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“The bed is too big.”
He’s aware of heads nodding even as he continues to stare at his shoelaces. They all know this.
“But a smaller one would seem wrong. No space for him.”
Him is David. Him is also Solid Snake but they don’t know that. For once, it doesn’t matter.
Cancer he said because everybody understands cancer and it’s close enough.
“Fuck cancer,” Tom said and Hal nodded because it’s true. Even if that’s not what took David away.
Most of the men here are older. All of the men here have lost their wives. There were two or three squirms when he told them about David but Fahin, their group leader, made it very clear that he was to be accepted and so they did. Performative only, in some cases, but he doesn’t care enough to care.
“The alarm clock’s on the wrong side. I can’t even reach it but I can’t put it on my bedside table either?”
More nods.
David was the one who got up first. David got the alarm clock. Now, Hal just gets the alarm.
There’s scuff marks on his shoes. A dried spot of spilled coffee or mud on the left. He should probably get new ones.
David was there when he bought these.
“At least they’re sensible shoes. Not more of those cheap sneakers. They’ll last longer.”
They’ve lasted longer than David.
“But I finally threw away his toothbrush.”
Murmuring encouragement and a “That’s good, Hal” from Fahin.
The toothbrush had been green, the bristles worn down.
“No sense getting a new one.”
No sense in worrying about dental hygiene either but he’d still wanted to kiss Hal.
Midway to death people thought he was Hal’s father or uncle. They were family alright but even though Hal got angry and corrected them to “husband,” it made no difference. The next strangers and the next assumptions were always just around the corner. He can still feel David’s heavy, papery hand on his, calming him down.
It grated on him, that calm and acceptance.
“All I wanted to do was scream, while he went forward. Toward death. Living each day as if it was his last. I still want to scream now.”
There’s a hand on his shoulder. Gerry’s or Jake’s maybe. It’s the wrong hand.
“How’s Sunny doing?”
He’s not the only one with children in their band of bereaved. But his is the youngest.
The only reason he isn’t screaming.
“She’s eating better now.”
She’s not screaming either. So that’s good.
They’re muted. Sound turned low and none of them know how to turn it up again.
David leeched all colour away, turning grey and brittle and finally to dust. A dead body produces a lot of ash.
David’s sits on the mantlepiece of an equally dead fireplace, among all the colours and smiles of the past.
“I’m just so tired of feeling like this. But I don’t know how to feel any different. I’m not sure I even want to. It would all seem so wrong.”
“He’d want you to go forward.”
None here knew him, their dead spouses ghosts in their circle of chairs and tears. Conjured up every Thursday between five and six pm.
But they all know the first rule of grief club:
“Your wife/(husband) would want you to live on and be happy.”
It doesn’t help that it’s true. That David said it again and again. Was willing to give him a head start by disappearing before time made him.
Hal wasn’t ready to let him go though. He still isn’t.
“Little steps.”
The second rule of grief club. Pockets of joy, small steps, slow progress is still progress.
The need to believe that it will get better. The underlying fear that it will.
Rule number three: you need to be grieving to be a member of grief club.
Where would he go without that? Who are they without that?
Widowers.
He’s been many things. Otaku, scientist, engineer, hacker, data analyst, terrorist, hero.
He liked husband and father the most.
Husband and father is a life at its best. With everything he could want.
Widower and father is a life at its worst. Because even breaking is denied to him.
Hal’s not the only one who’s lost David and how can he help Sunny cope if he can’t cope with it himself?
So he drags David’s ghosts to this room every Thursday in order to exorcise him and yet clinging to him as the only familiar face in a room full of strangers.
“Little steps,” he agrees and takes David’s ghost by the hand to go home.
They’ll be back next Thursday.