Status: FYI: two chapters posted March 20; COMPLETED
Do Not Resuscitate
Epilogue
She walks with her head down through rows of stone. She doesn’t stop to admire the pretty engravings, to pay homage to those who have passed, to marvel at wonders the way she did as a child. She walks. She knows where she’s going. She’s been here enough times over the last thirteen years to walk the path blindfolded.
The sun makes her uncomfortably hot, but she can’t take off her sweater. The looks people give her... Besides, she has water bottles galore in the backpack banging against her every step she takes, and she wore her shortest shorts, the ones that barely cover her ass. She won’t die from heatstroke today.
She stops six-feet away, exactly six-feet, from the hunk of stone she’s here to see, and stares. The giant grey gravestone stares silently back, waiting. It’s pretty. Too pretty. The ogee edge and gorgeous engraving of a cross on roses—the design she picked when she was three because she thought Sissy would like the flowers—and flourishing letters set off in their gold-bordered, light grey box, they’re tricks to make death sting less. But she knows. She’d never forget.
In Loving Memory of
Dannilynn Elizabeth Sanders
Greatly Missed Daughter and Sister
We’re Sorry
June 20, 1998-October 12, 2014
And she smiles.
“Hey,” she says, all pep and bouncing energy.
She plops to the ground, as if she’d been invited to pull up a chair and, in a way it felt like she had. That’s how she takes the welcoming silence.
Sissy only communicates with silence.
“Sorry I missed last weekend.” She unzips her backpack and shoves her arm inside, digging, digging, digging. “Birthday, you know?” She shrugs, peaks inside the bag. “It sucked anyway.” Shoves her arm farther inside. “Mom, Dad, Uncle Brian, Aunt Michelle, the guys, their wives, their children.” She pulls a face. “Gross.”
Where did she put—
There.
Her fingers graze the Ziploc, and her whole body seems to buzz from the touch, in anticipation of what’s to come. The glorious numbness, god, she couldn’t wait for it.
Patience, patience.
She takes out a water bottle instead.
“Oh.” She cracks open the bottle. “Your mom stopped by. To give me a present.” She drinks, chugs, tries to alleviate the cottony dryness in her mouth. Half the bottle down in seconds. It doesn’t help. It never helps. She pulls the bottle from her lips, uses the back of her sweater to wipe water off her chin, and continues talking at the silent gravestone. “She started crying when she saw me.”
Her hair. That’s what sent Sissy’s Mom over the edge. It was dumb, really, but in that moment, she’d felt lower than dirt. For dying her hair black.
Just like Sissy’s.
“You like it, right?” She takes another sip of water, gives the gravestone a chance to answer. Silence. Go figure. She rolls her eyes. “I know, I know, I should have asked Dad first, but he would have said ‘no.’”
As if this was the first thing she’d done behind his back.
She snorts. “He was so pissed when he saw. His face got all red and he wouldn’t stop yelling and that vein in his neck was totally about to explode.” She pauses. Something uncomfortable is welling up in her chest. Her eyes drop. She squeezes the cap, hard, till a dull pain seeps into her palm. “Then he went in his room and cried.”
He wasn’t supposed to cry.
“Mom…” She shakes her head. “She tried to tell me Dad was just having a bad day, it wasn’t my fault, and ‘he’ll come around.’ Yeah, right.” She squeezes the cap harder. “They think I’m stupid,” she mumbles.
She is stupid.
And useless and a failure and ugly and everything she does is wrong and she tells herself those things in the mirror every day, it’s her morning mantra, and she copes under the crippling truth, even though she wishes she had never been born.
Because then, maybe, Sissy would be alive.
“Did you know—” she stops, peers at the gravestone. The words on her lips go against weekly visit protocol.
Fuck it.
“Did you know he still cries sometimes? He’ll go to the kitchen in the middle of the night and sit on the floor and watch videos of you on his laptop and just cry for hours.”
She stayed up once to listen. Not on purpose. She was thirsty, her mouth was dry, and she went downstairs to get water, and there he was. On the floor, crying, staring at his laptop. So she hid and listened to the sounds of a toddler version of Sissy coming from the speakers over the backbeat of crying. He didn’t see her, and she didn’t say a word to anyone. Not even the gravestone.
Silence.
She isn’t sure what she was expecting. Something mind-blowing, but nothing happens. She glances around. Miscellaneous mourners litter the graveyard. They’re too far away and too wrapped up in their own conversations with hunks of stone to have heard her. She’s safe. She drinks more water, gulps down the rest of the bottle. More nothing. Her mouth never stops feeling like it’s full of cotton.
