Elegy
You don’t expect that the moment that will shatter your life permanently, irrevocably, will happen while you’re sitting in a too-small red metal chair in a kindergarten classroom, staring out the window at the windy snow, and then at the clock on the wall.
11:11. Glancing up to see how much time we had left before Munchkin and I could get out of there, I felt a drop in my stomach as I noted the time.
I used to get so mad at Hansel for pointing out when it was 11:11, because he'd always make some joke about how he was probably going to die right at that time. Mentally pushing away the horrible vision and subsequent panic attacks that had brought me back from England, I would tell him hotly that no, he probably just noticed it all the time in the same way you buy a red car and then suddenly see red cars everywhere. It was just the Baader-Meinhof phenonomen, something explained away with Psychology 101.
And yet, I couldn't help but feel my heart beat a little faster every time I saw it, too.
The point is...you think that you should feel it. Until you don’t, until you later wonder how it was that you didn’t. How was it that the earth didn’t shake, glass didn’t shatter, buildings didn’t crumble…how is that you remained so infuriatingly ignorant to the way life was being destroyed just 45 minutes west of where you sat in that too-small red metal chair, staring at a clock on the wall as the little hand stayed perched on 11:11.
We were broken up. Had been, for almost three months. I had tried to do it in person, but when he stood in the hallway and asked me to please don’t do this, why are you doing this…it broke me in the same way that all our fights had. No matter what small strength I had managed to muster, it always dissolved when he looked at me a certain way. So I had set down the laundry basket packed full of my things and I nodded and cried as he promised that it would get better, things will change, everything is going to be different from now on.
I had stopped believing that months ago. He still did, though, and that was the thing that broke me the most.
The next day I got off early from work and raced to his parents’ house, to the apartment in their basement where we had been living for the last couple months. A few weeks earlier, I had secretly signed a lease for a small winterized cottage on the shores of Rice Lake. Since then, I had been slowly but steadily moving my things - mainly the stuff I knew he wouldn’t notice - into the new place. The night before had been my attempt to at least do the honorable thing, to break up in the way that you’re supposed to break up, face-to-face…but I had also tried that so many times before, too many times to count. Tear-soaked, dramatic, tragic scenes; long, drawn-out, knock-down, drag-out fights; and one huge, panic-stricken, screaming, sobbing, almost-violent episode…and they had never resulted in anything but the hard, flat truth that I didn’t and never would have the strength to leave him if he stayed within my sights. So I raced into the apartment and swiftly carried the rest of my stuff to my car, dumping it all into my trunk before writing him a note and leaving it on his pillow. Then I quickly reversed out of his parents’ driveway and sped off, letting the sobs rip through my body as his house faded away into the woods of the Wisconsin Blue Hills.
We were each other's first big loves, each other's first serious, grown-up, adult relationship. For so long, we thought we would be together forever. But in the end, it didn’t matter how much we loved each other or how hard we tried…it just didn’t work. It was one of the hardest lessons I ever had to learn: That all my romantic ideals didn’t mean shit when secrets, resentments, and long-held hurts turned things toxic. He wanted a girl who would stay, whose life would revolve around her love for him. Who didn't care where she was, just as long as she was with him. And that was just never going to be me. To have the kind of life with him that he wanted, to be with him in the way that he wanted...it meant giving up everything I had ever dreamed of having for myself.
The thing I couldn’t shake was the suspicion that giving up everything I wanted for myself just to be with him was exactly what he wanted from me, even if just in theory, if not in practice. How could you even ask me to do that, I remember thinking, once. Giving up everything I wanted was giving up everything that made me who I was. Even if I had been willing to try, I knew the deprivation of my dreams would just twist and burn and eat away at my heart. Eventually, nothing would be left inside of me except bitterness and reproach.
