chapter
15
The gentle tap on the window startled me. I didn’t even realize how long I had been sitting in the driveway of my longtime friend’s house. We’d been knowing each other since the early seventies, when my construction company remodeled his law offices. I rolled down the window and Bruce stuck his head in.
His brow furrowed. “Hey, big guy. What are you doing?”
“Hey, Bruce,” I said.
“How’s it going?”
“I’m making it,” I replied.
Bruce stood back, studied me, and then said, “I got the bourbon on the deck. Come on.”
I rolled my window up, then pulled myself out of the truck and followed my friend up the walkway into his home of thirty-plus years. Bruce was a widower as well, but the only difference was he had long gotten over his lost love and gone through a flurry of women to help him heal. Something I not only had never done, but had zero desire to ever do.
“So, what’s going on? What brings you to my house, and on your birthday at that? Happy birthday, by the way. But why are you sitting here in my driveway? Just sitting there like an old girlfriend stalking me.” He winked as he dropped some ice cubes into a small glass and then poured a drink. “I looked out of the window and thought you were Betty Jean Boiling. She’s been after me for weeks.”
“I had to get out of my house,” I said, taking the glass and immediately downing the drink. The liquor burned my throat before settling in my stomach. “My sons, daughter, grandkids are all over. It’s just all too much.”
“I would think you’d like having a house full of folks.”
“They just never shut up,” I said.
A hearty laugh filled Bruce, and his round belly jiggled as he spoke. “You shouldn’t have had that baseball team.”
“I only had six kids.”
“Only and six don’t go together,” Bruce chuckled, sliding into his La-Z-Boy recliner. “Have a seat.”
I plopped down on the sofa across from him, feeling as if the weight of seven planets was on my shoulders.
“So what’s got you so down, buddy?”
I hesitated. I had never really talked to anyone about my feelings after losing Elizabeth. Following her death, I just kind of shut down. I didn’t think anyone could understand the depths of the pain I was feeling.
“How did you recover?” I finally asked Bruce. “How are you able to just be so carefree and footloose? Just continue living life? Because I know you loved Laura.”
“Oh, I did love her. With all my heart. But Laura died. I didn’t,” he said matter-of-factly.
“That’s just it,” I replied. “I feel like I did die. This has been the hardest year of my life.”
“But you know Elizabeth wouldn’t want you walking around here moping.”
“It’s been a year, and it still feels like yesterday when I put her in the ground. I’m just tired, Bruce. Tired of walking this earth with this huge hole in my heart.”
He nodded in understanding. “I get it. Maybe you need to go out on a date.”
I cut my eyes at my friend. That was his answer to everything. A woman. It didn’t matter that he was the spitting image of Santa Claus, minus fifty pounds, Bruce kept a smorgasbord of women. But that was his thing, not mine. “Now, you know that’s not about to happen.”
“Okay. Let me rephrase that. Maybe you need to go find something social to do,” Bruce corrected.
I released a heavy sigh. “I just don’t have any desire to do anything. My kids think I should go see a psychiatrist.”
“What?” Bruce said, as if the mere thought was an abomination. “Come on, buddy. You’re really going to go lay on somebody’s sofa and talk about what ails you? How crazy is that?”
“I know you’re right,” I said. “You know I’m not doing that. But I gotta do something.”
“You know what you gotta do? Go see Elizabeth and tell her goodbye. A real, I’m-moving-on goodbye. I guarantee you, if you get there and talk to her for a few minutes, and listen to her talk to you, she’ll tell you she wants you to move on and be happy.”
I thought about what my friend was saying. I visited my wife’s grave regularly. I talked to her and often felt that she was talking back. But I’d never asked her what she wanted for me. Maybe she would give me some advice on how to heal.
“Okay. I’m going do that,” I announced.
“Good, now here.” He extended the bottle toward me. “This bourbon isn’t going to drink itself.”
We sat and talked for another hour, with Bruce trying to make me laugh, to no avail. Finally, I could tell I was bringing my friend down, so I said, “I have to get going. You’re right. I’m going to head by Elizabeth’s grave. That’s what I need. I need to be with Elizabeth.”
Bruce shook his head like I was a lost cause. He stood to walk me to the door. “Ollie, I don’t know what you need, but you need to do something because I don’t like seeing you like this.”
I could only reply with a grunt.
I didn’t like seeing me like this. But no matter what I did, I couldn’t shake the dark cloud that hung over me.