Keeping On Without You

A plane ticket was held in my hand. Light solemnly flooded through the immensely large windows, illuminating everything in front of me as I stared at the words on the ticket. The name of the city that had been dancing on the tip of my tongue ever since I left it. And it was there, waiting for me to land some hours from now. That’s where it would begin, because that’s where everything ended.

I was standing in the terminal, having made it all the way to my gate before I realized maybe this wasn’t going to be a good idea. My reasoning though, was that if I had made it this far, I may as well continue. If I had done this well, completed rehab and sorted out my life, I should deserve to do this. I thought that if I worked this hard for my family, for my friends, for Addie, I should deserve to tell her. It was her right as well as my own to say as I could to her what I had done, that I had done it all for her.

And maybe she knew this. Maybe she knew, because maybe she had been there all along. Every night I laid awake in rehab, every night I cried, every night before rehab, maybe she was there. And I owed everything to Addie for motivating me to do this, because I know that without that, I wouldn’t be anywhere but on the kitchen floor night after night.

And I was sick of that.

Everyone I knew was sick of it as well. I owed every day I lived to Addie, every day I didn’t drink, every day I knew that things could only get better, even if she wasn’t here. She may have ruined my life at one point (or two) by leaving me here with no defenses, but I had never met someone like her. She taught me so much by being just there. She taught me more than I ever wished to learn by leaving me. At this point, my only wish now was that I could thank her.

I was sitting on the soft leather seats of first class in the plane before I knew it.

I sure hoped she would be able to hear me once I found her.

Close to eleven hours later with hardly a blink of either eye, I found myself experiencing the landing of the plane. Wheels hitting the runway, sending the plane bounding to a stop. Some people held their eyes shut, squeezing them closed to block out a presumed fear of flying. Others held the hands of those next to them, someone they loved, someone they cared for. Here I was, alone. My eyes wide open and legs ready to sprint off of the plane.

Zealous couldn’t even begin to cover how badly I was ready to find Addie. Two months of separation had been enough for me to go without telling her again how much she had meant to me, and how much I appreciated her now more than I ever had before. And I wasn’t even thinking about the rest of the lifetime of separation ahead of me yet.

The airport was the same as every other time I had touched down here to meet Addie, to surprise her with a visit. I remembered the very first time I came to find her. Back then, I wasn’t even sure what my reasons were for coming back, other than I had to see her again after the concert. One night, if you could call it that, was hardly enough. And oddly, as we remembered each other sometime down the road, I would learn that no matter how much time I got with her was never enough. True to this day, as much as I hated it.

People milled about and I had to find a way out of here. First, I had to find where she was buried. If I couldn’t do that, this entire adventure would be in vain, and I would be arriving back home with something of the same attitude that I had arrived with last time.

The thoughts set into me as I realized I had no idea how to find where Addie was buried, if she even was. My mind had been so set on finding where she rested that I gave no space for other options. I had depended on this, on finding her. And only now as I hailed a cab did I come to think that maybe I should have thought this through a little more. Of course, this plan had been conceived very shortly after I had arrived home, before rehab. Instantaneously, flaws appeared left and right, and the only direction I thought to be safe would be going towards home.

But what about my life had been safe? Nothing was ever sure, ever promised to last forever. Everything ended at one point or another. Obviously.

I breathed out the name of the hospital I wouldn’t be forgetting in this lifetime to the cab driver. He sped off in the busy street, weaving through different roads. The entire time I prayed like shit that the hospital would be able to give me some sort of information. Anything, anything that could help me find out where they… put her.

At this point, there was no other option besides me finding her.

Stupid enough to not have stopped at a bank before getting out at the hospital, I shoved a few pound notes at the cab driver and jogged off before I could hear any complaints about the currency I gave him.

The doors were just as unwelcoming as the last time I had been here. A cold air hit me as I walked through, searching the entire lobby. It all looked the same. Not even a chair out of place as compared to my memory of the last time I had been here. The secretaries were seated at the front desk, waiting there, talking on the phone or typing away on a computer.

I had no idea how to go about asking about Addie’s whereabouts, or if they even knew such information. The only thing I could hope was that my last-minute praying in the backseat of a taxicab would pay off.

A lady with red hair looked up at me as I approached the desk, the soles of my tattered Vans sliding against the linoleum floor.

“Can I help you?” she asked, hardly a smile adorning her lips as her eyes didn’t reflect much either.