After almost three years together, I didn’t know anymore, how to be without him. Yet the thought of staying, and forever…it filled me with this quiet panic, this dead-end feeling that none of this was right, that staying together was only going to end up destroying both of us. I kept trying to push that dread down, ignore it, but then something would happen, I would feel pushed into a corner, and that particular terror would rise up again, brandishing its claws and snapping its teeth, growling deep and low in the throat. It was turning me into someone I didn’t like, something I hated. Just let me go, I remember thinking, every time it got too claustrophobic. I'm not good for you, not anymore. So please, please…just let me go.
I thought if I could give us a clean break, if I could just vanish, then I could force us both over to the other side. With some distance and some space and time, we would both move on, and he would meet someone new. Someone who could make him happy. Someone who would want all the same things he wanted, who loved all the things he loved. Someone who could love him better than I could. ⠀⠀⠀
But he waited for me after work one day, chasing me down to tell me how shitty my note had been, that he deserved more, deserved at least an explanation; all of which was true. We spent the rest of that awful night sitting in his truck in the brightly lit parking lot of a gas station, fighting and crying and screaming, which then led to weeks of late night phone calls and painful voicemails and ignored requests to meet. “I’m not giving up," he told me, one night on the phone. "YOU can give up on us all you want. But I’m still gonna fight for this, no matter how long it takes."
Why can’t you see that this is the best thing for us? I wanted to say, scream, sob. Even broken up, all we do is fight. And I think we’re actually starting to really hate each other. But I didn’t say it. Instead I closed my eyes and silently reminded myself that I was hurting him, and on purpose, and so I just had to keep taking the hits until he tired of trying, until he finally just gave up. It will be worth it, for both of us, in the end, I kept telling myself. Maybe it doesn’t feel anything like it right now, but one day, it will be. You’ll see.
Being together felt wrong; yet being apart also felt unbearable. It left me curled up in my bed late at night, crying myself to sleep from the deep ache that burned inside my chest. Sometimes, when I felt like I just couldn’t take it anymore, I’d find myself swinging my legs over the side of my bed. I’d sit perched on the edge, ready to spring up and fly through the woods, wanting to just slip into bed with him one more time. I could be gone by morning, I told myself. We could pretend it was just a dream.
But I didn’t, because I knew it was ultimately selfish. I couldn’t open any windows that I knew I would have to smash back down again.
So I swallowed it, all of it, pretending to be so sure in my choice, never letting him know that I was crying on the other end when he’d call. Come back, he'd tell me. You have to come back. Please, just come back.
In late January I came down with strep, rendering me achy and mute, and I missed two calls from him. When I finally had enough voice to do so, I left a message for him, letting him know that I wasn’t blowing him off, but was sick and that it hurt too much to really talk.
The next night, there was a knock on my door. In a whoosh of winter wind, there he was, sporting a fresh haircut and a new coat. I never forgot how handsome he was, but there was something to him being right in front of me that stole my breath away. My stomach dropped as I noticed the shearling collar of his new coat, the way he carried it off perfectly. I thought about him going to the mall in Eau Claire with his buddies Shimko and Malsom to shop for new clothes, and I suddenly felt so left out of his life. But that’s what I wanted, I sternly reminded myself. I wanted him to move on, to get on with his life. So I couldn’t be sad about it. Of course he should go to The Gap and get a new coat.
Without a word, he smiled and handed me a bag packed heavy with all the things he knew I liked when I was sick, then headed back toward the truck headlights that were shining from my driveway. I called out a thanks and closed the door, then called him on his cell to thank him again. You didn’t have to do that, I told him. Just feel better, he replied. It’s funny, how you get to know a person, how you can start to tell that they’re smiling on the other end of the phone.
“Call me when it doesn’t hurt anymore to talk,” he told me.
When will that ever be, I wondered, as we said goodbye and I hung up the phone.
A few nights later, I called him. It was the first time that we had ever really, really talked. It’s funny, right, that I would say that after we had been together for almost three years? What I mean, though, is that it was the first time I felt like I could *really* talk to him. About everything. Sitting with my knees tucked up to my chest while I sat on my new couch in that tiny cottage, all the things I had never been able to tell him before all came spilling out of me. I couldn't explain it…it felt like this wall, this block that had always been there, even from the very, very beginning, had suddenly, miraculously, come tumbling down.
