Silence
Silence
I can see him before me as if all the years have disappeared and he’s here again and so am I and all that has happened between now and then has been erased. It’s quiet here and cold, but he holds my hand and the warmth of his touch makes me remember all that I didn’t want to forget. Time is a cruel device used by the mind to complicate and distort truth. There’s a fine line between the two, a truth and a memory. The truth was that I loved him.
When they found Jake there was a breeze that made its way into my bedroom, beginning with the pale yellow curtains, passing the books on the shelves, moving to my body in the bed. It brushed my face, and I opened my eyes. I knew he was gone. They said he probably didn’t feel any pain. It was instant. Just like that, he was no longer with me.
The night before, Jake and I were standing in front of my doorway at the appropriate time for my father, 11pm. We had just returned from a walk along the ocean’s shoreline. Our footprints disappeared and then reappeared with each passing of the tide. I was wearing Jake’s jacket. He had on his usual jeans and blue t-shirt. He was cold, I could feel him as we walked arm in arm, but he’d never complain. The rough sand massaged our feet in the darkness.
Jake stopped suddenly and turned to me asking, “May I have this dance?�
“What?� I responded.
He whispered, “Dance with me.�
“But there’s no music,� I protested.
“Sure there is, listen,� he said, and he began to sway us in time.
I closed my eyes and listened. The sounds of the water hitting the shore and then retreating created a melody.
Jake died at 11:25 pm, according to the coroner’s report, although they didn’t find the body until much later. He was driving along the road from my house to his, a long stretch of unlighted highway, when the brakes on his car must have suddenly given out. He swerved a couple of times before hitting a tree that propelled his car over the side into a ditch. The car rolled at least twice, pinning Jake’s body when it rested upside down. But Jake was dead before the car stopped. It must have been the force of the impact to the tree that broke a window, sending glass to sever his neck.
The night before, he held one of my hands with his; the other one circled my waist. Round and round we moved to the rhythm of the water. He went for the dramatic dip, almost dropping me, and I threw my head back and laughed. Then he pulled me in closer and I rested my head on his shoulder. We continued to dance in the quiet of the ocean.
They said it was instantaneous. They said he felt no pain. This information was supposed to comfort me, I know. The problem was there was pain. He had felt it before he died.
We were standing the night before in front of my house. He had just walked me up the last two remaining steps. As he held me, I hugged him tightly, warm and content with the feel of us.
He kissed me like he always did before leaving, but this time he added, “I love you Abby.�
I just looked at him. I froze, I don’t know. I couldn’t say anything. No one had ever said those words to me. He smiled, but I saw it. A tiny flash across his eyes, a small wound I had just given him with my silence.
There’s still pain, the pain that I carry with me, here and now as I stand looking out my old window. I hear my kids running downstairs. There’s a breeze, just like that morning my mother came and told me the news I had already known. The silence that came those moments after my mother left my room and in the years since Jake’s accident has never left. I know the truth now, as I did then but was too scared to admit. The truth is I loved him.