“I took money from Dad’s wallet again.”
The stone stays quiet, always overbearingly quiet.
“I needed it, okay? It’s not like he notices. God and it wasn’t even enough. I had to blow Sean behind a dumpster.”
The disgusting tangy taste of him is stuck on her tongue. That and the chalky taste of pills. She didn’t want to do it, but there was only two hundred dollars in Dad’s wallet, and she had to get enough to last a few days so she… got on her knees.
She feels dirty.
“He smells like Cheetos.”
She’s going to throw up.
“I don't get what the big deal is. It’s just oxy.”
She could do worse.
Couldn’t she?
She stares, hoping for something, anything, to come from the gravestone, but she gets no words of advice, no shoulder to cry on, no sisterly comradery, no comfort. Sissy is silent. Cold.
Dead.
Tears fill her eyes.
Her sister is dead.
“I miss you.”
But she can’t remember the sound of Sissy’s voice or her laugh or the way she smiled or the clothes she wore or her favorite foodbookmovieanimalcolor or how she took her coffee—did Sissy like coffee?—she can’t remember.
She pulls her legs to her chest, hugs them.
What did Sissy’s hugs feel like?
She blinks back tears.
Why did it have to be Sissy?
She tries to breathe.
Why couldn’t it have been her?
“I need you, Sissy.”
And in the silence of Danny’s grave, Brooklyn cries.
The sun makes her uncomfortably hot, but she can’t take off her sweater. The looks people give her... Besides, she has water bottles galore in the backpack banging against her every step she takes, and she wore her shortest shorts, the ones that barely cover her ass. She won’t die from heatstroke today.
She stops six-feet away, exactly six-feet, from the hunk of stone she’s here to see, and stares. The giant grey gravestone stares silently back, waiting. It’s pretty. Too pretty. The ogee edge and gorgeous engraving of a cross on roses—the design she picked when she was three because she thought Sissy would like the flowers—and flourishing letters set off in their gold-bordered, light grey box, they’re tricks to make death sting less. But she knows. She’d never forget.
In Loving Memory of
Dannilynn Elizabeth Sanders
Greatly Missed Daughter and Sister
We’re Sorry
June 20, 1998-October 12, 2014
And she smiles.
“Hey,” she says, all pep and bouncing energy.
She plops to the ground, as if she’d been invited to pull up a chair and, in a way it felt like she had. That’s how she takes the welcoming silence.
Sissy only communicates with silence.
“Sorry I missed last weekend.” She unzips her backpack and shoves her arm inside, digging, digging, digging. “Birthday, you know?” She shrugs, peaks inside the bag. “It sucked anyway.” Shoves her arm farther inside. “Mom, Dad, Uncle Brian, Aunt Michelle, the guys, their wives, their children.” She pulls a face. “Gross.”
Where did she put—
There.
Her fingers graze the Ziploc, and her whole body seems to buzz from the touch, in anticipation of what’s to come. The glorious numbness, god, she couldn’t wait for it.
Patience, patience.
She takes out a water bottle instead.
“Oh.” She cracks open the bottle. “Your mom stopped by. To give me a present.” She drinks, chugs, tries to alleviate the cottony dryness in her mouth. Half the bottle down in seconds. It doesn’t help. It never helps. She pulls the bottle from her lips, uses the back of her sweater to wipe water off her chin, and continues talking at the silent gravestone. “She started crying when she saw me.”
Her hair. That’s what sent Sissy’s Mom over the edge. It was dumb, really, but in that moment, she’d felt lower than dirt. For dying her hair black.
Just like Sissy’s.
“You like it, right?” She takes another sip of water, gives the gravestone a chance to answer. Silence. Go figure. She rolls her eyes. “I know, I know, I should have asked Dad first, but he would have said ‘no.’”
As if this was the first thing she’d done behind his back.
She snorts. “He was so pissed when he saw. His face got all red and he wouldn’t stop yelling and that vein in his neck was totally about to explode.” She pauses. Something uncomfortable is welling up in her chest. Her eyes drop. She squeezes the cap, hard, till a dull pain seeps into her palm. “Then he went in his room and cried.”
He wasn’t supposed to cry.
“Mom…” She shakes her head. “She tried to tell me Dad was just having a bad day, it wasn’t my fault, and ‘he’ll come around.’ Yeah, right.” She squeezes the cap harder. “They think I’m stupid,” she mumbles.
