I Would Have

For the last few months, since I quit my job as a caregiver for a Senior home, I have not once neglected to scour the obituaries in the local paper. There has not been a name I have recogized. Until yesterday. My dear big ole' Jimmy died of pneumonia at age 83. My heart felt a sharp pang, a needle prick of sorrow for an unusually short time. I was surprised how fleeting the grief was. Had I still worked there, his illness would have been a sympathetic obession with every shift. I would have wiped his brow, played soothing music, held firmly onto his hand as the life it contained was slipping away. I would have neglected my other duties, the other residents, rationalizing that this is where I needed to be. That he could not be alone. That he had to know he was loved. I would have left work exhausted, bereft, fearing the next day. Imagining clocking in the next morning, turning to the bullitin board and seeing his name scrawled in chalk that he had passed away the night before. Maybe just a few hours after I had left, maybe a few minutes. My head would grow numb. I could have bashed it against a concrete wall and nothing, not an inkling of physical pain. I would be in a cloud the entire day. I would ignore any laughter, any attempt at merriment. I would ignore all the living around me. I would have left work, riding my bike in a torrent of rain. I would have been shivering, drenched, bangs plastered to my forehead, water dripping from my nose down my blouse to the rounding of my stomach. I would have felt nothing. I would have parked my bike at the Bi-Mart, rushed in with head down, rubber soles sqeaking on the aluminum. I knew the aisle by heart. With eyes closed, I could have found it. Peppertree Grove Cabernet Savignon in hand, I'd squeak back to the check out, swipe my card, ask it to double-bagged, wrapped like a twisted present in a paper sack first. I couldn't allow it to break while swinging in the wind on my handlebars. I would have made it home, my son still at after school care, plucked out the cork, and taken the first lingering swig straight from the bottle. It would fill in all contours of my mouth, slide along my tongue, teeth, pour down my throat like melted truffles. After two glasses , my head would clear, uncloud. My eyes would focus, colors magnified. I would have thought of Jim. I would have cried. I would have cried for everyone: my mother, my past lover, my grandparents, a great aunt, a cousin, a boy I knew in high school, the mother in the apartment fire, the addict under the tracks, the thousands across the sea from disease, typhoons, hunger, war. I would have cried for all of them. And then, ME. But I would not cry for me. I did not deserve the sypmathy, the care, the attention. The bottle would be gone now. And I would be angry. Enraged that I did not have more wine, that my son would be dropped off at any moment, that the numbing had ceased, that I felt alive. That I was alive. I was alive and all of them were not. They were at peace and I was abandoned. I would have called my babysitter then, begged for my son to spend the night, that I could not allow for him to see me in this condition. She would agree. She would protect him from my grief, my stumblings, my incoherencies, my fear. She would make me promise I would call, that I would not leave the house, that I would call my boyfriend to come over and take care of me. I would promise. I would lie. I would face the mirror in the kitchen, wipe the black mascara smudged under my eyes. I would put on fresh lipstick, call my boyfriend. I would be calm, voice soft and contained, telling him I needed him. He would panic, his voice an octave higher than normal. I would hear him wrestling with his coat as he stammered that he would be right over. I love you, I would tell him. I'm sorry, I would say. I would place the phone back on the reciever, stare at all the photographs of my mother on the wall, in frames on the bookcases. I would yell at her. I would yell at her for leaving me. For dying. For dying before I could hold her hand. I woud sit then, on the kitchen floor, curved back against the cabinets. I would lift my hand to the upper drawer, pull out something sharp. A steak knife. I would rub it roughly again my wrists, my shoulder blades, my upper thighs. I would push hard enough just for a plush welt to grow. Rarely blood. Rarely would I have the luxury of seeing blood. I couldn't even do that right. The front door would open. My boyfrind would run in, grab the knife, throw it in the sink, slink down next to me on the floor and cry. He could cry and I could not. Again, I'm sorry, is all I would be able to say.
Jim has died. But I was not there. I did not see the progression of his death. I did not hold his cold hand. The grief has already subsided. I do not drink, not for that reason, anyway. My son plays with a friend on his Wii. My godmother hangs christmas decorations. My boyfriend has not called me in two days. And I write this. I wait at my family's home, broke, unemployed, all my belongings in storage, waiting for the Alcohol treatment center to call me when an open bed is ready. I have waited two months already. But today, I do not drink. I do not think of knives. Today, I write this. And for now, that is enough.