Let the Dead Bury the Dead
-
My darling angel, I wish I could say that I was sorry.
I know that you are near me now. I can feel it in the vague sort of way that animals can sense impending winter, and though they run from the chill of the season, I welcome you with what warmth I can muster. Though I cannot see you, and perhaps I never will again, I am comforted in the knowledge that you are coming to me. You have visited before, my love, but it has always been a fleeting comfort, temporary and distant. This time, I know you will not leave.
It has been a terrible, wretched journey, my husband, my dear, but I can promise that it will be finished soon. After tonight, in perhaps as little time as an hour, we can rest. I know you ache for it, darling. You have not slept a full night in weeks, and it shows. You move slowly, and when you do, your workboots drag against the wooden floor. The tone of your voice, on the rare occasions that you use it, is lethargic and listless, your energy drained away.
I watched you become this, my dove, and there was nothing I could do to stop it. Those last few days with you were so frantic, so full of manic energy and life. Sometimes I think that I do not remember those nights accurately, for the fever and the visions and the hysteria, but I remember that first night. How the doctor was hesitant as he closed up his black case, shutting his medical tools away from us, knowing what we did not. I remember how he lowered his voice to speak to you, how the words he spoke fell on numb ears, and how sadly he tipped his hat toward us before turning away, before walking out of our home.
And as I tried to make sense of it, my hands reaching around your torso to grip the cotton of your shirt, you pulled me against you. Ran your calloused farmer’s hands over my hair, your fingers sliding through the strands. You rocked me quietly, and I did not understand, I refused to understand, because how could it be that something so wretched and hateful could happen to us?
It was hot, I remember that, and the loathsome heat grew only from inside my own body; outside, the winter snow had been storming down on us for weeks. The fever came upon me in waves, and as you donned extra layers of cotton and silk, I shed my own. You helped me unlace my petticoat and my bodice and my skirts and assisted me into my nightclothes. You let the door open to invite the chill inside, and though I could see you shivering, I could not bring myself to ask you to close it. The cold could not banish the fiery torture of the illness, but it did provide some temporary relief, some blessed abatement of temperature. I could not bear to part with that, my darling. I was weak, my darling, and weak people are often selfish.
Despite our efforts, despite your doting care, despite everything, the sickness took me quickly.
Lord in Heaven, my love, you could not imagine it. The sweltering heat. The exhaustion. The blanket of heaviness that held me in bed. I lost sense of what was real and what was the nightmarish world of my dreams. The room tilted, my vision blurred. I moaned, and you were there. Our child cried out. You held her, and wept. I could not find the energy to move. You fed me, and changed the bedcloths. Desperately pacing, aiding me, burning out the flame of your life in a desperate attempt to keep mine kindled. I do not know how long it lasted. The days blurred. Sometimes there was sun, but more often than not, the winter hours had claimed the daylight before I could bring myself to open my eyes.
And then, that sudden burst of energy. I called to you, and you came, and I screamed for the pain of the heat. The child cried, and you paid her no attention. I could not see, but I thrashed out, I grabbed at you, and your arm was around my back, lifting me. The hand that was not busy supporting me held a cloth of cold water to my forehead, and the liquid ran down my face and mixed with my tears. My fingers, for one last desperate moment, dug into the flesh of your backside, and then they released.
The heat was gone then, but of course, so was everything else.
It is dark here, darling, too dark to see. It is a cold and lonely, wretched sort of place. The fever has left me for ever, and the rainwater seeps through the dirt to chill me where I lay. Sometimes I panic and wonder if the sickness has truly abandoned me, for I am as immobile here as I was in our bed, though I know in my heart that it is not flu that holds me still now. Maybe I should have accepted that from the beginning, and perhaps I should have simply let it be, and rested in my grave.
