they were addressed to me, not the band.

On the front of each envelope, my name sang out to me in an unholy chorus. Jack Sargent. Jack Sargent. Jack Sargent.

I realized that in the woods here, I’d been living without words. Without recognition. Without a name.

I didn’t have to be anyone here, I just existed.

But the letters brought me back and forced me to remember connections I had to the outside world. Despite my better judgment, I opened one. It was a stiff cream-colored paper, the kind you’d use to print a nice resume if you wanted to stand out job hunting.

Seemed like a weird choice to write to a bass player in a band with, but what did I know?

“Jack,” said the letter, written in a scrawling pen I could barely decipher, “I’m so sorry about your loss, dude. My wife died five years ago and I can still remember the pain of hearing about it like it happened five minutes ago. Wouldn’t wish it on anyone, let alone you. If you ever need to talk, know you’ve got a buddy in me. Your songs helped me through a dark, dark time. Wish I could do the same for you.”

I didn’t make it to the end of the note. The name was at the bottom, signed with care and a flourish.

I hated him.

How dare he think he know what I’d gone through?

I grabbed rum from the liquor cabinet, an old microwave stand now full of mostly empty bottles. The rum smelled enticing as I poured it into a nearby mug. At the first sip, my mouth burned, but I soon grew accustomed to the alcohol’s numbing sensation.

Fortified, I then returned to the pile of letters, not because I wanted to read the words people had written, but because I felt obligated to work my way through them on account of Stevie’s work compiling and sending them to me.

The next letter was short, printed on festive paper that smelled a little like candy.

“Hello, Jack. I know my first year without my husband was difficult. We’d been together for almost fifty years. I never listened to your music much, but my husband loved you boys and would have wanted me to send you this card. Best wishes, Greta.”

The signature that followed the typewritten text was perfectly angled, as if measured by a precision-obsessed grandmother. Maybe that’s who Greta was. But I still couldn’t resist the way the rage bubbled up inside me, pouring out and venting to these kind souls who wanted me to feel less alone.

Couldn’t they tell that it was worse to hear from strangers than to be left to your own devices?

My conscious thoughts swam with anger, but something underneath must have found solace in the packet of letters, because I kept opening them. I read each and every one, drinking rum as I went, until I’d been barraged with so many messages of sympathy, commiseration, and well-wishing that I thought I would drown.

There was so much grief in the world. Most of the people who’d written to me told me about someone they’d lost, a time they’d felt hopeless. Apparently a lot of the time the music my brothers and I played helped them through, but I was certain that my bass did no such thing for me.

I’d tried. It was like playing with an anvil for a hand. I couldn’t do it.

So I drank more rum, shuffling the cards and letters into a pile at the side of the table while I made more room for myself. After a gulp of rum, I laid my head down on the table and exhaled slowly, the space filling with rum fumes on my breath.

“What the fuck am I doing?”

Stevie had tried to get me help, tried so many things to reach out, to aid me. To do something to try to counteract the howling pain I was being buffeted by. And yet nothing had landed.

That wasn’t entirely true.

Saying it that way obscured how I’d pushed Stevie far, far away from me. Nothing had landed because I violently shoved my closest friend out the door one way, screaming at him that I didn’t want his help. He still tried but from a distance.

Hence the packet of letters.

Somehow, they’d made me feel worse. Probably because they’d made me feel something, and I had moved here to try to turn off all my emotions.

Guess that was what the rum was for. I drank more, no longer bothering to pour the stuff into my mug. I just chugged straight from the bottle, like a loser pirate out in the middle of the woods. Inland. Miles from the sea where I belonged.

Miles from the people I belonged with.

I sighed.

Might as well take a walk.

I staggered into my bedroom, putting on my boots clumsily and shrugging on an insulated plaid jacket. When I next noticed my surroundings, I was outside. The woods smelled clean and wintry, pine sap half frozen on the branches while puffs of snow floated in the breeze.

It wasn’t enough to exorcise the pain, but it kept me moving. If I just kept moving long enough, maybe I’d find something that would help. Because nothing had yet. I had no hope. Nothing.

Gabe had whined at my feet while I was going through the letters and now trotted ahead happily, sniffing at the tree bases where he’d peed every day since we got here. Of course, there was never anything new for him to smell there, just his own piss. Never stopped him from investigating as if each tree held carefully locked secrets he could decipher with keen observation.

I strode past him, impatient as the rum rushed through my veins. My eyes felt foggy, but wiping at them did nothing to clear my vision.

I dimly recognized that I was crying. Water on my cheeks, vision blurred.

Those are tears on your face, Jack. Asshat.

It felt good to let the feelings seep from my eyes, a droplet for each heartbeat until they blended together in constant streams. The chilly air froze some of the tears to my skin, small crystals of ice forming on the collar of my shirt.

I don’t know how long I was out walking. I made it around the lake, and then I just kept going. Today wasn’t like other days. I plodded, my eyes not seeing the beauty of nature around me, my hand not reaching for Gabe to pat him amicably as we moved.

One foot landing in the snow with a whumpf, then another.

Trudge. That’s the word for it.

I wasn’t walking to enjoy nature, I was walking to keep moving. To keep shuffling through life until I could exhaust myself into oblivion.

Nothingness was so appealing right now, I longed for it. To have my feelings lifted by making them no longer exist. Ceasing all thinking, all pain, all suffering. I watched each footstep land on the snow-laden ground through my blurry, drunk vision. Kept going, and going, and going.

That was it.

I’d just stop.

I let the exhaustion and depression-fuelled weariness combine with my drunken stupor. I slumped to my knees, moisture from the snow immediately seeping into the fabric of my pants. With a sigh, I let myself fall the rest of the way. We were miles from town, on the outskirts of the lake near where seasonal cottages were boarded up for the winter.

As good a place to die as any.

I was half asleep immediately, verging on blackout while I sank deeper into the snowbank on the side of the trail. There was a kind of serenity to relinquishing control like that, to just letting myself stop when I’d been craving the end for so many days.

Here I was.

My eyes were closed firmly, but even through my eyelids I could tell that it was getting dark. I welcomed the night, knowing that with it came colder temperatures, a way of shortening my inevitable decline into nothingness. If I could receive enough exposure, soon it would be over.

Unconsciousness came for me in a wave, swiftly enough that I didn’t notice it on its way until it had overwhelmed me. And then I didn’t have to hurt anymore.

* * *

A muffled whine, warmth against my cheek. Strange smell.

What was that?

Where was I?

Another sound: the faint hooting of an owl. Night time. Sudden, deadening pain in my feet became palpable. The blazing agony shot up through half-frozen veins to scream in my head.

You’re dying. Frostbite at the very least.

Good.

Let it be over already. Please.

As with every awakening, it took only a few seconds before reality crashed back down on me and I remembered. Sarah was dead. Ava was gone.

I was a ruin.

A strengthening hangover rang out in my head, almost eclipsed by the searing feeling in my feet. When I thought about it, everything hurt. The pains all took turns vying for my attention.

I groaned, and then realized that the warmth against my cheek was Gabe licking me anxiously.

“Goway,” I muttered.

Easier to pronounce than ‘leave me alone here to die.’

But Gabe whimpered at my comment and then pawed at my back. It was harder to push away a dog when you were already half frozen than I’d anticipated.

“Go!” I yelled, the sound still half buffered by the snowbank I was face-down in. Gabe stopped pawing and whined more audibly, so I took the opportunity to push him with my closest hand.

He turned and slunk away.

I blacked out again, relieved. Alone at last.