When Love and Death Embrace

When you’re a little kid, you often visualize what happens after death. You try to imagine what heaven looks like, and you twist it to be exactly what you want. At least I did. In my after life I always imagined it would be filled with paintings and lit up in bright colors. With rides that never stopped unless you wanted them too, and endless buckets of candy. But you see that’s just the thing about imagination, it’s not always true. No, not at all.

The hours following my death was a hurricane of emotions. To sit there and watch your parents mourn the death, your death and not being able to do a thing about it. You can scream, you can throw things, you can do anything, but they’ll never know. Because they sit there, with that same look upon their face, because all you are is a ghost. It’s the most helpless feeling in the world, and if it wasn’t’ for the fact that I was already dead, that night would have killed me.

There are times when you often find yourself questioning those who say that they love you. Simply because they did something that made you mad. And you always play that little lie in your head of ‘they don’t really care, they just have to.’ but you never realize just how big that lie is until they no longer have you around to care for. Because in their eyes there is pain, there’s love, and there’s hate. It’s the pain you see in the movies, it’s the pain from the blood splattered on the floor. The heartache of watching someone walk away and finding out that they won’t be coming back. The sorrow of not knowing, but blaming yourself. The hate, towards the person who made it all happen. They do care, they’ve always cared, whether you believe it or not.

But if I were to say that it only grew easier after the hours my parents spent crying, I would be lying. Because I wasn’t prepared, and I knew none of them were prepared to tell Frank. My beautiful Frankie. I had known him my entire life, our Mom’s worked together so there was never really a moment that Frank and I weren’t together. As we grew older, things changed for the better I think. I fell in love with him, and he fell in love with me. People weren’t shocked, but just because they weren’t shocked didn’t mean they liked it. We had our moments where people hated us, but we didn’t care. We had each other, even if people said it wouldn’t last. They said we were young, that it wasn’t true love. If only they knew how wrong they really were.

My heart clenched as she called him, I sat perched upon the counter with my head rested against the wall. She knew I would have wanted her to tell him face to face, but I also knew that there was no way she had the strength to. Time seemed to grow slower with each ring, for a moment I wished that he wasn’t home. I could barely handle watching both of my parents fall to shambles, but to have Frankie fall apart... I thought for sure my heart would break. But after the eighth ring, there was a clicking sound followed by his voice.
“Hello?” it was groggy, and I knew that he had stayed up late. Most likely waiting for my call, if only he had known.
“Frank? Is that you?” she wiped her eyes and cleared her voice of any sorrow.
“Uh yeah. Mrs. Wilkins?” she nodded and then realized that he couldn’t see that.
“Y-yes dear it’s me. There was something I needed to talk to you about, I hope I’m not interrupting anything.” she placed her hand against the counter for support and she blinked away her tears.
“No actually, you’re not. So what did you need to talk to me about?” his voice was full of life, it was one of things that made me fall in love with him.
“Well it’s about David. You see... there was an accident last night.” her voice began to break as fresh tears came to her eyes. On his end it suddenly grew quiet, I couldn’t even hear him breathing.
“Accident?”
“He’s... he’s gone dear. He died.” she choked covering her mouth with the hand that had been propping her up. Her eyes snapped shut and she shook her head before gasping.
“W-what? No... I mean... no,” he choked, his breathing went heavy and I listened as his body wracked in sobs.
“I’m sorry dear, I would have called you sooner. But we wanted to make sure it was him first, and by then it was after midnight.” she breathed.
“H-how?” was the only word to come through the phone.
“He was on his way home, and a drunk driver coming off the highway hit him. The doctors said that it was instantaneous, so he didn’t feel any pain.”
“And the driver?” the words were colder. I could picture the darkness in his eyes.
“He died too Frank, nobody survived the crash.” she replied.

They didn’t talk for much longer, only to address the planning of my funeral and how she would let him know when everything was set in stone. She also invited him up to stay a few days, if it was something that he would have wanted. After all, before we moved from Jersey, our house had been a second home for him. After his parents divorce, he always found himself running away because it was something that he couldn’t handle. But seeing as he was with his Dad as of now, he couldn’t get him to allow him to travel all the way to Ohio until the day before they would lay me in the ground forever.