My hands fidgeted together while I tried to decide on what to say. “Em, I… have a question about one of your… ex-patients,” I said slowly, my voice not entirely up to speed with my brain.

She looked confused, her eyes darting to another secretary sitting next to her, then back to me. “Ex-patient?”

“She, she died here.” My voice was just about as small as I felt right now, standing in the hospital where Addie died. Here I was alone, no one to come for me or help me. Suddenly I wondered if this was how Addie felt, spending her last night alone here while I was passed out in her mother’s bathroom. I wanted to be sick. Every emotion of how horrible I had been washed over me while I stood under the scrutiny of the secretary who didn’t look like she would help me.

“And what is your question?” she asked, still wearing a mask of confusion while I was trying my best to communicate what I wanted.

“I was wondering if you knew anything about where she could have… ended up,” I stuttered out, trying not to come off in a bad way. It was likely inevitable though, if I was asking where an ex-patient was located.

“Well, every decision as to where the patient will be buried, or cremated, is left to the family. Unless there is no family, or they cannot be contacted, the hospital will decide what will happen.”

“Well… how am I supposed to know whether her family was contacted? She wasn’t exactly in contact with them much… I’m not sure if they would have done anything.” Dejected, my voice sounded exasperated as I ran through reasons as to why her family wouldn’t have done anything. Addie was never fond of them, and as she put it, they weren’t fond of her either. “Can’t you look it up or something?”

“I can try,” she replied, her voice getting terse and I could tell she was annoyed. She obviously had no idea what you would do for someone you loved. “Name?”

“Addie… Adelaide Kaston.”

She typed her name into the computer database, and more silent praying happened as I hoped with more than everything I owned that something would come up, some sort of answer as to where I could find her.

“Looks like the hospital managed everything after she died. That means she was buried at one of two cemeteries near here. It doesn’t say which one, but you can try your luck at either of those if that’s what you’re looking for.”

I sighed in small relief. She was here. Resting somewhere, waiting for me to come find her. The secretary gave me the two names of the cemeteries I would be trying, praying that I could find her at one of these, sometime today. Yet again, in just a few moments, I found more flaws in my plan. I had no idea when I was going to fly back home.

But I would deal with that later.

Just as I was about to turn on my heel and scamper out of the hospital, a small piece of paper tucked into my pocket with the names and addresses of each cemetery, I remembered one thing.

“Would you mind just looking up one more thing?” I asked with caution, hoping that the secretary wouldn’t mind. Just one favor. I had to know.

She didn’t say anything, only looking up at me.

“C-can you tell me if, if Caroline Kaston is still in your care here?”

She typed yet another Kaston name into the database, results coming back quickly, so I assumed.

“No, she left about two weeks ago.”

First, my heart sank. “Left… alive?”

She nodded. Somehow at that moment, my heart was lifted. A tiny smile plastered upon my face as I thanked the secretary and slowly made my way out of the hospital lobby. Her mother had woken up. Even if it was over a month after her own daughter’s passing, there was one Kaston left. And somehow, that gave me hope.

It was a tragedy for Addie to leave. For first her brother to shoot her father and then himself. But her mother was still here, surviving all of them in the worst way possible, but she was here. And by now she knew that her daughter was gone, that she was really alone this time. And I was with her on that one.

I decided to set off on foot to the first cemetery, learning that it was only blocks away. The hospital itself was near the outskirts of the city, close to the two cemeteries Addie could be buried at. My pace quickened every time I breathed, thinking again and again how much closer I was coming to her for the first time in weeks. How physically close I could be to her for the first time in weeks. Many nights before I had been close to her, inches away from the darkness that I could be sealed forever in with her.

It was like awakening again for the first time in years when I stepped through the gates of the first cemetery. It was a whole new life breathing into me - ironically in the place where there was neither life nor breathing. Each step was one of hope, rapidly increasing as I became desperate to find where she could be. I thanked God there wasn’t a lot of ground to cover.

Rain trickled down from the sky and onto the top of my head, onto my shoulders where it slowly seeped through the hoodie I swiped before I left the flat yesterday.

My breathing was sporadic as I jogged, sprinted across the grass. Every plaque I scanned didn’t read her name. I was becoming more and more nervous, running through the rows while hoping I wouldn’t gain any bad luck from running on someone’s grave.

She wasn’t here.

Quickly I turned on my heel, ripping the piece of paper out of my back pocket. The purple ink on the page was running as water pelted it mercilessly. I tried my best to read the address, running out onto the pavement and heading in the direction I sure as hell hoped was the right one. I had no sense of direction in this foreign town, but I was picking it up rather quickly in these past few months.

