“Memory is the treasury and guardian of all things.” Cicero
Three hundred and sixty five days later and the pain still remains as fresh, as deep, as everlasting as day one. Well-intentioned friends, family and professionals told me that I’d feel this way for some time, that this was normal.
“You’ll get over it eventually,” one of my colleagues told me in haste one morning.
“I don’t want to get over it,” I responded coldly as I grabbed my cup of Earl Grey from the cafeteria counter and quickly left. I’ve been there a thousand times before on the other side of the couch counseling women and women, aunts, uncles, friends and even parents about grief. No stranger to me, I knew grief so well that I could recite the stages of grief without much thought and convince the best of them that this knowledge had come from experience. At the time I thought it had. I was wrong.
Slowly leaning down I place the simple bouquet of irises on his grave as I quickly glance at the tombstone. It’s always the same. I’m okay until I see his name, until I see the validation that he’s not here with me. Until that moment it’s not real, it could be someone else lying coldly beneath the soil, unable to feel or experience the comfort of a lovers touch. John Black. I trace my fingers along the engraved lettering as I stifle a sob. I don’t know why I try to be strong all the time, especially here. Knowing that no one is around to see my pain never helps. Maybe subconsciously I’m still trying to be strong for him because that’s what he wanted in the end, for me to go on with my life, to once again experience love and passion with someone else. Knowing that’s what he wanted and needed for me to say, in the end I promised that I would. I promised him that I would always remember him but that I wouldn’t mourn for him forever.
“I lied,” I whisper through my tears as tiny sobs threaten to give way to great big ones. I try to calm my breathing and control my emotions for him. He wanted me to be strong. He wanted me to go on with my life, but I can’t. For as hard as I try, I can’t. I can’t forget that he is lying beneath my feet, separated by dirt and a wooden casket.
“Why did you leave me John?” I question him. For three hundred and sixty five days the question has been the same. I wake up to the question and fall asleep hugging his pillow asking the same thing. Why? Why him? Why me? Why?
The silence is broken by the sound of the fierce autumn wind whipping newly fallen leaves around the cemetery. Looking up at the sky I can see the solemn grey sky and the threat of rain it holds. I want it to rain, need it to rain, needing the sky to validate what I’m feeling.
When I lost Sam and DJ I thought that I’d experienced the depths of the dark despair of grief and pain and in a way I did. How I mourned their loss and their futures. With Sam’s death it was as if a part of me died. For years I felt guilty that I had survived and she had paid the price with her life. With DJ the loss was still as significant but different. I hadn’t had thirty years with him, but a mere months. Nevertheless, my heart ached for what I’d never get to experience with him. I’d never see him grow up, learn to walk, to read. I would never get to hold his small hand as I walked him into his classroom on the first day of school. Nor would I get to see him play baseball, graduate high school or become an adult. Eventually after a period of time I was able to move on with my life and function again, but now I am unable to. I know that my family, that Belle, is worried about me. I want to play the stoic widow, that woman in black, but I can’t. I’m unable to move past my all consuming pain and grief. I thought that I wanted to and I tried to desperately hard to, but I can’t and I won’t. So alone I grieve, unable to be comforted by another.
Each passing day only seems to bring more grief, more sorrow as I am reminded not of what once was, but what isn’t.
The silence beckons me, becoming my only friend. I finger the lettering once more, trying to make it real to me, trying to let go. Every moment, every conversation with him once I knew has been etched into my memory and soul. I reply the scenes a hundred times a day wondering if there was anything that I could have done differently, he could have done differently that would have changed things.
Laying down on the trampled grass that separates us I lay my cheek against the sodden earth and listen. I want him to talk to me. I beg him to talk to me, to tell me that he’s all right and that I’ll be okay. I want to remember everything about him. I want to remember all the little things, the nuisances that made him who he was. The way that he absently rubbed his fingers together when he was deep in thought. The way he nervously laughed when someone brought up something that made him uncomfortable. The way his toes curled involuntarily the instant before he orgasmed. His deep love for his country and his family. His ability to see the best in people even when I couldn’t. His faith in mankind that balanced my growing sense of apathy. He was my best friend in the entire world and now he’s gone. My other half, my better half, the one who competed me is gone. How can I function, how am I supposed to go on without him? People say that with time it will get better? When? And how can it when he’s not here beside me?
“John,” I sob as the dying blades of grass wither in my grasp. The coldness of the earth provides no comfort and only reminds me that he’s cold and all alone below me with no one to comfort him. I don’t want to forget him and with each passing day I’m afraid that each thread that kept our souls woven together is slowly unraveling one by one and that soon I’ll be left with nothing, the connection gone. I close my eyes forcing myself to replay another scene, another memory, another chance to be with him again even if its in my mind alone.
I watch him through eyes half closed, clouded by tears. Standing before me is what I always wanted but never knew was possible. So many years, so many dreams, so much hope put onto the shoulders of someone else that I was always looking to save me from myself.
“John,” I whisper as I extend my hand towards his. I don’t know how to reach him, not now. His focus is not on me, but on my left hand, ring finger to be exact. He nervously laughs as he touches where his ring should be, but is not.