You did not rest, even though the terror was gone. I thought that you would, but instead you spent your nights staring out the cabin window, watching over the place where you knew I remained. You watched for hours, my angel, never knowing that I was not there. Never understanding that I could not stay in that deplorable hole, that I forced what was left of me away from it to return to you. You could not hear me, or see me, and I could not touch you, but it was better than the darkness. The solitude. I watched as your undereyes grew dark and bagged, and the lifelessness drained out of your voice. Night after night, you refused to return to the bed in which I had struggled through my last breaths, and night after night I ached for your pain.
Perhaps it had nothing to do with me, after all. It would stand to reason that the dead cannot meddle in the affairs of the living. And if I did nothing to guide you that night, perhaps that is for the best. I never wanted to see you hurt, my angel. But silently, desperately, I begged you to hear me, to follow the call of that which was more than flesh and bones. No matter how close to you I forced myself, a part of me remained alone in that desolate, unforgiving pit where you left me. Our nearness was empty and deficient, inadequate, because you were alive, and I was not.
I love you, my darling, my dove, my angel, but I am weak. And weak people are often selfish.
The winter snow came heavily that night. I remember, because it whipped around the sides of the cabin, whistling and shoving and pulling me away from you. I came to you in desperate flashes, only to be forced back into the unapologetic embrace of my tomb. I found you, and I screamed, and I lost you again. Did you hear me? I suppose you will never tell. But something prompted you to leave the cabin that night. When I reached for you again, knowing that I was about to be thrown back into the darkness, screaming and pleading and crying for your attention, the door to our home slammed open. Frantically, selfishly, I began to give up on trying to stay with you. Instead, I thought of how it would be so much easier for you to come to me, instead.
You could have closed the door. You could have returned to the child, who had woken at the sound of the crash and wailed for the comfort of your embrace. You could have barred the winter chill from our home and curled up with the child in our bed, remaining safe and alive and hollow. Instead, my darling, you shoved your feet into your boots, neglecting your coat, and followed what was left of me into the storm.
I pulled, and you followed, the tracks you left in the snow quickly disappearing under the fall of flurries, gone by the time you turned around to retrace them. You found the rope, as I had willed you to, discarded and forgotten in the back of the barn. Against the wind and the furious storm you trudged, passed the cabin again, disregarding the sobbing noises from inside. I longed for you, my angel, so very desperately. I was so frightened and cold that I was willing to curse you as well, simply to keep me from enduring it alone.
Was it me that led you to the old oak that night? I do not know. Perhaps I was simply wishing for the inevitable, perhaps it would have happened regardless of my wishes or intentions. What I do know is that it was easier to stay with you as you walked willingly into my embrace, and the wind did not rip me away as it had before. I was no longer trying to escape from the prison I would suffer for the rest of eternity; I was dragging you into it to suffer with me.
I watched you fall, and as you had at my passing, I wept. I stayed with you that night, waiting at the tree, knowing that it was right. Knowing that you could rest now, that I could be comforted. As I wept for the joy of our reunion and the wretched knowledge of your death, the snow around us grew heavier, blanketing everything around is in a whirlwind of white. By the time it slowed, it was morning, and you were showered in the light that I had been denied during the last days of my life.
Our neighbours, they came for you, as I knew they would. Cut you down from your dying place. Someone entered our home and collected the child, and then I could not hear it crying any longer. They were touching you, and you were cold and lifeless and undeniably dead, and I was alone. Inescapably, resolutely alone. Frantic, I fled back to my hiding place and grave, and only there did I manage to remain calm. To wait for you to come to me, as I knew you must.
I can hear them above, faintly, reading verse over you. They did the same for me. They are expressing the shame of the thing, the tragedy, unaware of the truth. Not knowing, as I do, that it was your love for me that forced you into the cold that night, and the promise of me that tied the knot in the rope. Though I am dead, my darling dove, I lured you away. I killed you. And tonight, my love, I bury you.
They are sealing you away now, pouring dirt over your eternal resting place, releasing you from their living world into my own. And though their hands, solid flesh and steady bone, raise the shovels, and though the voices of these living people bless you and cry for you, know, my darling, that I am the only one to claim you tonight, because I am more than flesh and bone, and because tonight, the dead buries the dead.