My mind held not a thought except finding her.

It was a mission now to find Addie, in as little time as possible as if she would disappear on me, like she had so many times before now. I speed walked, thinking of all the times she had abandoned me, left me alone in solitude when she went off somewhere. And I was always wondering when she’d come back. If she’d come back. If I’d see her again. Only once did that come true; only once did I wish so hard to see her again that years later I found her.

It only broke my heart with each step to know that even if it had been two months and I knew she wasn’t coming back, it hurt more than the tortures of Hell itself to know she wouldn’t be coming back. I’d had my time with her again, when I more than likely wasn’t supposed to have more time with her. We weren’t meant to be together again; we both knew it. And yet we plundered on together as best we could, to squeeze every single thing we could get out of being together.

The only thing I ended up with was a lot of hurt.

She had a pattern of disappearing on me when I needed her most.

But I suppose I’d developed a pattern of saying the right thing at the wrong time. Every single time something amazing managed to happen to us, I had to leave.

Maybe we both had a pattern of leaving. Maybe it wasn’t only Addie.

We were both going in opposite directions our entire lives, but something in the two of us was compelled to pull us together - to bind ourselves to the other through every time we should have given up and walked away. I suppose everything would have been easier if we had given up, and had broken up when things were at a standstill. Or maybe we should have never tried in the first place.

“It’s better to have loved and lost, than to have never loved at all, right?”

If the rain didn’t have my teeth chattering and my spine shivering already, the second I heard her words in my head nearly sent me into convulsions.

The words sounded like ice, cold and unfamiliar in my memory, like they had never been there in the first place. Like our love had never been there in the first place.

And suddenly I hated myself all over again for believing that loving Addie at all had been a waste because I had lost her. I had lost her to the one place I could never come back from should I want to find her. And yet again I remembered how much she had taught me, showed me through her actions without even having to try. Then and there I could only hope to have such an impact on someone someday; to impact them in the same way Addie had unto me.

My feet started pounding again and after ten more minutes I found myself in front of the set of gates I prayed she would be somewhere behind. Tears leaked out of my eyes, camouflaged by the rain showers. I ran over the slippery grass of the cemetery, scanning over the fifty or so rows of headstones and plaques resting atop the ground. If she wasn’t here, I wasn’t sure what I would do.

My mind never reached the point of what would happen if I made it all the way to the cemetery and couldn’t find her. It was as if I didn’t find her, all would be lost. The past six weeks of cleansing myself and internally vowing that I wouldn’t harm myself with alcohol ever again would have sailed out the window, never to be seen again. I had to tell her. I had to scream to a goddamn grave in order to get my closure and satisfaction so that I could rightly move on.

If I couldn’t do that, I wouldn’t be able to move on. And it was perhaps obsession that got me to this point, because I couldn’t let it go. I had to find where she was buried. To know she was safe in the ground, as morbid as it sounded in my mind. I had to tell her everything, from the start. And she wouldn’t even be able to hear me.

And somehow, I didn’t care.

I raced through every row, my feet slipping on more than one occasion while the only thing keeping me from falling was determination. Every plaque seemed to be in random order, no names following each other in the alphabet. My job just got that much harder, but I hadn’t expected it to be easy from the start. I was only damning myself in some way to think I could actually complete this mission.

But like I said, there was no other option.

Rain was pouring from the sky in the way it only can when bad things are about to happen. My hair was soaked through, my clothes sticking to my skin in the most uncomfortable way. And somehow it felt like if I wasn’t soaked to the bone, this wouldn’t feel right.

I took shelter for a moment under a tree, scanning out the rest of the rows and plots I would have to scout out in hopes of finding the single plaque that rested atop the ground with her name on it.

My breathing was forced at this point, the breath rushing in and out of my lungs from running on the wet grass. I rested my hands on my head, closing my eyes and letting out a noise of frustration. My eyes landed on the one thing that I wanted to find though.

She was buried under the tree.

I knew she would have liked it there just as well when she was alive. Finally, it seemed like she had something perfect. And this would last forever.

My knees gave out as I sank down to the ground slowly, the rain on the ground soaking through my knees on contact, as if I could get any more wet. I watched as my hands reached out slowly on their own, tracing through the air carefully to feel the smooth metal. It hurt so much to be doing this. Never in the time she had been with me did I think I would ever be doing this. Ever. And here I was, tracing over every engraved letter of her first name, the feel of it still the same as the first time I had learned her name. That was ages ago, over a decade, and somehow I had expected now to be spending countless decades with her.

