Happily Never After

By

 



Trigger Warning: this short memoir contains graphic and candid recollections of a traumatic death.  It also discusses suicidal ideation and explores the darkest crevices of grief.  Some may find this content distressing.  

Disclaimer: while the events and scenes of this memoir are all factual, the letters and dates have been fictionalised.  The dates are, however, my best estimate at the approximate point in time when each of these pivotal stages of my life occurred.  


"The world was rumoured to be ending in 2012... in many ways, mine did."  

 

05/02/2012

Surely this is a nightmare and soon I will awaken; you cannot truly be gone. I close my eyes and try to envision your once handsome face—those luscious lashes, twinkling brown eyes and gorgeous smile, framed with perfect olive skin—but that face is now gone, replaced with horror and gore. When I think of you, my mind conjures only the image of your battered face, bloody and disfigured; eyes closed, their sparkling light gone forever. The vision of my hands, caked with vomit and blood, soon follows, as the paramedic’s gentle words echo over and over, as though taunting me, 'til they too, turn sinister: ‘Sweetheart stop, he’s gone. Sweetheart stop, he’s gone. Sweetheart stop, he’s gone.’

            Our precious one-year old son, Lachlan, stood sobbing in the doorway, bearing witness as I fought desperately to save your life. I vividly recall the moment I heeded the instruction to cease CPR. I looked from my son, to your eerily still chest, to the paramedic’s kind blue eyes, glazed over with unshed tears. What a fanciful show of theatrics. There is no need for tears in a nightmare.

            You are gone for now but soon I will awaken.


*


05/03/2012

A month has passed; the nightmare has not ended. I fear I am not sleeping after all and it is time to accept you are gone. My stomach swells with child and our little boy no longer speaks—what a mess.

            We buried you on Valentine’s Day and now I anxiously await your autopsy report. I have so many theories about how you might have died, each as uncertain as the next. Your epilepsy feels like the most plausible explanation. I ponder whether you hit your head during a seizure, broke your neck when you fell or choked on your own vomit—I recall seeing stories like those in the news before. The paramedics told me cardiac arrest was their best guess.  You were so young and full of life though. That leaves me hesitant to accept a heart attack stole you away from this world and our life together. Did you choke on a jellybean from the open container on your desk? I have so many questions, answered only with deafening silence and the raw, palpable pain of your absence.

            We are going to release butterflies at your grave on what would have been your twenty-fourth birthday.  I spend hours of every day there, sitting with you in that cemetery, talking out loud to you like a madwoman; perhaps it is time I find a psychic or a medium for you to answer my frantic ramblings. Shhh, don’t tell our families. Heaven forbid, they should weep for our souls, as we commune with the aid of demonic forces and entities not of this world.

            Alas, I cannot awaken—you are gone—but we'll be together again. I will find a way. Talk soon, my love.


*


05/04/2012

I cannot bear this madness. The gravity anchoring me to the earth’s surface is excruciating. The medium at Amethyst City (*name changed*) knew everything.  He spoke your name the moment I walked in off the street and fondly described our living son and the other, nestled safely within my womb. I was compassionately reassured that the argument we had the night you died was silly; that you harbour no hard feelings and will not tolerate the blame I continue to project upon myself.  All this without a single word of prompting from myself and no reply but tears. It is not humanly possible for a stranger to have known these intricate details about our life.  I'd never spoken about that fight to anybody. I was too ashamed of having wasted our final night together in such a senseless way. It was comforting to have closure via that man’s connection to wherever you are now. That guilt can at last be done with its incessant gnawing at my soul.  

            But enough digression.  There was no way that decision could have ended well, in hindsight. You are gone from this plane forever, that much is crystal clear to me now. So screw your hell-bound mouthpiece and the hogwash future the pair of you claim is in the stars for me. My next relationship will be the man I marry, and we will be very happy together? Unlikely. A very special little girl is coming, and this man and I will bring her into the world together? Pardon my French but what bullshit. There is no moving on from you and no getting over you. I could never love another, and I have absolutely no desire for more children if they cannot be yours.

            I am coming for you, my love. I will not take this baby inside me from either of our families; I must see the pregnancy through. After our son’s birth, suicide’s merciful wings will wrap around my weary bones and carry me home to you. Forgive me. Please.


*


05/09/2012

Our little miracle, Christopher Jr., was born this morning. He is the image of you, only with piercing, ice-blue eyes in place of your brown, yet shrouded in your thick, jet-black lashes, all the same, as though desperately clinging to his birth-right of those, despite what the blue eyed gene had sought to dictate. One look at him, your last gift of love, and I knew suicide was no longer an option; I belong here with my babies. I thought it was you I could not live without but I was wrong. It’s them. It’s always been them.

            We received your autopsy results last week: Sudden Unexpected Death in Epilepsy (SUDEP). It was just your time to go, I know that now. I will never stop loving you and it will be my life's mission to be the best mother I can. Sweet dreams, my love.



05/12/2012

Against all odds, I find myself falling in love again. His name is Pete and while I tried to push him away, you cannot fight fate. He was meant for me and me, for him. It is time to let you go now but letting go does not mean forgetting you or the life we shared. I will always keep your memory alive for our sons and ensure they grow up knowing what a wonderful man their daddy was. Good-bye, my love.


*

05/03/2017

I was unable to resist the urge to write to you one last time. I had to tell you Pete and I were married last month, and we have a two-year-old daughter named Porschia. The demonic psychic, "the stars", you, God, everyone, knew better than my crazed, grief addled mind, wrestling with the pain of your passing in those early months.

            Pete and I were destined to share this lifetime together but as for you and me, we will meet again someday. The core of our beings were formed from the same stardust, this much I am sure of. We will always find each other, my love.   xo  




*


 Wormington, C. (2020), Happily Never After, Memoir assessment piece.


 google.com, pub-5896944412523933, DIRECT, f08c47fec0942fa0

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