Page 14 of Life After Me

David

I was supposed to go back to work a few days ago, but it seemed like too much effort.

Now I have to go and see the Human Resources department as my compassionate leave has run out.

Apparently they’ve been very understanding and already given me more than the contracted three weeks, in consideration of the fact that I was in the accident too.

Offices and houses are still being built, and people are still wanting extensions on their homes.

It doesn’t matter that my family, and life, has shrunk by one very important person — other families are still growing and their houses need to keep up, so someone, like me, needs to draft the plans.

Three weeks. Twenty-one days to get over a car accident, a few minor injuries and the loss of your wife.

That’s not even a day for every year I spent with Jenn as the centre of my world.

Not that it would make any difference. Jenn is still everything to me, even though she isn’t here anymore.

She’s still the first thing I think of every morning, and the last thing on my mind at night.

She’s embedded into my heart and my skin.

A habit that I never want to break. I still feel her hair brush against my skin and smell her perfume in the air.

Sometimes I still think I see her out of the corner of my eye, before I’m fully awake in the morning.

Matty and Lucy have already had to head back up north.

He took off as much time as he could, but he was needed back at work.

It seems contracts don’t wait any longer than building blueprints.

As I’ve found out recently, losing one of the most important people in your life apparently doesn’t warrant more than a few weeks off.

I mean Jenn only carried him for nine months, went through hours of agony to bring him into the world and spent two and a half decades dedicating her life to him.

Why should he need more than two weeks to get over losing the woman who did all that and a million other things besides?

At least Lottie has been able to stay longer.

She’s still trying to set up her career, so most of her work is freelance or short contract.

I keep trying to tell her to go home, that I don’t need her here looking after me, but we both know it’s a lie.

Really, I’m glad of her company. I’m not ready to be alone in Jenn’s and my house yet.

I still feel like I’m trying to work out how to breathe without her, let alone how to live and function.

* * *

The meeting with HR and my boss was a complete blur.

Somehow I got through it and found myself sitting in the car in a daze, trying to remember what had been said.

It was pretty clear to everyone in the meeting, myself included, that there’s no way I’m ready to go back to work.

I struggled to concentrate on anything, and even when I did try really hard, it seems that my memory’s shot to pieces.

They strongly suggested I go and see a doctor, but I don’t think I can be bothered, and I don’t think they’ll be too insistent: that’s the benefit of working for the same, small firm for so long I guess. That, and so many of them knew Jenn too.

The occupational health nurse mentioned that she thinks I could be experiencing depression. I think they’re overreacting myself. Who wouldn’t be in pain after something like this?

There are times when the grief is so overwhelming that it becomes physical agony.

I mean, yes, I am struggling to sleep, having nightmares about that bloody awful day, and I have lost my appetite, but surely that’s to be expected when going through a major trauma.

Can there really be anything more traumatic than losing your wife in an accident?

She went out with me that morning, perfectly happy and healthy and perfectly Jenn: full of life, and joy, and chatting about plans for the new year.

And then she was just . . . gone.

I mean, there’s food in the kitchen — cheese and condiments, lots of those — that Jenn bought which I could safely eat if I had any appetite. The thought of that doesn’t sit right with me at all.

Maybe they’re right, and I should go and see someone.

But I really don’t want to face it, and what if the doctors agree and want to prescribe me something, and it messes up whatever magic is happening with Jenn?

I don’t think I could bear it. That’s when it happened again.

The cold warmth wrapped around my left hand and seeped up my arm.

I breathed in honeysuckle and apple, and closed my eyes.

A moment later hair brushed against my shoulder, as delicately as a butterfly.

If I hadn’t been sitting silently, waiting for it, I’d probably have missed it.

I found myself smiling. Jenn was here. I didn’t want to open my eyes in case she disappeared, but I didn’t need to.

I knew she was there as strongly as if I’d just rolled over in the darkness in bed and found her lying beside me.

There was no questioning it, and no fear for my sanity either.

It had happened so many times before, so clearly, that questioning Jenn’s presence and refusing to accept it would be the true measure of losing my mind.

Besides, the more time I have spent thinking about it, the more I have come to realise that it would be insane to believe Jenn would really have left us completely.

If there was any way she could have stayed with us, I know Jenn would have found it.

She was always a fighter in life, pushing hard to achieve whatever it was she wanted and needed.

It seems that Jenn’s set her mind to staying with us, or at least with me.

I have never been so glad of anything. Before this year, I hadn’t really thought about death or what happens after it.

I’d always assumed that it would either be nothing at all, or the full-blown, pearly-gated heaven.

I’d never really thought about ghosts or hauntings as anything more than the basis for stories around a campfire or Halloween films. But now that I have started to think about it, it makes so much sense.

Jenn wasn’t expecting to die. She definitely wasn’t ready to leave us, any more than I’m ready to face life without her.

I like the idea that she’s still here, in some form. I’m not ready to be alone yet.

* * *

Jenn

Oh David, sweetheart, I’m not going anywhere until you’re ready.

I’m not ready to leave you either. Especially not when you’re still hurting.

I’ve got all the time in the world. I’ll be here for your whole life, and I’ll wait at the end of it to greet you if that’s what you need.

Nothing is going to change that, I promise.

But I’d rather you worked out how to live again, and found other things that make you happy.

You’re not just my husband, David, or the father of my children.

You were a wonderful person before we met — I would never have fallen in love with you otherwise.

You had a life before you met me and it’s time you remembered that.

You’re going to have to rediscover who you are, and I know it’s scary, but it’s exciting too.

How many dreams did you give up to be with me?

You always talked about travelling when you were younger, before Matty and Lottie came along.

You could do that now. Or learn to fly, like you always threatened, or even just go back to your painting.

You were always brilliant at capturing a feeling and pinning it down to paper.

You’d probably have a much better, more arty way to say it — but that’s my point, love.

It’s not me Lottie gets her creativity from: it’s you.

You’ve spent your whole adult life being “Jenn’s husband” and “Matthew and Charlotte’s daddy”, and you’ve been incredible in both of those roles, but now it’s time for you to be David. It’s up to you who that’s going to be.

But whoever you decide to be, and whatever you decide to do, you’re going to be wonderful. You always are.

* * *

I have a confession to make. I’m feeling a bit guilty.

I knew Lottie was planning to go back to her shared flat, and I knew David wasn’t ready for it.

So, I decided she should stay. I’m blaming David for my actions though.

He should be able to talk to his own daughter.

He should have been able to tell her that he wanted her to stay a little longer.

She was never going to say no. If anything, she was waiting for the invitation.

But those two are as bad as each other. He’s too proud and scared to ask for help, and she’s too self-sufficient and stubborn to ask for it.

So I took matters into my own hands.

Yesterday evening, when Lottie was getting ready to leave, I stole her keys.

She was packed and ready to go, but she kept pausing at the bedroom door and chewing the side of her thumbnail, like she always does when she’s worried.

I could see David wandering back and forth downstairs, stopping every so often to stare up at the ceiling helplessly.

I love them both dearly, but sometimes they can be so stupid. I’m worried about what’s going to happen to them now, because they’re just useless at talking to each other. It was obvious to me that neither of them were going to make the first move, so I decided to make it for them.

It was so easy. One moment Lottie’s keys were sitting on the dressing table in front of the mirror, and the next they were in my hand.

Lottie hoisted her bag onto her shoulder and looked around the room vaguely, checking to make sure she’d got everything.

She stared at the spot where her keys had rested a few seconds before, then shrugged.