Page 7 of Life After Me

David

I couldn’t be bothered to move when I woke up.

It was so comfortable there, curled up under the duvet where it was warm.

The sun filtered through the pale curtains, making the room far too light.

I knew there was something I was supposed to be getting up for, but I didn’t want to move, and I could hear Jenn pottering around in the kitchen.

With any luck, she was whipping up her scrambled egg and muffin breakfast. With sausages.

Then maybe I’d pull her back into bed with me, and we’d laze a few more hours away.

That was when it hit me. The curtains were letting in too much light because they weren’t mine. I was in Charlotte’s old room. Without Jenn.

I really do hate mornings. They’re the hardest part of the day.

Every time I wake up I have to remind myself that Jenn’s gone.

It’s sheer agony. I wish I could wake up without the few minutes of peace and warmth every day when I think that she’s still with me, and avoid the half an hour of pain that follows when I have to remember what my new reality is.

I want to stay asleep for ever, because in my dreaming world Jenn still exists. She’s far more than lingering perfume and unfinished books that fill the house and mock me. In my dreams, Jenn is as bright and beautiful, and as warm and real, as she’s ever been.

But Jenn would never forgive me for lying around in bed, especially when there is so much to do.

Yesterday I packed all the things I thought she would want.

One of her favourite long, floaty skirts, and the top she always hand-washed so carefully.

Lottie picked out beaded sandals, and Sarah found a necklace that apparently matched.

I’m glad the girls were there to help me, because I’ve always been a bit useless with things like that.

I don’t think I really paid enough attention.

There are so many things I wish I’d paid more attention to.

We filled up a bag with all the things we thought Jenn would want.

Letters and photos from the children, and her favourite book of poems, which I wrote my own message in.

Sarah slid in a few photos of her own — one of them recent, and one of them from years ago, when they were both giggling little girls.

And I put in the book that had been sitting on the arm of her chair.

I don’t even know if Jenn was enjoying it, but she hated to leave things unfinished.

I don’t think she ever started a book that she didn’t finish.

I remember she lost one on holiday somewhere.

When we got back, we had to drive to three different libraries before we found a copy of it — because she couldn’t bear to not find out how it ended.

At least this way she’ll know the ending.

I had pointed out before that it would be easier if she’d switched to e-books and reading apps, but she’d always refused, saying she loved the smell and feel of real books.

At the last second I grabbed her mobile and dropped it into the bag.

I know it’s silly, and it’s not like it’ll even work, but I hate the thought of her being all alone in the dark.

She always had a phone near her, whether it was on the bedside table or in the bottom of a bag.

Admittedly half the time her bags were so big that she wouldn’t be able to find it before it stopped ringing, but she always had it.

I wasn’t going to take it away from her.

Making sure she has all the things she would want is very nearly the last thing I can do for Jenn. I was determined to get it right.

* * *

It took me nearly an hour to get to the funeral home. I hadn’t realised that I’d be driving through rush hour, or that there were roadworks clogging up the high street. I’ve lost track of everything at the moment. There aren’t really days or times, just a never-ending list of different tasks.

Lottie offered to come with me, but I knew she didn’t want to see Jenn, not really.

She wants to remember her the way she should — full of life and happiness, and that magical sparkle that made her Jenn.

And I can understand that. I want to remember her like that too, and I’m really scared to see her now, without that sparkle.

But at the same time, I don’t feel that I have any other choice.

I have to see her one last time. I have to make sure that everything is the way she would have wanted it to be.

And I have to make sure that she’s all right, even though I know she really isn’t.

It doesn’t make sense, but in a way it feels right.

It was me and Jenn for years before the kids came along, so it seems fitting it should be just me and Jenn now.

And, from the darker point of view, part of me is hoping that seeing Jenn will help me understand this all, and get rid of the pervasive fantasy that if I walk around enough corners I’ll eventually bump into her again.