“Don’t Marlena,” he tells me as he looks deep into my eyes. I see the pain behind them and know that I am partially the cause. Around and around he circles my finger with his, so many unspoken words and wishes chanted with each full circle. If only. Maybe. Happiness. Family. My future.
“John,” I whisper as I choke back a sob. I want so badly to take back my hand from his, to stop reminding him of what could have been but is not, but don’t want to loose that connection. I can’t deny him now any source of comfort as painful as it may be.
“Don’t,” he says as he grasps my hand tightly in his and smiles. “I want you to be happy.”
“How can I?” I yell, amazed that he would even suggest such a thing. I’m beyond upset, not at him, but at the situation and nothing that anyone can say will make it better or assuage my guilt. If only. Could of. Should have. I could have changed the course of events, but didn’t; thinking time was on my side. “I’m sorry,” I whisper seeing the shock of my outburst has caused a pained expression.
“Lay beside me,” he requests as he tries to move over in the small bed, each movement of his arm or leg causing excruciating pain. I try to stop him from moving but know it’s a lost cause. Gone are all the monitors, machines and tubes. All that’s left is a simple morphine drip to help with his pain management. It’s what he wanted in the end, choosing to spend his time not hooked up to machines delaying the impossible, but
living.
Carefully climbing into the bed beside him I lay my head on his chest, needing to feel the slow and steady beat. I need to know that he’s alive and here with me no matter for how long. I feel him running his fingers through my hair over and over like he used to do after we’d made love. I’m unable to stop my tears and they give way to sobs. I’m never going to experience that with him again.
“It’s okay,” he says as he continues to rub my hair and back.
“It’s never going to be okay,” I sob into his chest as I hold onto his hospital gown tightly. “How am I going to go on without you?”
“You’re stronger than you realize Doc.”
“I’m not….I don’t want to be strong John….I don’t want to be…I just want you.”
“I’ll always be with you…you know that. I’ll be with you in Belle and in Claire and in the new baby…I may be physically gone, but I’ll always be here for you.”
“Oh God,” I sob harder as I move my body on top of his frail and emaciated form. The cancer has slowly eaten away at his frame causing ribs to protrude where strong muscle used to be. Nevertheless he’s still my John. My John that’s dying beneath me and there is not a damn thing that I or anyone else can do to stop it.
“I don’t want you to mourn for me Marlena…I need to know that you’ll go on with your life and find happiness.”
“I don’t want to,” I cry into his neck as I struggle to get closer to him. “I want to go with you…. Please don’t leave me.”
“I wish that it wasn’t this way,” he mumbled as a coughing fit overcame him. Tightly I held onto him, unable to let go.
“You will always be in my heart, no matter what,” I confess as my tears continue to spill across the crisp sheets. I can’t stop my tears as the realization that the end is near. There are still so many words left unspoken, so many things I wanted to tell him and always thought I would have the time to. Where did my time go?
“No tears Marlena,” John stoically says as he tries to be calm. He’s the one that’s dying, but a part of me is dying right along side of him and died the moment that we received his diagnosis. Terminal cancer. I always thought that Stefano was the threat, not his own body. Surgery, chemotherapy, radiation, stem cell therapy, experimental treatments and nothing worked. John’s own body betrayed him as the cancer spread from one organ to the next and eventually entered his blood stream and bones. Time is not on our side and I know its only a matter of days that I have left with him. How am I supposed to say goodbye to him. How am I supposed to end this love affair of ours?
“I love you Marlena…I love you more than anyone in the entire world,” he whispers his mantra over and over to me as I hear his breathing become more and more shallow.
Forcing myself out of my silent reverie I am once again unable to relive the last moments of his life. After a year the pain is still to great, the loss too devastating.
“Mom,” Belle softly says as she lays down beside me on John’s grave and takes me into her arms.
“I miss him so much,” I cry into her shoulder as I hold on, comforted by a part of him. I don’t want to feel his daughter’s arms around me; I want to feel his.
“I miss daddy too,” she says as she hugs me, reminding me that I am not the only one. “Let’s get back to the car,” Belle says as she tries once again to coax me out of my all-consuming grief. “I think its going to rain,” she says changing the subject.
I nod as I hold onto his daughter even tighter. She’s the only comfort that I really have, a piece of him that will remain forever. Before when I looked at her I saw my baby girl, now when I look at her I see him. His eyes haunt me when I look at her, but strangely they also provide me a sense of security. I grab onto her hand as she helps me up off the ground. Straightening my black coat I glance up at the sky and see that the heavens mirror my sorrow. She’s right, it’s going to rain.
“Thank you,” I whisper, not sure if I’m whispering it to Belle or to him, but in the end it doesn’t really matter.
Taking her hand once again, needing that connection to him once more, I squeeze it tightly, thankful that she is here with me. Smiling through her tears she squeezes my hand back and for an instance I feel him with me and know that impossibly things are going to be alright.
I know tomorrow will be the same as I once again rise with dawn and begin another day without him.
The End
The Jarlena Journal 