The initial loss pierces you with a sharp blade. You freeze, unable to process the shock and the pain. It cripples you in an instant. You can’t breathe. Can’t move. If you try, you’ll only drive the knife in deeper. So you hold still, praying the agonizingpain will subside. You rip out the blade, but it only makes you bleed more.
They say time heals all wounds, so maybe you can just wait it out.
Sadly, that’s another lie.
Time brings you farther away from the one you lost. The blade rusts, infecting your blood until you’ve gone septic. Desperate for relief, you seek out comfort in all the wrong places.
“Lila, did you hear me?”
If you’re lucky, simply deciding to live a life that honors the departed might be enough to heal the wound.Yet the scar never fades. And sometimes you feel a dull ache right where the blade first sliced into your flesh.
“Lila? Baby?”
At times, it isn’t an ache, but a fresh wound, somehow more piercing than the first time around. I never know when it might happen. It only takes a random thought. Or a nostalgic smell. A ghost of a girl walking by, hair like hers. The chirp of her favorite bird, singing from the treetops in the early light of day. The echo of her bubbly laugh.
Sometimes, nothing at all triggers it.
Next thing I know, I’m back on that cliff. She’s with me again, full of life and joy. We’re happy and whole, two parts of one soul. Then I blink, and she’s gone again. Sorrow gouges me once more, slicing me open. I creep to the edge, terrified of what might be at the bottom of the quarry. Before Ilook down, my eyes fasten shut like my brain is protecting me from seeing her lifeless body because it’ll leave me with yet another gaping wound.
But that’s my sister. I need to see her. I won’t leave her alone.
She isn’t moving.
Maybe it isn’t too late. She’s gonna be okay. She was just talking to me a minute ago. I can still feel the warmth of herarm in my hands from where I held on to her as she hung over the edge. I gave her the camera because I was too scared to take the picture myself. That’s why she did it. Zara’s always been the fearless one. She didn’t let anything stop her.
How can someone larger than life die?
“Lila!”
No, no, no. Shecannotbe dead. This is a trick or a nightmare.
She can’t die.She just can’t.
“Lila!”
But she did die.
And it’s my fault.
There’s no escaping this kind of grief. It didn’t make me stronger. It murdered me slowly, rotting me from the inside out.
That’s what grief does.
It kills more than the one we lower into the earth.
FORTY-SEVEN
Let the past be the past 'til it's weightless
LILA
Strong hands gripme by the upper arms, shaking me delicately. “Cookie, it’s me. Talk to me.”
A distant voice comes into my awareness along with my vision. I blink out of the haze, finding a startled Reed hovering over me.
My pulse pounds in my throat.. “What happened? What’s wrong?”
A giant breath whooshes out of him, his shoulders sagging with relief. “You zoned out. Your eyes glazed over. Scared the shit out of me.” Releasing my arms, he takes my cheeks between his palms. “Baby, are you okay?”