It had always been the one thing he had wanted from me, above anything else…to let him inside, for me to tell him everything I was thinking and feeling, everything I would never tell anyone else. I never could, before. At first it was because I just wasn't used to sharing myself in that way, with anyone. Then, later, it was because I no longer trusted him with those kinds of things. Sometimes, when he asked me questions or wanted to hear about a particular part of my life, it was like he was digging for proof that every thought of mine revolved around him, every experience I had ever had was only preparing me for him, every other relationship paled in comparison to him. If I didn’t give him that, if my stories or thoughts or opinions didn’t validate his preferred position in life, he would either shatter me with a thoughtless reaction or try to hurt me with a biting response. Sometimes he even got angry, that I wasn’t constantly bending or editing all of my thoughts and stories to feature him as the hero of my life. “I wasn’t born the day before you met me,” I remember telling him, hotly, one night when we were out at the local bar. He had asked me something about high school boyfriends, I had shared a story about a guy I had gone out with junior year, and he had grown sullen and angry about the fact that I had been “going around, kissing all these other guys” before I had met him. I remember sitting there, as the late evening light poured into the dim bar through the storefront window, and swearing to never be fully honest with him about anything I had done ever again.
But this time, this night…I felt myself opening up, and he listened...he really listened, in the way I had always wanted him to: Without judgment or argument, without making me feel like the things I had to say could or should only be the things he wanted to hear.
He asked if I still loved him. I told him that I did, but that loving him was never the problem. He asked if I missed him, and I replied yes, every single day, but I wouldn't let it change my mind. "I don't want this to hurt you, but it's been really good for me, to be alone and on my own again."
“That doesn't hurt me. I'm happy if you're happy. But I just want you to still be in my life, Amber, “ he replied. “Even if it is just as friends.”
“I don't think that's such a good idea,” I told him quietly.
It was hard to be around him. Weeks ago, my resolve had weakened in the face of another one of his countless requests to meet and talk, and I agreed to meet up for a drink. It didn't go well. Still, he walked me out and then asked if he could hug me goodbye. Against my better judgment, I found myself nodding, and when he hugged me, I didn't want him to let go. It felt so good to to feel his arms wrapped around me again, to feel pressed close against his chest. I had to physically stop myself from tilting my face up and kissing him, from telling him that we should just go home, I don't want to be apart from you anymore.
But instead I pulled away, said an abrupt goodbye, and got in my car. After checking to make sure he was gone, I rested my head on the steering wheel and cried and cried and cried.
Being just friends with him would only bring more situations of the same. “It's hard to look at you, or be somewhere with you, or hug you, and not want to go back,” I told him. “And I can't do that. I won’t do that.”
“Maybe we can't go back, but we could make it be something different-”
“No.”
Silence fell. Finally, he said, quietly, “All I want is for us to just at least be friends. Can’t we just try? I won't push you. But it would mean everything to me if you would at least try.”
I was quiet for a long time. “Okay. I'll try.”
We made plans for him to come over to my place the next night. We would hang out as friends, watch movies, just…try. When the phone conversation ended, I sat with the phone's antenna pressed to my lips for a long time, wondering about the maybes. It felt like only the tiniest glimmer of hope, and I didn't want to entertain it. Yet I also couldn't help thinking that maybe, if it could keep being like it just was during that phone conversation, if I could keep talking to him like I did that night, then maybe he was right: Maybe we could make it be something different.
And then maybe I really could have him in my life again, and for good.
The phone was already ringing when I came home from work that next afternoon. Thinking it was Hansel calling to say he was going to be late coming over, I kicked off my shoes, threw off my coat, and then lunged for the cordless.
“Amber? It’s Brian.”
“Malsom?” I asked, surprised. Why are you calling me? “What’s up?"
“Hansel’s dead.”
Just like that. No preamble, no warm-up. I slowly sank down to the couch. “Shut up.”
“He was hit by a train in Weirgor, in his timber loader.”
