Tiny Little Fractures

Chapter Four

It was a lovely bright day when we buried Jon’s empty casket. People always tell me stories about how it rains every time you bury someone that you love. I guess since I wasn’t actually burying anyone it was almost symbolic. The sun was shining, birds were singing. His parents said it was a sign from heaven that he was happy there. I never believed that.

I got a lot of the same comments I had heard spoken to my mother when my father died. “It’ll be okay.” “He’s in a better place.” “You’re still young. You’ll fall in love again.” The only difference is that my mother had a reason to keep going. She had me. Jon and I never had kids. And then there was the problem of how pathetic I was to have needed him so much that a life without him didn’t even seem worth living. I had so much potential, they said. I was so young, they said. I still had so much to live for, they said. I couldn’t give up on life. Jon wouldn’t want me to.

Obviously these people had never lost anyone. It wasn’t okay. I didn’t believe for one second that he was in a better place. I didn’t think I would ever fall in love again because I only knew how to love one person. I had no potential because waking up every morning was a struggle. I didn’t feel like I had anything left to live for at all. And I didn’t care how pathetic and tragic that made me out to be. When you’ve lost the single most important person in your life, you can’t think of any reason why you should still be breathing when they aren’t.

My mother was the only person who never said these things to me. During Jon’s fake funeral, she held me against her and let me cry it out. She never told me to stop crying. She never fed me lies about better places and heaven and angels. She never told me to move on. It’s one thing to lose someone you love. It’s entirely different to lose your spouse.

I didn’t feel like Jon was just a “spouse” though. That’s what I had the most difficult time explaining to people. People can fall in love easily. They get married. Someone dies and the other mourns until they move on and find someone to fill that person’s place. Then they’re happy again. Almost as if they’d forgotten the other person in the first place.

I was ten when I met Jon. Any average person doesn’t remember much of their life before that age. Before ten my memories were simple. I remembered the death of my father, the roughness of growing up, my mom’s wedding. Then there was Jon. Just Jon. Sure, there were bits and pieces of memories that didn’t involve him. Like slumber parties with friends, family holidays, vacations, and road trips. But every memory brought me back to him in some form or another. My friends were my friends because they were Jon’s friends. He came to some of our holiday dinners. Whenever we went on vacation, I always found something to bring back for him. And he was always home waiting for me when we went on road trips. Forgetting Jon would mean forgetting most of my life.

Maybe in the future when my life had stretched to longer periods and Jon was no longer my strongest memory, I might move on. Maybe someday when I had spent more time without him than with him, I might move on. But he would always be there. Every memory of my adolescence. Every memory of high school and college. And the few short years afterward where we were rarely apart. Even when I was old and gray, I would still be haunted by memories of him.

Like I said before, we were so disgustingly sweet that we were borderline cliché. We were childhood sweethearts, each other’s first kiss, first love, first s****l partners, prom dates, homecoming dates. All of those sappy things that everyone dreams of but so very few are actually blessed with.

If you want the truth, Jon and I weren’t always together. I can tell you the story of a perfect romance gone horribly wrong. But there were periods of time where Jon and I separated. We broke up a total of twice. Once in high school when his friends convinced him to see other girls, and once in college when we decided the odds were already against us enough and that we should try something different. We saw other people just to see where it would lead us.

It led us back together. That’s it. We tried and we failed. We saw other people. We went on dates. I never knew if he had s*x with anyone else. I never bothered to ask. But I was sure that he did. I did too. In the end, it didn’t matter who we once tried to fill the void with. People say that we were creatures of habit and that’s why we were together so long. We just didn’t know how to be apart. It wasn’t like that. I enjoyed the newness of different relationships just like the next person. That’s everyone’s favorite part, isn’t it?

The point is that the newness with Jon never left. Years later I could still feel my heartbeat quicken when he used that low sexy voice that meant he was thinking dirty things. I still felt the air squeeze out of my lungs whenever I realized how lucky I was to have him in the first place. That was why Jon and I stayed together so long. Because we loved each other.

Burying an empty coffin was the hardest thing I’d ever done. Sure, there was a tiny part of me that still hoped Jon was alive. But there’s a difference between hope and knowledge. What I knew is that if Jon were alive he would have found his way home. Even if, for whatever reason, we couldn’t be together he would make sure that I didn’t have to suffer the same way I watched my mom suffer.

There was nothing. He just simply never came home. And that’s why I believed he was really gone. It was easier than trying to come up with a reason for why he hadn’t contacted me. It was easier for me to believe he was dead than that he didn’t love me.