Somehow my mind was immune to the fact that her body was just feet below me, resting there amongst the mud and dirt. She never deserved that. Addie didn’t deserve to die. She was so much better than being put in the ground, or put in an urn.

It felt wrong to be this close. To be this far above her body when I could breathe and think and function, and she couldn’t. And the tears just didn’t stop coming.

My voice was slowly being gathered as I just stared at the plaque. The date of her birthday and day of death engraved. Her name sitting there. It was then I realized that by now, she should have had a different last name inscribed on that plaque. It was then I realized how much I should have wanted to start spending the rest of my life with her before the rest of her life caught up with us. I wanted to marry her. I should have.

“I-I… I’m an alcoholic,” I choked out. The words came slow, not at all steady. I told her the one thing I never did. The few words that would have shattered her life, every opinion she already held of me. It was the few words that maybe could have saved me before she died. Maybe it could have saved her, too.

I bit my lip to keep the vicious sobs inside my mouth. It didn’t work very well.

I wondered how many other people had grieved here, in this same cemetery, for the loss of their own loved ones. I wondered if everyone else in the ground here had been taken before they should have. Part of me hoped they weren’t, for the sake of their family and friends. Apparently my own sake was not considered when Addie stopped breathing. When she was ripped from me in the way that changed my life.

“But I h-have it under control now,” I whispered, my voice distorted from tears. The tiniest of smiles tugged at the corners of my lips. “And it’s all because of you. I-I went to rehab, because of you, Addie.”

It was the most disheartening one-sided conversation I would ever have to bare through. And this is what I came all the way here to do, so God help me I would carry through with it.

“I miss you so much,” I said through tears, sobs spilling from inside of me and into the open air to be heard. My shoulders shook and suddenly everything I had wanted to say was no longer there. “And I don’t know how I’ve done it without you now for two months… but it’s been so fucking hard. And I hate it. And sometimes I wish you never told me not to come after you. Because if you didn’t, I wouldn’t be here right now. I would be with you. And the only reason why I’m not with you now is because you told me not to. I listen to everything you tell me… told me. I can’t go against what you told me.”

I just couldn’t. I couldn’t disappoint her more than I already had. We both knew I royally fucked up during the past month of our relationship. Here was my attempt at fixing it, two months too late.

Better late than never?

I hoped it would work this time. We never seemed to get the whole ‘timing’ thing down, anyways. It just wasn’t our thing.

“I love you,” I said softly, looking at the ground in alarming admiration. To any person watching me I would have been deemed insane, but maybe it was a right diagnosis. “And I don’t know how I’m going to live without you!”

I was shouting, screaming everything that came to mind in some sort of morbid catharsis. Addie was going to hear exactly what I had gone through, what I was terrified of going through without her in the coming days, months, years. Everything was going to be different without her. And sometimes I just wasn’t sure how I was going to survive.

“I wish I made you promise that you would never leave. But I guess I was the one who should have done that, even if I had to leave you left and right because of the band. Neither of us thought that you would ever be the one leaving me, did we?” I was still kneeled on the wet ground. “But I guess even a promise like that couldn’t have kept you here. I really fucking miss you Addie. I wanted to spend the rest of my life with you. I should have fucking done something about it; told you, showed you that you were the only person I wanted to spend the rest of my life with. I need you. I really, really need you. I need you here. With me.”

I sat there in silence for somewhere around five minutes. There was nothing I could think of to say, nothing more that came to mind that needed to be told. Seemingly every word I would say again, Addie needed to hear. But that was just because I knew she should still be with me.

Summoning the words was harder and harder.

And I hoped that if Addie was watching me right now, she knew that I just didn’t know what to say anymore. That I had told her things every night in my head, hoping it would get to her somehow. I had talked to her everyday, thought about her every time I wasn’t occupied. She had never, ever left my mind. Not even for a second.

And she never would. She never left the first time, and she would never leave my mind this time.

“I don’t know if I’ll ever fall in love with anyone again. I don’t know if I want to. If I’ll meet someone who can make me half as happy as you did. I don’t know if I’ll let anyone. I-I don’t know what’s going to happen… if you’ll be my last or not. I know you want me to be happy. The worst part is I just can’t be happy without you.” My voice was reduced to a whisper as I choked out one last thing to her grave, “I just wish you were here.”