It’s been a week since I returned home. One week since I moved back into the apartment above Carol’s garage. One week since I last saw Kane, or even spoke to him for that matter. One week since everything fell apart. One week.
To say the last few days have been difficult would be putting it mildly. With my body’s natural hormone shift due to the pregnancy and everything going on with Kane, it’s no surprise that I feel like I’m going to crawl out of my own skin just about every second of the day.
I wish I could say sleep offers me some reprieve, but so far no such luck. Hell, sometimes my dreams are even worse than my reality. Like the one where Kane never comes back. Or the one where it’s him lying under that four-wheeler instead of Kam. And I can’t forget about the one where Kane is holding our baby, trying to stay afloat but he keeps disappearing under the water until they both end up drowning right in front of me and I’m powerless to save either of them. I guess nightmares would be a better term for what I’m having.
It only took one really bad one–the one where Kane was trapped under the ATV– before I picked up the phone and called him. He declined the call. I knew he had because it rang twice before his voicemail picked up.
I left a panicked message that I needed to know he was okay. He texted me less than a minute later with one simple message: I’m okay.
That’s it. Nothing else.
I keep reminding myself that I’m supposed to be taking this time to heal. Up until recently I didn’t feel like I needed it. I felt like I had moved on, at least for the most part. I mean, as much as someone can given the circumstances. But now I know I was only pretending that I had. Lying to myself so I wouldn’t have to face everything that I buried. Everything that losing the baby brought to the surface.
I don’t know how long I’ve been out walking but when I finally look around I find myself standing feet from the entrance of the cemetery. I wasn’t intentionally heading this way so I’m not really sure how I ended up here. I look up at the tall steel gate before turning my gaze beyond it to the small road that weaves through the cemetery.
I haven’t been back here to see Kam since the day I left North Carolina nearly three months ago. Taking a deep inhale, I step through the gates, snuggling deeper into my sweatshirt. It’s not cold by any means but there’s definitely a crispness to the air. A clear sign of colder temperatures to come.
It doesn’t take me long to find Kam. He’s at the back of the lot next to a large tree that looks like it’s older than the cemetery itself. As soon as I reach his headstone I plop down on the ground in front of it, pulling my knees up to my chest.
I don’t speak right away. Instead I sit here, staring at his name etched in the stone, wondering what he would say to me if he were here right now. If I close my eyes hard enough I can almost hear him. His voice. His laugh. The way he used to say my name, or rather my nickname.
“Hey, tater tot,” I say after a long while, reaching up to lay my palm flat against the stone in front of me. “Sorry it’s been so long since I’ve come to see you. Things have been…well, interesting. Of course you already know all that, don’t you? You’re probably sitting back, feet up, hands locked behind your head, enjoying the show. You always did find my ability to make such a mess of things entertaining. You’re probably having a good laugh at my expense right now, aren’t you?” I chuckle bitterly, crossing my legs in front of me before dropping my hands into my lap.
“Nah. You wouldn’t have found any of this funny. And you certainly wouldn’t have let me lie in bed and wallow for the last week. You would have walked into my apartment, ripped the blanket off of me, and demanded that I get up. And I would have done it. You always did know how to make me listen. Well, almost always.” I pick at some of the long pieces of grass that have sprouted up around the base of his headstone.
“You understood me like no one else. I miss that about you. I miss everything about you. But that’s one of the things I miss the most. Your ability to know exactly what to say, what to do, how to handle me no matter my mood. You were the only person that called me on my bullshit the instant it left my mouth and even though you would make me so mad sometimes, I could never stay that way. You would smile at me and I would instantly forget about the reason I was supposed to be mad. You knew it too. You knew what that smile would do to me and it worked, without fail, every single time.” I smile softly to myself.
“God I wish you were here now, Kam. I wish you could tell me how to fix this. I wish you could tell me how stupid I’m being and to suck it up and put my big girl panties on.” I laugh before falling silent. “I wish you could tell me how to let you go,” I whisper but my words get carried off in the wind.
Closing my eyes, I lean my face upward to the sky and let the cool breeze whip through my hair.
“Tell me what to do, Kam,” I plead to the sky before turning my eyes back to his headstone. “I love him. I don’t know how it happened. One minute he was your brother and I wanted to be close to him because it made me feel close to you. And then suddenly it wasn’t about that anymore. It was about the way he looked at me. The way his hand would graze my lower back so softly it was barely a touch yet it could set my entire body on fire. The way he would smile at me.” I pause, letting the thought hang.