“But…” I protested, looking around the room for some kind of explanation. “But we were supposed to hang out tonight. I thought you were him.” I closed my eyes. It’s not true, he’s lying, it’s not true. This has to be a joke, some kind of shitty prank Hansel and Brian are playing…
“How did you get this number?”
“I looked it up in the phone book.”
“Malsom, if this is a joke, I’m going to kill you.”
“It's not a joke, Amber.”
It's not true, not my Hansel, I still don't believe you. “Um, okay,” I stammered. “I’m going to make some calls and then I’ll call you back.”
“Okay.”
I didn't say goodbye. I just hung up, then sat there and stared at the phone for a long time. Picking it up, I flung it across the room. It's not true, he's lying, it's not true, not my Hansel. I stood up to go and find the phone book, to call the Sheriff's department, but the next thing I knew, I was on my knees, clutching and clawing at the thin, rough carpet, keening with my face pressed to the floor, crying over and over that it's not true, it’s not true, not my Hansel, please God not my Hansel, please God please, it’s not true, not my Hansel.
It was the bright swollen moon. It hung over the valleys, filled with snow so thick and smooth it looked like Sally Ann frosting, and shone through the black outline of bare tree limbs that reached toward the cold January night sky. I remember all of it, and I remember wishing I could tell him about it. How it was all the things he loved, gathered together in a world he was no longer in.
I drove along the familiar road, the one that hugged the bluff and cut a swath between the long-ago path of glaciers, pressing repeat over and over on the song that had already been playing when I got in my car to head up north, to my parents’ house. Every once in a while I would roll the window down, letting the winter air wash over my face, stun me back to reality. My dad had wanted me to wait for him to pick me up, but I told him I would drive.
"I don't think it's a good idea for you to be on the road if you're crying," he said.
“I won't cry,” I told him. “I promise.”
I made a point to memorize everything about that drive, because somehow I knew that once I reached my parent's house, it would be real. There would be nothing more to do but to think about it, about how he was gone and I was still here. So I took my time, memorizing that bright swollen moon, and the valleys filled with snow so thick and smooth it looked like Sally Ann frosting, and the black outline of bare tree limbs reaching toward the cold January night sky.
Lying in my old bed that night, I clenched my eyes shut and willed for sleep to come, pleaded for it to cover me as fast as it possible. I needed to not think anymore, needed my mind to be buried under the heavy cover of unconsciousness, in the place where none of this was happening, none of it was actually real.
But when I stretched out in that big bed, I thought about how he used to sleep there, too, right next to me. And that's when the anchor lifted and pulled away.
For the rest of my life, I don't think I'll ever find the words to fully describe what it is to cry with such deep anguish that your whole body aches with it. Legs kicking in slow motion as your form curls into itself, then unfurls again as waves of sheer agony courses through your veins. It just could not be true. How could his body, which was once right there, wrapped up next to mine, now not be anywhere? And all the tears and all the pain, all in hopes that he would be happy in his long life...it was now worse than nothing. Instead of being because I loved him, wanted better for him than what I could give, it was now only wasted time, months of misplaced misery...just hollow wind blowing through an empty space.
It was the smell of banana bread. Exhausted from crying but still far from sleep, I slipped out of bed and made my way to the bathroom to wash my face. And there, in the space between my bedroom and the bathroom, was the distinct and overwhelming scent of banana bread. It was one of his favorite things. Not being able to believe it, I took a couple steps forward and smelled clean air. I took two steps back, and there it was again…so heavy that I could smell it in my hair, on my hands, and in my clothes.
I sank to the floor and sat there with my back against the wall, breathing in that smell and staring off into space for what felt like hours. When I realized that I couldn't smell it any longer, I got up and shuffled back to bed, where I finally fell into a deep, dark, dreamless sleep.
The morning sky was bright, and I wasn't going to cry. I didn’t want my younger brother Daniel to see me like that again; not after the night before, when just two steps inside the door and my mom’s outstretched arms had broken the dam that had held from my house to theirs.
