Week Fifty

The Great Beyond

She wanted something simple.

“You’re not going to need it long,” she’d say, looking through what one might consider to be the most melancholy catalog ever devised.

It’s a strange thing to sit there next to your dying girlfriend, and picking out which urn she’d like most.

“Just pick the one you like most,” she said, closing the catalog. “Or go cheap. Honestly, I don’t care and I won’t be there to enjoy it. But promise me you’ll turn it into something awesome, like a vase or a place to store your car keys.”

We spent our last few days together imagining what our timeline looked like if it unspooled indefinitely. Where we’d get married. What we’d name our kids. What color we’d paint our house. And as I held her and heard the furnace of her lungs expel what would be one of the last thousand or so breaths they’d take, she said she wished we could ice skate on a frozen pond in the moonlight. Just once.

I didn’t ice skate. She didn’t ice skate. And, it was summer.

“We’d float below the stars,” she said, her voice tiny and delicate, “making parallel twists and dancing to the sound of nothing.” She exhaled again in resignation, “It would all be so wonderful.”

———

I stood on the edge of the lake holding what remained of her in a minimalist yet tasteful box. Through moistened eyes, I opened the lid and spilled her into the water which created a fitting reverse mushroom cloud of smoke that drifted with the wind.

I watched her fade away in the bleach of the summer sun, then walked home in my cheap suit to work on the rest of my life.

———

Hey,
So, I’m dead, huh?

Of course she left me a note. She probably had one of the nurses mail it for her. It felt odd to hold a piece of paper that she’d held only a week ago. I lifted it to my nose to see if it smelled like her.

I’m sorry I won’t be around to name our children after characters from the Lord of the Rings. Quick side note here: whomever you do end up with, please don’t make her name your kids after characters from the Lord of the Rings. Naming a kid ‘Strider’ is child abuse.

She continued through all the normal things, such as thanking me for helping her, reminding me how much she loved me, and asking me to feed the cat. But it was the last couple of lines that stood out.

And I have a task for you. Go out. Talk to people. Engage. You’ve never been Mr. Social, but now is the time. You’ll never find someone who loves you as much as I do by sitting at home. Go to restaurants. Travel. Experience the world. But more than anything, talk to people.

I hadn’t had many friends since grade school, and those I did grew distant once she got sick. I hated social situations, and would rather stay at home with movies, video games, or my books. But how could I not honor my dead girlfriend’s final wish?

Even in her death, I still spun upon her finger.

———

The photo’s edges had frayed. The colors muted. And yet I could still hear her laugh echoing through infinity as she felt the wind turn her hair into a cone of drift and chaos. I placed the photo gingerly into my coat pocket and looked at the back of my coffee cup and into the empty chair beyond the wooden cliff of the cafe table.

I began slowly, simply smiling at people as they passed my table. The toothless lips pressed tight expression one would reserve for passing a co-worker in the office cafeteria. I got many in return, but the closest I got to legitimate conversation was when a young father asked to take the empty chair reserved for my dead girlfriend to let his daughter sit down.

The next day, I sat in the same chair at the same table in the same cafe. Granted, this wasn’t the most proactive way of engaging in conversations with strangers, but I needed to take baby steps. The sun shrunk shadows and then drew them long as I sat quietly sipping various coffees, waters, and ate a variety of cafe foods. I sketched ideas in a notepad, and assigned names and personalities to the birds that ate crumbs off the sidewalk.

And as the lights blinked on in the windows of the buildings across the street, each new illuminated square of sidewalk drove home the point that I was failing to live up to the one wish my girlfriend had requested of me. I left without a word and spent the night connecting dots on my ceiling to distract me from my failures.

———

Silence has away of drawing people in. We are a vocal species, and the lack of talk will drive others to think something is wrong. Such was the case as I sat in the cafe on the third day.

“You alright man?” he asked with a mix of concern and amicable uplift, “Noticed you’ve been sitting here just looking off into space.”

“Yeah! I’m great,” I lied. “Just lost in thought.”

“Alright man. We’ll I hope they’re good thoughts.”

“They are,” another lie. What would she do? And then, the impossible, “How are YOU doing?”

