The constant beeping was the only comfort I
had to hold on to. It was the only thing that kept me going; she
was still alive, as long as the beeping continued. The world was
still decent if she was in it.
I had fallen for Emma when she was five
years old. It was the first day of kindergarten. She’d had
her hair in two braids. My father pointed her out to me.
“See that little girl? I wanted to marry her mother but she
ran off with a miner instead.” When I asked why she would
pick a miner over him, he’d smiled sadly.
“Because when the miner sang, all the birds stopped to
listen.”
The teacher had started class by asking if
anybody wanted to sing a song. Emma’s hand had shot straight
up, and she stood up and sang. From that moment on, I knew I loved
her because her voice was almost as beautiful as she
was.
For years, I tried to work up the courage
to talk to her but I couldn’t. As time went on, she just grew
more beautiful and more confident. I knew I might never have the
nerve to tell her how I felt. So I did the next best thing, I
became her best friend, her confidant. And I was always there to
hold her when a boy hurt her. I would always comfort her because
the most wretched feeling in the world was seeing her
cry.
It had been thirteen years since that day
in kindergarten. I still couldn’t imagine anything more
perfect than her.
I sat for what seemed like years, waiting
until the doctors would take her out of the coma. Her hands were
stiff, her features were uncharacteristically serious, everything
was wrong. But what was the most wrong was that I was the only
person who would stay the whole night, who would stay with her. Not
her boyfriend who she had said she loved, not her parents who had
only come to see her twice, not her friends. Just me. She was all I
had and I was all she had.
Then on a cold January night, after a month
of tears, the monitors give a couple final beeps before going flat.
It takes me a couple minutes to fight through the shock and figure
out what just happened. I’m still in shock as doctors rush
in, shoving me out of the room. I watch their futile attempts to
bring the beeps back. It’s almost as if I’m watching
all of this from somewhere above my body, as if I’m floating
above my head, away from all of this. I sit on a bench out in the
lobby for hours. Not crying, not speaking, not moving because right
now there’s a tiny sliver of a chance that they can bring her
back.
I’m brought into the hospital room
where I see her motionless figure. The doctor shakes his head at me
when I look over at him, hoping for a chance. “She’s
gone.”
All I remember after that is that I kept
repeating one thing over and over. It was simple, it was
cliché, it was all I felt from that moment on.
“Please, please, don’t leave me. I can’t live
without you.”
A month later, I stand to give the eulogy.
I look out to the sea of mourners clad in black. I only do it
because I can’t imagine anyone else being able to do it well.
I tell the sea of people what a great person she had been. I tell
them how she was my best friend and that I could trust her. I tell
them she will be missed dearly. I don’t tell them that she
was the most beautiful creature on earth. I don’t tell them
what our last conversation was about or that I never got to tell
her what I’d wanted to tell her since I was five. I
don’t tell them how I was in love her or that I still am in
love with her or that I always will be in love with her. I
don’t tell them that I don’t even know how to live
without her. Those things I will keep hidden, secret. Those things
are mine and only mine.
found on tumblr.
The constant beeping was the only comfort I had to hold on to.
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Apr 22, 2012 12:46am
