Things Will Never Be the Same

They say that the way you spend your New Year’s is going to be the way you spend your entire year. However, that saying was the biggest lie Lea Blumen had have ever heard. She had lived by that saying her entire life, cleaning her house until it sparkled, fixing any broken or hurt relationships and making sure that on that day, she was the happiest she had ever been. And this New Year’s was no different. She had done everything to make sure that her New Year’s was perfect.

Her Fiancée, Evgeni Birmaun, had made New Year’s and her birthday the most perfect time she had ever had. They had left in late December for Israel and had spent two weeks over there. Spending New Year’s and January 7th, which happened to be her birthday and old Christmas, there.

She couldn’t imagine her New Year going all but magical. Lea and Evgeni were to be getting married in March. All their preparations were done, the honeymoon tickets had been booked and their family was flying in from around the world just to be at their wedding.

Of course no one expected this to happen, no one imagined that something like this could happen to someone so young. His life was only starting and his journey with Lea was only beginning. But that was the trick with life, you never knew what twists and turns it was going to go on next. Life also didn’t care whether what was to happen would rip you apart and that you wouldn’t really know how to deal with it at all. But the only thing that Lea kept telling herself was that God wouldn’t give her anything that she couldn’t handle. However, the longer she was living her life the less she was beginning to believe in that statement.

It was January 15th that Lea’s life had changed forever. It had started as any normal day would. They had both woken up at six am, took their showers, ate their breakfasts and had gotten ready for their eight-hour workday. Neither one of them had felt off, neither one of them felt the impending doom that was coming their way not even ten hours from the moment that they walked out the door.

Lea had come home, started dinner. It was unusual for Evgeni to be late coming home without letting her know in advance. She had waited and waited, dinner had gotten cold and she only got madder by the minute. She was a paranoid person, she had been hurt and broken by so many men in her life that her imagination had begun to run wild as to what it is that he was doing, but more importantly with who.

She was just in the process of trashing the dinner when a knock on her front door had startled her. She couldn’t help it as her eyebrows furrowed together and confusion masked her features as she starred at the door. She knew that if it was Evgeni he would use his key and she couldn’t even begin to imagine who was visiting her at ten pm on a Wednesday night.

The minute that it took her to put the plate down, wash her hands and make her way to the door were the last moments of actual internal peace that she had felt. The anger that she felt was frivolous because she was still at peace, life was still good and everyone that she loved were still with her.

As she looked through the peephole she saw two police officers on the other side of the door and now she was completely confused. Panic had enveloped every cell of her body as her breaths had become more ragged. Licking her lips, she put a forced smile on her lips as she opened the door slowly.

“Good evening Officers. How can I help you?” She asked the man and woman that stood on the other side of her doorstep.

“Good Evening ma’am, I’m officer Hernandez and this is my partner officer Johnson. Are you Lea Blumen?”

“Yes I am.”

“We have some hard news to tell you. Do you mind if we come in?”

“Is everything okay?” Lea had asked as she let the officer’s inside of her house, closing the door quickly behind them.

“Are you Evgeni Birmaun’s fiancée?”

“Yes I am.”

“Evgeni had you listed as his emergency contact in his wallet. There was a note written that if anything were to happen to him we were to contact you.” Lea licked her lips knowing that this was not good if they had looked through his wallet and found out that she was his emergency contact.

“Is he okay? Where is he? Is he alive?” Lea rambled out the three questions that had forced their way into her brain as quickly as she could.

“Do you mind coming with us to the coroner’s office? We need you to identify if it is his body or if it was someone that was carrying his stolen wallet.”

Life had not been the same for Lea since the moment the police officer’s had asked her to come to the coroner’s office. She felt lost, hurt, scarred and guilty. She couldn’t wash the guilt off of her, the guilt of thinking that he was doing something wrong, something that would hurt her. She should have known something was wrong, she should have felt it. But she didn’t and that hurt her.

“Lea, how are you holding up? I know Zhenia would want to see you still smiling that beautiful smile of yours.” Lea looked up, noticing that it was Gabriel Yolinsky talking to her. He was Evgeni’s best friend and somehow, in the past ten days that had led up to his funeral, neither one of them were able to talk to each other. They knew the pain was hard on them both and they didn’t want to make it worse for each other.

“I’m holding up Gabi. It’s hard, but I think I’ll be alright with time.” Gabi sighed as he walked closer to Lea, pulling her into a hug and just as he was about to let go, he felt her arms tighten around his body and he knew he couldn’t let go of her. “It’s so hard Gabi.”

“I know, it hurts me too Lea. I don’t know how to go on without my best friend and this pain that I’m feeling, I can’t even begin to image how much harder it is for you.” He mumbled into her hair as his hands began to rub her back, hoping that they would provide some form of comfort. “But I know with time it won’t be as hard, you won’t forget but you will be able to live without that heavy weight on your heart.”

Lea simply nodded her head. She was ready to go home, the dinner reception after the funeral was over and everyone had once again told her how sorry they were and how they were there for her. The worst was everyone asking why it had taken so long to do his funeral after his death. Ten days wasn’t the “Jewish” tradition, he had to be buried the next day. But what no-one understood was that there was an investigation that had gone on with the fatal head on collision that he had with a truck, they had to do an autopsy and she was lucky that they had released the body to her yesterday.

“I just want to get out of here. If I have to hear one more person say how sorry they are, I will end up punching someone.” Gabi let out a quiet laugh, his body slightly shaking causing Lea to smile for the first time since she had found out the terrible news.

“Come on, I’ll drive you home.”