“I think I miss his smile more than anything else right now. The way it would light up a room. The way it would make my heart pound so hard in my chest I was convinced the whole world could hear it crashing against my ribcage. I fell so hard and so fast I didn’t have time to talk myself out of it. I didn’t have time to rationalize or second guess. I wanted him and that was all I could see… Him.”
“And now I’ve lost him too.” I blow out a slow breath. “He says it’s because I need time. Time to heal. Time to move on. Time to let you go. Only I don’t know how to let you go, Kam. Hell, I’m not even sure I want to. I just need you to tell me what to do. Tell me how I fix this. Tell me how I get him back. Because I can’t live without him, Kam, and honestly, I don’t want to.”
I close my eyes again, imagining Kam sitting next to me. I feel his hand close down over mine; feel the warmth of his body as he settles in next to me. I can even hear his words as if he were actually speaking.
“You already know what to do, bean.”
“But I don’t,” I argue.
“Yes you do. You need to face what happened to me, to us.”
“I have faced it. I’ve been facing it every day that you’ve been gone.”
“No you haven’t, bean. You’ve been burying it. Telling Kane was a start. It means you’re ready. But you’re still holding back. Why are you so afraid to let me go?”
“You know why,” I say, remembering the last time I spoke those words to him. It was the day of the accident, when he pushed me to tell him why I was so upset over his date. God I remember that day so clearly and yet it’s all blurred together at the same time.
“I do know why. But do you?” I hear him say.
“What if something happens to him?”
“You mean what if you cause something to happen to him,” he corrects.
“You always could read me better than anyone else.”
I open my eyes and suddenly he’s there, staring back at me with those hazel eyes, the blue and green specks catching the sunlight just right making them almost sparkle.
“There she is.” He smiles.
“Kam.” I choke back a sob, knowing he’s not really here but wanting so desperately to believe the lie my mind is telling me.
“You didn’t do this, bean. You can’t spend the rest of your life focused on what might happen. You don’t have that kind of control, no matter how much you wish you did. All you can do is love with everything that you have while you have the chance to do it. I died and you’re going to have to find a way to forgive yourself for that. If not for you, then do it for me, bean. Do it for Kane.”
“You make it sound so easy.” I sniff.
“It’s only as difficult as you make it.”
“I don’t want to let you go, Kam. I don’t want to purge you from my life and forget about you. I want you with me, always.”
“And I will be.”
“No you won’t,” I accuse, trying to hold onto the image of him that’s starting to blur in front of me.
“Yes I will, bean. I will always be with you. Letting me go doesn’t mean forgetting me. It means forgiving yourself. Don’t bury me. Don’t pretend like I didn’t exist. Learn to live with what happened and find a way to be okay.”
“Don’t bury you,” I say slowly, turning my eyes forward.
I suddenly realize that’s exactly what I’ve been trying to do. I’ve been trying to bury his memory to ease my own guilt.
I ran away from North Carolina. I packed everything I had of his including his camera and his old Dodgers hat in a box and sealed it up tight so I wouldn’t have to look at it every day. So I wouldn’t have to face what I lost every single day.
“Your camera,” I blurt, but when I look back to where Kam was sitting next to me just moments earlier, there’s no one there. “Kam?” I look around, willing my mind to bring him back. “Kam?” I close my eyes hard, pleading, but when I open them I’m met with the truth I haven’t wanted to see since the accident.
Kam is gone and no matter how hard I wish and pray, he’s not coming back.
I let the weight of that settle around me. Let myself feel it all the way into my bones. Let it seep through every pore until I have no choice but to face it.
“Don’t bury me,” I repeat his words, reaching out to lay my hand on the front of his headstone just as a hard wind whips around me.
I know it’s probably wishful thinking but for some reason I feel meaning behind the wind. Like Kam really is here, telling me what to do, guiding me, and for the first time since he died, I close my eyes and let myself listen.
And suddenly it all becomes clear.
“I know what I have to do,” I whisper. “I know what to do,” I repeat, quickly shuffling to my feet.
“I’ve tried to forget. For months I’ve tried to forget what happened,” I say, my face tilted down to his grave. “But you’re right. I can’t forget you. And I don’t want to. I want to remember you. Every single thing about you. Because you were my best friend, Kamden Joseph Thaler. You were everything to me and you deserve so much more than to be stuffed into a box and forgotten. I know what I have to do now. I have to find a way to keep you alive forever; at least in my own way.”
I smile down at him just as a tear slides down my cheek.
“Thank you, Kam.” I kiss my fingers and lay them across the top of the cool stone. “Thank you.” And with that I turn and take off through the cemetery. For the first time in a long time, I feel some of the weight I’ve carried with me for months start to lift.