And, my darling, I wish I could say that I was sorry.
I know that you are near me now. I can feel it in the vague sort of way that animals can sense impending winter, and though they run from the chill of the season, I welcome you with what warmth I can muster. Though I cannot see you, and perhaps I never will again, I am comforted in the knowledge that you are coming to me. You have visited before, my love, but it has always been a fleeting comfort, temporary and distant. This time, I know you will not leave.
It has been a terrible, wretched journey, my husband, my dear, but I can promise that it will be finished soon. After tonight, in perhaps as little time as an hour, we can rest. I know you ache for it, darling. You have not slept a full night in weeks, and it shows. You move slowly, and when you do, your workboots drag against the wooden floor. The tone of your voice, on the rare occasions that you use it, is lethargic and listless, your energy drained away.
I watched you become this, my dove, and there was nothing I could do to stop it. Those last few days with you were so frantic, so full of manic energy and life. Sometimes I think that I do not remember those nights accurately, for the fever and the visions and the hysteria, but I remember that first night. How the doctor was hesitant as he closed up his black case, shutting his medical tools away from us, knowing what we did not. I remember how he lowered his voice to speak to you, how the words he spoke fell on numb ears, and how sadly he tipped his hat toward us before turning away, before walking out of our home.
And as I tried to make sense of it, my hands reaching around your torso to grip the cotton of your shirt, you pulled me against you. Ran your calloused farmer’s hands over my hair, your fingers sliding through the strands. You rocked me quietly, and I did not understand, I refused to understand, because how could it be that something so wretched and hateful could happen to us?
It was hot, I remember that, and the loathsome heat grew only from inside my own body; outside, the winter snow had been storming down on us for weeks. The fever came upon me in waves, and as you donned extra layers of cotton and silk, I shed my own. You helped me unlace my petticoat and my bodice and my skirts and assisted me into my nightclothes. You let the door open to invite the chill inside, and though I could see you shivering, I could not bring myself to ask you to close it. The cold could not banish the fiery torture of the illness, but it did provide some temporary relief, some blessed abatement of temperature. I could not bear to part with that, my darling. I was weak, my darling, and weak people are often selfish.
Despite our efforts, despite your doting care, despite everything, the sickness took me quickly.
Lord in Heaven, my love, you could not imagine it. The sweltering heat. The exhaustion. The blanket of heaviness that held me in bed. I lost sense of what was real and what was the nightmarish world of my dreams. The room tilted, my vision blurred. I moaned, and you were there. Our child cried out. You held her, and wept. I could not find the energy to move. You fed me, and changed the bedcloths. Desperately pacing, aiding me, burning out the flame of your life in a desperate attempt to keep mine kindled. I do not know how long it lasted. The days blurred. Sometimes there was sun, but more often than not, the winter hours had claimed the daylight before I could bring myself to open my eyes.
And then, that sudden burst of energy. I called to you, and you came, and I screamed for the pain of the heat. The child cried, and you paid her no attention. I could not see, but I thrashed out, I grabbed at you, and your arm was around my back, lifting me. The hand that was not busy supporting me held a cloth of cold water to my forehead, and the liquid ran down my face and mixed with my tears. My fingers, for one last desperate moment, dug into the flesh of your backside, and then they released.
The heat was gone then, but of course, so was everything else.
It is dark here, darling, too dark to see. It is a cold and lonely, wretched sort of place. The fever has left me for ever, and the rainwater seeps through the dirt to chill me where I lay. Sometimes I panic and wonder if the sickness has truly abandoned me, for I am as immobile here as I was in our bed, though I know in my heart that it is not flu that holds me still now. Maybe I should have accepted that from the beginning, and perhaps I should have simply let it be, and rested in my grave.
You did not rest, even though the terror was gone. I thought that you would, but instead you spent your nights staring out the cabin window, watching over the place where you knew I remained. You watched for hours, my angel, never knowing that I was not there. Never understanding that I could not stay in that deplorable hole, that I forced what was left of me away from it to return to you. You could not hear me, or see me, and I could not touch you, but it was better than the darkness. The solitude. I watched as your undereyes grew dark and bagged, and the lifelessness drained out of your voice. Night after night, you refused to return to the bed in which I had struggled through my last breaths, and night after night I ached for your pain.