-----

It had once again been a slow next four days, my parents were ones that didn’t like to hold on, and so they found themselves going through the plans quickly. Within two days everything was decided upon, and now all they could do was wait.

It wasn’t until that third day when I had been eaves dropping, if that’s what it was even considered, when I came to learn that two of my old friends would be coming with him to stay the night. Ray Toro and Bob Bryar. Ray was the quiet genius who, whenever he did speak, you knew that it may come across confusing at first, but it did mean something of importance. Bob, he was the giant teddy bear who used to constantly vow that he would get restraining orders on both Frankie and I if we continued to cling to him. But at the end of the day we would always jump on his back, and he would carry us wherever we wanted to go. They were the guys that I grew up with, and I knew that the day when everyone would come together, would be the day that I would walk away. Because I wouldn’t be able to handle it.

At around seven, is when the doorbell rang. Dad was trying to get more time off work, while Mom had been waiting patiently on the couch knowing that they would be arriving soon. I’d have to say that those ten seconds between the last knock and the moment she opened the door were terrifying. But when she did, I saw what should only be considered as an empty shell of the person that I loved the most.
“Hello boys, come on in.” she stepped out of the way as all three of them piled into the house.
“Did you find the house easily?” Ray nodded seeing as none of them were talking. They hadn’t been to the house before, let alone in Ohio. Since I had moved here a little over a year ago, I was the one who would go and visit them. The last time being almost two months prior to now.
“Well then, come on, I’ll show you where you’ll be sleeping tonight.” they followed her upstairs, and she showed Bob and Ray the guest room with the two twin beds. They went in with a small parting and she then led Frankie to my room.
“If you don’t want to stay in here, then there’s another spare bed back downstairs.” she opened it up and he walked in. He looked around, his eyes glossy.
“Is this okay?” he nodded and looked back over at her.
“Thank you Mrs. Wilkins,” he whispered before wrapping his arms around his small body.
“Also... if there is anything, anything at all that you would like to take. Please do, in all honesty I think I’ll go crazy if it all stays. Will you let Ray and Bob know as well?” he nodded and soon she left, but I stayed with him.

I followed him as he moved slowly around my room, he would stop sometimes to look through things that he used to mess with all the time. On others he would find something new and spend a few moments with it before moving on. When he reached my closet, he opened it up carefully before looking at my clothes. His hand reached up and he gripped onto the hoodie he had bought for me my last Christmas back in Jersey. He pulled it off the hanger and cuddled it to his chest as he leaned against the frame of the door.
“You promised you would never leave me Davie,” he whispered into the black material before his eyes slipped shut and the tears leaked. I walked up to him touching his warm face, knowing he couldn’t feel me.
“I’m right here, I haven’t left you.” I reassured him, but it was an empty reassurance as he moved to the floor. He laid in a mess as he cried into my jacket, his shoulders jerking when he would breathe.

We sat there till dinner, the entire time he never stopped crying and I fell back into that pit of helplessness. Because all I could do was sit beside him and kiss the side of his head, telling him over and over again that I loved him, and how I would never leave him.

----

The day finally came, and as I had thought, I couldn’t bring myself to go. So I stayed at home, wondering what the hell I should call where I was. I knew I wasn’t in Hell, if I was, then people really got it wrong. But I knew that this wasn’t my after life, so all I could do was come to the conclusion that something had me pinned down on earth. Whether it was finished business, I didn’t know.

When everyone came home, I knew that Frankie and the guys would be leaving. I was torn, seeing that dead look in his eyes had latched onto me and was begging me to go with him. But I felt that I couldn’t bring myself to leave my parents, the people who had raised me. Supported me for who I was, and gave me the leverage to be whoever I wanted to be. But when it came time for them to go, there was a look in my parents eyes. An aspect in their posture that told me that they would live on and not be held down in the past.

So I did the one thing that I knew was right, I left with them.