Cold Hands

I stopped crying months ago.…about the same time I stopped healing. I don’t know what is real anymore. The deafening sound made by our neighbor, Luke’s tired lawn mower which he uses every weekend, seems to be more authentic than my reality. They all think I’m crazy, Mum, Dad, Nelly and even Doctor Karim, my therapist who diagnosed my case as Type II trauma. I see it in his eyes each time I’m wheeled in for my session, he tries to mask the pity in his heart with a bogus display of hope in my recovery. I know it’s just the cheques in dad’s signature that keeps him working.

It wasn’t always this way, though I’ve never been able to walk, I was once normal. My first nightmares were my last memories of him. He told me he was going to get a drink with his friends that night, though I had a bad feeling about it, I let him. We had just made up after a fight that lasted nearly five days and frankly, I wasn’t ready for another one. Plus, I needed some space to think clearly and cut down the number of invitees to our wedding since the last estimate exceeded our budget.

Kay never returned that night.

I tried fiercely to be strong. All my life, my disability has attracted a lot of pity party, and I wasn’t about to let his death attract more. I knew my mum was worried when I refused to leave his apartment or let anyone console me, I stopped eating, quit my editing job and answering my calls became a punishment. She said I shut everyone out. She suggested I visit a therapist, but I refused…I was fine, I was dealing with it in my own way. She tried avoiding topics that could lead to him but it only made the vacuum more vivid. He was accidentally gunned down by the police during a gunfire exchange between them and a set of criminals.

His burial was the most solemn and painful I’ve ever attended. He had so many people that loved him and they were all seated in the church pews, most with dark shades to hide their red swollen eyes. I watched some leave consecutively to the rest room during the service, only to return later to their seats shakier and redder. I was still in a daze, when I was called up to speak about Kay. I didn’t let anyone wheel me up the podium that day. When I took the mic, I began my well-rehearsed speech about my deceased fiancé. I choked on the second sentence, and when I tried to start over again, I cracked and heard myself laughing sardonically. The people and more, present for his funeral were the same ones we were making invitation cards for to our wedding which would have happened the following week. I stared down at him in the immaculately white casket and felt hot tears roll down my cheeks. He looked alive. His hair was well trimmed as always, his beards carefully carved the way I liked it...for God’s sake he was smiling. My laughter died as soon as it began and I was wailing within seconds, begging him to wake up, promising not to pick fights anymore, threatening to join him if he didn’t come back to me. It took his brother and a friend of his sometime to cajole me out of the podium and into a vehicle. They didn’t let me stay for the rest of the funeral in fear of my mental stability. Months after his burial, I saw him.

I was in the kitchen, clearing up days old stacked dirty dishes as had become my habit, when I heard the sound of the shower in our bathroom go on. Three days before that, I smelt his cologne on the sheets of our bed. I dismissed the thought as quickly as it came. His funeral was barely nine weeks old then, I was still grieving so it was not strange to have nostalgia. I wheeled myself to the bathroom and turned it off after making a mental note to get the plumbers to fix the pipes. When I returned to finish cleaning up, the dishes were done. The following day, I saw his sweatpants in the laundry basket. My sister Nelly and my mum had helped me put all his stuff in boxes days after his burial, and I had stacked the boxes under our bed, hoping to give them all away when the pain was less raw. I was terrified when I got to the room and saw the boxes all pulled out from beneath the bed, his clothes, game pads and sneakers scattered on the floor. The moment I knew my mind wasn’t playing tricks on me was when in my very before, the bed made an indention, like someone just lay on it. I called my mum in alarm and told her what had just happened. She arrived at our apartment minutes later not because she had believed me, but because she saw as a perfect opportunity to get me out of the place. I told her the other strange things that had been happening…she looked at me in pity and cried. She said I was broken. I let her hold me as she cried, I too wanted to be in her arms. I was scared…maybe she was right, I was broken and my mind was conjuring things up. I glanced over her shoulder in time to catch a glimpse of his shadow going up the stairs.

I moved in with my parents that day. I agreed to have therapy sessions because I wanted to move on. The psychoanalysts I met with advised that a step I needed to take for the progress of my healing included total acceptance that he’s gone and gone for good. I was optimistic about getting better, I was tired of sulking. I loved Kay, but life wasn’t waiting for me and I wasn’t ready to be a liability to my family. I took my sessions and treatments very seriously, read motivational books, watched my diet, helped around the house when I could, took my medications and even did some volunteering around the neighborhood. I honestly was getting better, I was thinking of him less, and even when I did, my heart didn’t feel like gently disintegrating into a thousand pieces…it just hurt enough for me to know that things won’t be the same anymore. Few months later, I had a job interview for a position in an art gallery. It was a really big step for me, I had few days to be done with rehab, I wasn’t dependent on my meds again to sleep and the doctors were in support of my decision to get a job. I took a taxi to the gallery on the day of the interview. I wasn’t the only one being interviewed for the job, and from the downcast looks of those coming out of the meeting room, I wasn’t certain the interview was going to be a walk over for me. When it was my turn to go in, I did. I had barely started my introduction when an interruption came in form of a knock on the interview door. I heard the arrival’s steps behind me. The evaluators didn’t seem disturbed by the presence of the new comer and so I continued my presentation. Half way through it I heard a voice very close to my ear say,

“It’s been a while Leslie”

I froze. It was his voice.

I don’t know how long I sat there staring at them, but the next thing I remember was me seeing the mouths of the three interviewers moving as if trying to tell me something...but all I heard was silence. In confusion as to what was going on, I tried speaking, my lips were moving, but no words were coming out. Panic exploded in me when the only voice I heard again was his own,

“I’ve missed you”

I couldn’t believe it was happening again. I begged him to leave me, to get out of my head. He told me he wasn’t in my head and asked me to turn around. I dared not and kept telling myself it wasn’t real. Gripping the handle of my wheel chair, he spun me. That’s when I saw him.