“I’m good,” he said, sitting down across from me. “I mean, ‘good’ is relative, right? My shoulder hasn’t been the same since I fell snowboarding last winter. My girl thinks I’m not passionate enough. And I’m pretty sure my boss is embezzling funds from our firm. But I’m not homeless. So I’m good.”

“Right on,” I said having never actually used the term ‘right on’ before. Ever. “Out of those, which is the most concerning?”

“Damn. I guess the passionate thing. She’s awesome and I’m completely undeserving of her. But that’s probably the easiest to fix. The shoulder is really just me procrastinating going to the doctor, and my boss is an asshole who deserves whatever is coming to him.”

In the background, a server called out an order that I didn’t hear.

“Shit, that’s me. Good talking to you man.” and he got up, grabbed his coffee, and walked out the door.

I’d engaged. I asked questions. I learned something about someone else. I gravitated.

———

“I like your shoes,” I said, not knowing if I was supposed to like her shoes.

“Thanks,” she said with a warm smile. “They’re [insert some fancy brand I’ve never heard of here] and they hurt like hell.”

“You wanna take a seat?”

“Thanks, but I’m already late for a meeting. Next time?”

She walked to the door and stopped before opening it. “I like your shoes, too,” she said before walking into the sunlight.

———

That night, I took a dramatic step. I took a piece of paper, folded it in half lengthwise, and wrote “Free to Listen” on either side. The next day, I placed it in front of me.

And they showed up.

All of them.

The ones who wanted to talk. The ones who wanted to have someone listen. The ones who had a world to unleash, and those who needed to know that they were heard.

One woman talked about the prettiest rose she’d ever seen that just happened to be growing a few blocks away. A man spoke about being disconnected from his son. A little girl talked - at great length - about her favorite stuffed sheep. One couple asked me if I thought they should move in together. Another woman asked me to watch her puppy while she ordered.

I left that day feeling energized, like my body were filled with humanity in a way that I hadn’t felt since she died.

I’d bring the sign with me again tomorrow.

———

“Well, what do you think?” she asked, her eyes tracing the wood grain of the table top.

“I think you should call him. I know a thing or two about true love, and if you really think that’s what you guys have, don’t let distance get in the way."

I’d been actively talking to people for more than two weeks, each day more and more people lined up to talk. I’d heard all manner of stories, and almost all of them came down to one simple thing: needing a human connection.

“You’re right. I’m sure I can get a job out in Denver. Sometimes you need to jump without looking, right?” she said, now looking directly at me hoping for some facial reassurance.

“If it’s true love, it’s not really like jumping at all.”

“This has been awesome. Thank you so much. So what about you? What’s your deal?”

“I don’t have a deal.”

“My friend, anyone who solicits conversations with strangers has a deal. What’s yours?”

“Ha,” I looked away trying to find the right words. “Well, it comes down to loneliness, I guess.”

“All this because you wanted to talk to someone? Isn’t that what internet chat rooms are for?”

“Well, there’s more to it than that.”

“Go on,” and with her words I felt my jaw tighten and my voice became weak.

“My girlfriend died a month ago, and one of her last wishes was that I be more social,” she instinctively reached across the table and held my hand. I could feel my eyes grow heavy.

“Well, it seems like you’re doing a good job of being social.”

“So it would seem. It hasn’t been easy,” now I was being sheepish.

“You’ve been coming here for the past month since she died and just hoping to talk to anyone? I’m sure you’ve heard all sorts of stories. But what’s your story? Tell me about her.”

Cue the floodgates. I told her everything. How we met. How she liked her waffles. What happened when she got sick, and what happened afterward. She never interrupted. She didn’t ask questions. She just listened. And in that moment, it felt like all this pain and sadness that I was holding inside just escaped and melted into the ether.

When I was done, she smiled, thanked me, and walked away without saying another word.

———

I slept more deeply and more completely than I had in weeks. It was the first time since she died that I dreamed. And when I woke up in the morning, I saw my “Free to Listen” sign sitting on our kitchen table. I immediately tossed it in the trash and grabbed another piece of paper which I folded lengthwise. On either side, I wrote, “Free to Talk.”