So I sat at the counter and stared out at the sun as it danced on the frozen lake while Mom made coffee, and we talked in low voices about the arrangements for Hansel's wake and funeral. I didn't know if I should go, I told her. What would everyone say, they probably hated me, would his family even want me there… But why do you feel that way, my mom had asked, as she placed a cup of coffee in front of me. Because he had been miserable, I told her, trying to keep my voice from breaking. “And it had been all my fault.”
Trying to still hide it, I buried my head in my arms as the tears broke. Mom walked over and began rubbing my back as I cried into the sleeves of my old, way-too-big blue hooded sweatshirt. “I don't know how to do this,” I said, more to myself than to her. “I just feel like I'll never going to be okay ever again.”
“I know,” Mom said quietly. And she did know, I remember thinking, remembering the brother she had lost when they both were young. “And maybe you won't. There just really aren't any answers, Amber.”
I lifted my head and wiped the tears away from my cheeks as I stared out the window. “I don't know how be alive without him.”
“I know.”
When I finally left my parents house, I found myself steering my car south, then east, automatic memory taking me down one rural road, and then another. I knew where it was. We had been there together a million times before.
I had always hated those rides. I used to pretend to Hansel that bumping around in his logging truck – or timber loader, as he tried a million times to correct me – was romantic and thrilling. But the roaring engine was too loud for us to talk, and the ride in the cab was so hard that I used to make him laugh by putting my hands over my chest when the impact of the broken roads in Rusk County grew physically painful. He loved it, though, when I would ride with him on my days off from work, and I loved the rugged handsomeness of him in his logging gear, the way he would swing his body up into the seat on the back of the rig, his eyes focused and set as he loaded each log onto the truck with slow, careful precision.
So I knew where it was. No one had to tell me, even though everyone did: He had made the evening news, and the front page of every area newspaper.
It felt so cold. The way the Duluth anchorman, the one with the mustache, announced it the night he died. It made me drag a blanket over my head, sobbing to my mom that it was all such a nightmare, it didn't feel real, please turn the TV off. Stopping at a little station outside Birchwood for gas on the way to Weirgor, I glanced down at the bin by the counter. Three different papers from three different counties, freshly delivered and stacked together, the news of his death in bold black type. I watched myself grab a paper off each pile and stack them on the counter. I didn't know what I was buying them for – to put in my scrapbook?! I never wanted to see them again – but for some reason I felt like I should have them, and that if I didn't, some night soon I would find myself wailing for the lost, missing details of his passing that I didn't claim when I had the chance.
“So sad, isn't it?” I heard the lady behind the counter say. I looked up to see her gesture at the papers. “He was so young.”
Nodding at her was all I could do, before scooping the papers up and hugging them to my chest as I walked out.
It was the wind, they said. It had blown the snow, cutting his visibility so he couldn't see the train. At first they reported that he had failed to stop, but no: One of the loggers at the lumber yard said they saw him pause and then back up, shift his gears up to push across the ice and slush. But the wind...
There were still tracks in the snow: Textured lines from tires and smooth straight lines from the sled. I stood by the tracks and watched as the wind whipped the snow around, covering and uncovering the clues that lay scattered along the rails. It looked like diamonds at first, the glints of light that lay sparkling in the snow. And then I realized it was glass, shattered from the windows of his cab. The red and silver glitter scattered amongst with it was chips of red paint and broken metal detailing.
I followed the railroad tracks down to where the train had finally stopped. They said he was still breathing, when they pulled him from the cab. A friend on the Winter Fire Rescue told another friend that they heard Hansel moaning, but he didn't respond to the calling of his name. We lost him a few minutes later, on the rescue sled, while he was being raced to where the helicopter had just landed, about a half mile down.
It felt so important, to be where he last was, to stand in the space where he was last alive. Staring up into the white January sky, I let the ragged breath sink deep into my lungs and then I drew it back up again, blew it out into the winter air. I pictured it rising, spreading, expanding, floating up and up until it reached the place where I imagined he might still be hovering, staring down, watching. And then I dropped to my knees in the soft snow, sobbing so hard that no sound came out. Come back come back come back...you have to come back. Please, just come back.