She is stupid.
And useless and a failure and ugly and everything she does is wrong and she tells herself those things in the mirror every day, it’s her morning mantra, and she copes under the crippling truth, even though she wishes she had never been born.
Because then, maybe, Sissy would be alive.
“Did you know—” she stops, peers at the gravestone. The words on her lips go against weekly visit protocol.
Fuck it.
“Did you know he still cries sometimes? He’ll go to the kitchen in the middle of the night and sit on the floor and watch videos of you on his laptop and just cry for hours.”
She stayed up once to listen. Not on purpose. She was thirsty, her mouth was dry, and she went downstairs to get water, and there he was. On the floor, crying, staring at his laptop. So she hid and listened to the sounds of a toddler version of Sissy coming from the speakers over the backbeat of crying. He didn’t see her, and she didn’t say a word to anyone. Not even the gravestone.
Silence.
She isn’t sure what she was expecting. Something mind-blowing, but nothing happens. She glances around. Miscellaneous mourners litter the graveyard. They’re too far away and too wrapped up in their own conversations with hunks of stone to have heard her. She’s safe. She drinks more water, gulps down the rest of the bottle. More nothing. Her mouth never stops feeling like it’s full of cotton.
“I took money from Dad’s wallet again.”
The stone stays quiet, always overbearingly quiet.
“I needed it, okay? It’s not like he notices. God and it wasn’t even enough. I had to blow Sean behind a dumpster.”
The disgusting tangy taste of him is stuck on her tongue. That and the chalky taste of pills. She didn’t want to do it, but there was only two hundred dollars in Dad’s wallet, and she had to get enough to last a few days so she… got on her knees.
She feels dirty.
“He smells like Cheetos.”
She’s going to throw up.
“I don't get what the big deal is. It’s just oxy.”
She could do worse.
Couldn’t she?
She stares, hoping for something, anything, to come from the gravestone, but she gets no words of advice, no shoulder to cry on, no sisterly comradery, no comfort. Sissy is silent. Cold.
Dead.
Tears fill her eyes.
Her sister is dead.
“I miss you.”
But she can’t remember the sound of Sissy’s voice or her laugh or the way she smiled or the clothes she wore or her favorite foodbookmovieanimalcolor or how she took her coffee—did Sissy like coffee?—she can’t remember.
She pulls her legs to her chest, hugs them.
What did Sissy’s hugs feel like?
She blinks back tears.
Why did it have to be Sissy?
She tries to breathe.
Why couldn’t it have been her?
“I need you, Sissy.”
And in the silence of Danny’s grave, Brooklyn cries.
♠ ♠ ♠
I debated long and hard about how to end this.I mean, I wrote this entire story without picking an ending.
As some of you know, I wasn’t planning on going over thirty chapters, not counting the prologue and epilogue, and I had two endings picked out.
One where Danny asks for help, finally, in Ch 30, with an epilogue that either was going to be her leaving the treatment center or her just before her first day back to school, something kind of funny, with her verbally snarking her dad, that would open the door for a sequel if I decided somewhere down the line that I wanted to keep going with Danny.
And the other is what you just read.
I chose this one, even though it is sad and maybe not what y’all wanted and maybe something that will upset me in the future because I closed the door on a character I’ve grown attached to.
But in some weird way, this ending is cathartic for me. Because DNR is very personal.
Danny’s thoughts are my thoughts.
I pretty much spewed everything I have thought and do think into a Word doc and posted it for you to read.
Danny’s family life is very different from mine, but the feelings and thoughts, the things she was doing to herself prior to the start of and during the story, and the suicide method are the same.
I’ve been in dark places, I still sometimes drop into dark places, and some of you have said that you have been in the same place as Danny.
I’m so sorry.
I wouldn’t wish this on anyone.
But that’s what drove me to this. I wanted a character like me. I wanted to stop seeing mental health portrayed as something that can be “cured” by romance. I wanted to stop seeing these characters magically getting better because of one stupidly heartwarming incident. I wanted the reality of what it’s like to be… well… like me.
It’s not perfect by any stretch of the imagination but I’ve done what I needed to do.
And this ending, writing it, makes me feel an itty bitty bit lighter.
I want to end this mini ramble by saying: if you are struggling, you should reach out for help, and I’m always here for you to vent to.
Thank you all for suffering with my shitty updating for over a year, for reading, for subscribing, for commenting.
X’s and O’s,
Lexi Munroe