Perhaps it had nothing to do with me, after all. It would stand to reason that the dead cannot meddle in the affairs of the living. And if I did nothing to guide you that night, perhaps that is for the best. I never wanted to see you hurt, my angel. But silently, desperately, I begged you to hear me, to follow the call of that which was more than flesh and bones. No matter how close to you I forced myself, a part of me remained alone in that desolate, unforgiving pit where you left me. Our nearness was empty and deficient, inadequate, because you were alive, and I was not.
I love you, my darling, my dove, my angel, but I am weak. And weak people are often selfish.
The winter snow came heavily that night. I remember, because it whipped around the sides of the cabin, whistling and shoving and pulling me away from you. I came to you in desperate flashes, only to be forced back into the unapologetic embrace of my tomb. I found you, and I screamed, and I lost you again. Did you hear me? I suppose you will never tell. But something prompted you to leave the cabin that night. When I reached for you again, knowing that I was about to be thrown back into the darkness, screaming and pleading and crying for your attention, the door to our home slammed open. Frantically, selfishly, I began to give up on trying to stay with you. Instead, I thought of how it would be so much easier for you to come to me, instead.
You could have closed the door. You could have returned to the child, who had woken at the sound of the crash and wailed for the comfort of your embrace. You could have barred the winter chill from our home and curled up with the child in our bed, remaining safe and alive and hollow. Instead, my darling, you shoved your feet into your boots, neglecting your coat, and followed what was left of me into the storm.
I pulled, and you followed, the tracks you left in the snow quickly disappearing under the fall of flurries, gone by the time you turned around to retrace them. You found the rope, as I had willed you to, discarded and forgotten in the back of the barn. Against the wind and the furious storm you trudged, passed the cabin again, disregarding the sobbing noises from inside. I longed for you, my angel, so very desperately. I was so frightened and cold that I was willing to curse you as well, simply to keep me from enduring it alone.
Was it me that led you to the old oak that night? I do not know. Perhaps I was simply wishing for the inevitable, perhaps it would have happened regardless of my wishes or intentions. What I do know is that it was easier to stay with you as you walked willingly into my embrace, and the wind did not rip me away as it had before. I was no longer trying to escape from the prison I would suffer for the rest of eternity; I was dragging you into it to suffer with me.
I watched you fall, and as you had at my passing, I wept. I stayed with you that night, waiting at the tree, knowing that it was right. Knowing that you could rest now, that I could be comforted. As I wept for the joy of our reunion and the wretched knowledge of your death, the snow around us grew heavier, blanketing everything around is in a whirlwind of white. By the time it slowed, it was morning, and you were showered in the light that I had been denied during the last days of my life.
Our neighbours, they came for you, as I knew they would. Cut you down from your dying place. Someone entered our home and collected the child, and then I could not hear it crying any longer. They were touching you, and you were cold and lifeless and undeniably dead, and I was alone. Inescapably, resolutely alone. Frantic, I fled back to my hiding place and grave, and only there did I manage to remain calm. To wait for you to come to me, as I knew you must.
I can hear them above, faintly, reading verse over you. They did the same for me. They are expressing the shame of the thing, the tragedy, unaware of the truth. Not knowing, as I do, that it was your love for me that forced you into the cold that night, and the promise of me that tied the knot in the rope. Though I am dead, my darling dove, I lured you away. I killed you. And tonight, my love, I bury you.
They are sealing you away now, pouring dirt over your eternal resting place, releasing you from their living world into my own. And though their hands, solid flesh and steady bone, raise the shovels, and though the voices of these living people bless you and cry for you, know, my darling, that I am the only one to claim you tonight, because I am more than flesh and bone, and because tonight, the dead buries the dead.
And, my darling, I wish I could say that I was sorry.