I have coffee with your mum, she seems so glad to see me. I don't know why I thought she'd cry. I don't know why I thought I'd be a comfort to her, imagining myself holding her hand while she cried and spoke of you. Because here we are, and she is smiling at me, and asking about my work, and asking if I'm seeing anyone, and I can't stop the tears from gathering in my eyes, and she's comforting me.
She seems to not mind that I remind her of you.
There are pictures of you here. Not many. I don't know why I thought she'd have your image everywhere, pictures that you never liked, pictures that never quite captured your eyes, or the color of your hair, or the curve of your jaw. But there aren't many. Just a few. One of you and I. And it is worse than I imagined.
I think of you sometimes, and I can't remember your face.
That happens, they say, after a time. I don't know why I thought that would be a good sign, that it would mean I was starting to get over it, get over the loss of you, the sudden, unforgivable loss. It is frightening to me when I can't picture you. And every time, I have to pull out your image, and I memorize you all over again, but it isn't you, because the light is wrong, and the shadow cuts across your cheek too harshly, and it is cold and flat and unreal. Perhaps I will never remember you, the real you, and will have to rely on the hologram, the snapshot, the version of you that will never be you. I don't know why I hate that so terribly that it makes me shake.
She reminds me of you so much that it strangles me. But her voice is not yours.
Sometimes, when I fall asleep at night, in that moment just before dreams, I hear you. I'm not going mad; I looked it up - they have a name for it. The hypnagogic state. Your mother laughs at that, says that you would laugh at it - me, the philosopher, finding scientific explanations for behavior. I never thought about how you would respond to that, but you mother does now. It is a fist in the gut to me.
But I do hear you. Not a conversation. Just you calling my name, once. It is so real, Kathryn, so crystal clear, as if you were in the room with me. And every time it is chilling, I jump and my heart pounds. The first few times I answered. Now I just wait until my skin stops crawling, and go back to sleep.
It is your voice though. I remember your voice.
I don't know why I continue to write you these letters. As if someday I believe you'll read them, as if I believe they'll convince you that I still love you, will always love you, will never quite be able to move on without you. I don't believe that you'll come back anymore. I did for a long time. That is why I started writing.
I don't know when I'll stop. Maybe I'll show them to your mother, someday. She seems so glad to see me, so accepting of it all, so willing to speak of you and look at your image and see the people you once knew. I don't know why that makes me hate her, just a little.
I'll perhaps hear you again tonight. As much as it startles me, frightens and hurts me still, it is the one thing I have of you. Your voice, in my head. "Mark," you say, and it could be anything, you could be planning anything, and there is a joy in your voice - come see the sunrise, come help me move this, come sit with me.
But I never hear anything else. I never know what you're going to say.
Are you calling me? Maybe you are. Maybe the one time I hear the rest, whatever it is you're saying - maybe that will mean that I can go with you. Wherever that is.
It wouldn't be a bad thing. It couldn't be any worse.
FIN