The temptation to just walk — until I wear out my shoes and blister and bloody my feet — is almost overwhelming.

If I weren’t so tired and struggling so much with everything, I think I might do it some days.

But, instead, I just wander around the house, unable to leave but not really wanting to stay. It’s pointless.

Everything is.

Lottie fussed about me driving by myself, worrying that it was too soon and that I wasn’t ready — like I haven’t been driving for her entire life and longer.

Besides, I didn’t have much choice. I couldn’t afford to take cabs everywhere, and the thought of sitting alone on a bus surrounded by noise and chaos made my skin crawl.

And there was something comforting about climbing into Jenn’s car, smelling her fragrance on the headrest and hearing her music streaming from the speakers.

The traffic was horrendous, and in a way it really pissed me off. Didn’t they know Jenn had died? How could they just carry on with their lives as if nothing had happened? I didn’t even know how the world kept turning. I felt like mine had stopped moving, back on that roadside.

Maybe that’s why I feel so disorientated and sick all the time, because I’m standing still when I should be spinning through life.

It’s like the whole world is moving on around me, blurring with speed, while I’m frozen in time.

I’m living in the past, in flashbacks of Jenn.

Moments when she’s smiling, when she’s crying, when her hand tightens around mine.

I see her full of life, crying and laughing at the births of our children, vibrant and beautiful, moving beneath me and over me in heated moments in our bed, yelling at me in anger so intense it burned.

I wondered how many times she’d kissed me, how many times her hand slipped into mine.

A few thousand? A hundred thousand? I could probably have worked it out, but it would be pointless.

Whatever the answer, it just wasn’t enough.

When I got to the funeral home, I found myself standing outside a cold, quiet door, a sombre man next to me, waiting for my decision. Did I want to see Jenn again? Or just leave her stuff with him?

In the end there wasn’t any choice. I don’t know why, but I had to see her. I guess I had to be sure. I had to be certain she was really gone.

Even though I’d been with her at the hospital, and watched them working on her, then finally shaking their heads and telling me how sorry they were, it hadn’t been real. It had been too bright, busy and noisy to be real.

Besides, hospitals were places that people went to get better, and where good things happened.

The last time Jenn was in a hospital, she came out with Lottie wrapped in her arms, a cooing, wriggling bundle of new life and hope.

How can you die in a place like that? It was too silly and contrived, too like a scene from a TV drama to be real.

But the quiet, cool room on the other side of the door was real. The professional, comforting voice at my side was real. Jenn, peaceful and silent on the table, her eyes closed and arms by her side, that was real.

I wanted her to look like she was asleep, like she’d flutter her eyes open any second, and roll over towards me with a smile. But she didn’t. She looked cold, and small, and alone. And far too still.

The waxy fingers I stroked weren’t hers, nor were the cool cheeks or lips.

But I kissed them anyway. I sat there for a while, holding her hand and stroking the soft hair I knew so well.

It was Jenn lying there. I knew that. I knew every single inch of that body, every freckle and mole, every wrinkle and tiny imperfection that she claimed to have.

But at the same time, I didn’t know that strange, empty shell at all.

The woman I fell in love with, who had been the centre of my world for decades, wasn’t there anymore.

There was no light or joy or laughter. But it was all I had left of her.

I sat there numbly, not knowing what to do. I wanted to shake her, to yell at her to wake up and make everything OK again, but it couldn’t happen. The harsh, cold reality finally hit me. It seeped beneath my skin and made me shiver.

Jenn was really gone. She wasn’t going to walk into the room and laugh about this big, silly mistake. And no matter how many corners I walked round, she was never going to be waiting there to greet me.

I wanted to run from the room, screaming at the unfairness of it all.

I wanted to tear the world apart to find her again.

But I couldn’t move, and couldn’t release my fingers from her grasp.

Even if I could have torn myself away, there was nothing to find because she was right beside me.

And this would be the last time I’d ever see her.