“Not home, take me to my parent’s house, that’s where my car is right now.” Gabi simply nodded his head as he pulled away from Lea.

There was no need for words as she walked away from him. He knew she was going to tell Evgeni’s parent’s goodbye as well as her own. She had come with her parent’s but she knew that they weren’t going to be going home until the last person had left the restaurant, neither were Evgeni’s parents. But she couldn’t stand being there anymore, she was so fed up of people looking at her with sad eyes. She knew that everyone was talking about her and she was sick of the quiet whispers that had filled the air of the reception hall.

It felt like it took forever to get back to Gabi, who waited patiently for Lea at the exit to the receptionist. When she had finally gotten back to him, he grabbed her purse and they walked in a peaceful silence to his car. They didn’t need to talk to know how the other one was feeling, they didn’t need to talk to understand the pain that was inside both of them.

“Do you remember where my parent’s live?” Lea asked Gabi quietly as she got in the car and buckled up.

“We spent our high school days in that house. I can drive there in my sleep.” Gabi chuckled out and they fell into a comfortable silence as they were driving.

Lea couldn’t stop thinking about what was to happen now. A new life, a new chapter was opening up for her. She was finally going to achieve one of her dreams, one of the dreams that her and Evgeni had come up with together. She had known they were going to do it one day, they had their whole life together ahead of them. Now that he was gone, she knew she had to do it. She had to change her life for the positive because it took a horrible event in her life to realize that she needed to live her life in a more positive way, a way that when it was her time to go, she could say she enjoyed every single minute of it, that she actually achieved something

“Can’t stay in your house.” Gabi asked her after about ten minutes of silence.

“Man Gabi, the first night I stayed home after Zhenia’s death, I couldn’t stop crying. Every single thing that I looked at, touched, smelled… it just reminded me of Zhenia and I couldn’t live like that. It’s not much easier at their house but I’m leaving tomorrow so I’m hoping the weight on my heart will get lighter soon.”

“Are you going back home?” Gabi asked her, not understanding how the weight will get easier when she would be going back to the house where her and Evgeni had built six years of memories in.

“No, I’m leaving.”

“What do you mean your leaving?”

“I’m leaving New York. I don’t know when I’ll be back, I have two suitcases packed and I’m just going. I’m going to fulfill one of mine and Zhenia’s dreams. It’s time to do it and it’s time to enjoy life, enjoy every minute of it. It took Zhenia’s death for me to realize how precious life is and you can’t waste it without enjoying it.” Gabi furrowed his eyebrows, raking his brain to figure out what dream that they had that she wanted to achieve.

“Which dream?”

“To travel the world. We had this one plan. We were gonna pack up our car and go cross country. We were gonna travel down to Florida, and go across the southern border, hitting all the southern states. We were going to travel up the west coast, up to Alaska and then travel across Canada and coming back down to New York, hitting all the Eastern states.” Lea told Gabi, a real smile coming to her lips as she was thinking about it. She knew Evgeni would be there with her, maybe not in person but she knew that he would be there with her in spirit.

Since he had passed away she never felt like she was alone, he was always with her and as hard as it was dealing with his death, the feeling of his presence made it that little bit better.

“You’re crazy to do that in the winter, it's going to be so cold. You’ll be gone for like two months, what about work?”

“They gave me time off, as much as I needed. I’m one of their number one people there, so I took six months.”

“What do you need six months for?”

“I’m opening a new chapter in my life, I’m walking through a new door. Zhenia and I saved up a lot of money. When I come back , I’m going to Australia and New Zealand for a month, from there I’ll come back and I’m going back packing through Europe and end it in Africa going on Safari’s and living with the animals for a month with WWF” Lea told him as she got more excited. They were nearing her house and her car was packed and ready to go. She was leaving tonight with her first stop being in DC.

“You’re doing this on your own?”

“The first one I am, I need to do this cross country trip alone. It was something me and Zhenia wanted to do so I need to do this for us. From there if anyone wants to join me, I’m all up for company. I shouldn’t be as much of a mess by the time I came back. By the time I come back a new chapter of my life will be open and I hope to be a completely different person by then.”

It was then that they had finally pulled up to Lea’s parent’s house. She took a deep breath in and smiled as she turned to look at Gabi.

“Thank you for the ride home Gabi.”

“There’s nothing to thank for. I’m always here for you.” He told her softly as he leaned across and pulled her into a hug. “Don’t forget about me.” He mumbled out. “I want to be able to join you on one of your trips when you come back.”

“You’re always welcome with me. Stay safe and strong and remember, with every down slope on the roller coaster we call life, there’s a big up. This may seem hard now, this may have broken us and made the ride back up hard, but there will be an up. I’m taking control of my life, I’m making sure my up come’s soon.” Lea pulled away from Gabi, gave him a peck on his cheek before looking in his eyes. “Whenever it gets to hard for you, call me. I’ll always be there.”

“I feel like I should be telling you this. You lost your fiancé.”

“You lost your brother. God never give’s us anything we can’t handle and Zhenia will never be gone. He will always be here.” She told him softly as she lay both of her hand’s to her heart. “He will always be a part of me, a part of you." She told him softly as she put her hand's on his heart. "But what I’m about to do, I need to do it for both of us, I need to do this so I can cope with his death the right way. Take care of yourself Gabi.” And with that Lea got out of the car and headed for her parent’s house.

She knew the road ahead of her was going to be hard and bumpy. It would be filled with tears, pain, regret and suffering but she knew that the road at the end would be paved and beautiful, it would be new. If Evgeni’s death had given her anything, it had given the strength to live her life for the first time ever.