How To Let Go

Chapter 1: No Words

            The night that we had the biggest flight of our lives, I drove him to the LAX airport. Before going into the gate, he turned to me.

            “You can still be mad at me if you want to. I don’t mind, Natalie.” He approached me and wrapped his arms around me. The last time he had done so was when he came to me and told me that Carrie was filing for a divorce and that he had found bloodied blades in Eliza’s drawers.

            I didn’t hug him back.

            “Honey, why don’t you come visit next Monday?” he whispered.

            “…I don’t know…” I answered. I never gave him such a vague answer.

            He was quiet. “…Okay. I understand.” He let go and began going towards the gate. He turned back and smiled warmly at me. “Honey, I’ll see you again.” He waved at me.

            I waved back. That was the last time I ever did.

            The phone rang early Wednesday morning. It had been two days since I last said goodbye to Jimmy.

            I answered it, groggily. I had pulled an all-nighter and this huge migraine was slowly coming into play.

            It was Eliza. Her voice was shaky and as quiet as a mouse when she said ‘hello’. I knew instantly that something was wrong.

            “What’s up, Sweetie?” I asked.

            “…Natalie,” she whispered. “…D-dad’s…d-dad’s passed away…”

            At first, I blinked. Moments passed by after I hung up. An eerie silence had crept through me and controlled every cell of my being. My body didn’t move. Everything was quiet.

            Jimmy…Dead? No, it wasn’t possible. It couldn’t be. He couldn’t be gone. How could he be?

            I slowly set off for the bathroom. I soaked in my tub. After fifteen minutes later, it slowly registered in my mind. Jimmy. Dead. Gone. Forever.

            In my tub, my tears mixed in with the tub water. I opened my mouth to scream, but no sound came out. I wanted to groan, wanted to scream, but my vocal chords constricted and no sound came out. Only tears.

            How could I explain that moment? It was a kaleidoscope of fear, sadness, terror, hurt, pain, and above all, realization. He was gone. He was never going to come back. Someone had punched me in the gut and I was out of breath.

            In my mind, the thoughts continued to race. Never again was he going to walk with me to the bookstore to spend hours of nothingness but looking for a good book. Never again were we going to go the coffee shop and stare at random strangers that walked by. Never again were we ever going to talk.

            He was supposed to be immortal; he was supposed to make the longest toast at my wedding, supposed to see and hold my babies, supposed to be there for me. He was supposed to live.

            And now, he was gone.

            I slept on the couch, the spot where he slept at every time he came over. His covers still smelled like him: Calvin Klein cologne and lavender soap. Every time that I tried to fall asleep, another memory of him came to me with just one whiff of the covers.

            The phone rang countless times. I couldn’t find the effort to raise my body up and answer it. If I did, though, I still don’t know if I had the will to continue the conversation with whoever was on the line.

            I don’t know for how many hours I slept, after finally sleeping. I think there was also a knock on the door. I didn’t care anymore.

            Each time my eyes opened, tears would line them in seconds. I couldn’t find the will to wail; I couldn’t find the will to make a sound. I felt as if that sound would be responded; responded by Jimmy.

            A week passed by without my noticing. Empty cans of all of Jimmy’s favorites laid next to my body; empty words in empty books that were embraced by Jimmy laid on my stomach; empty dreams and empty hopes of Jimmy’s and mine bled from my heart.

            And all I could hear were his very last words to me: “Honey, I’ll see you again.”

            I couldn’t do it; I couldn’t let go. How could I? To let go of Jimmy was to let go of the very essence of my life. It would kill me to let him go. No one understood how I felt.

            And, how could they? Have they spent twenty-four years with Jimmy? A hundred thousand days with him? A million hours? A century of minutes? An eternity of significant seconds? No; no one, not even our parents have spent that long of a life with him…It was all of mine. Those twenty-four years, that hundred thousand days, those millions of hours, that century of minutes, that eternity of seconds. All of that belonged to me. All of that was for me…Me and him; it was for no one else.

            And, when I realize that, I can only end up crying, once again.