Legacy // H.S

22.

'This is a place where I don't feel alone'

*

1 month later

I almost forgot it was the holiday season when the shops along Oxford Street began getting their decorations out and the lights in Regents Street were turned on. I'd go on my daily run, and I'd notice more put up on the houses down the street filled with hues of blue and green and red, preparing the families for what is supposed to be a joyous time of year. Some carollers tried knocking at the house once too, and I heard them out the window singing on another doorstep when I played piano in the evening.

But these things seemed to have faded into the background after everything we endured the month before. Collectively, we all seemed to forget the festive season, the time for relaxation, the time for a break to regain our strength – it was the last the thing on our minds.

In the warehouse, Niall gave me a Christmas card, and I stared at it for far too long before I realised why. Like my mind was still in the summer before everything started falling apart. Before George died, before Graham died, before Louis died. He laughed, but behind his eyes I could see the same loss and concern all of us are trying to hide.

And since then, it hasn't got any easier.

The house is silent these days. Quiet to the point where it scares me, like I'm sat in anticipation waiting for the creaking of a floorboard or the banging of a door or the roar of a terrifying beast. Perhaps someone will break in and wield a knife, and it will finally be time for me to go, or someone will emerge from the attic that we hadn't realise had been living up there. In the silence, I can't help the way my mind spirals and loses rationality. A horror story waiting to happen, because life seems to have created every component needed for such a tale.

It is quiet, not because of a lack of visitors, but because of the lack of life inside. For all it's worth, it seems as if Harry has disappeared. The man I knew gone, maybe forever. He's despondent, unresponsive, hurting. He lays in bed every day, quite like I did when I lost my father, and he refuses to talk. I try, of course, desperate for the smallest bit of noise, but he never responds.

At first, he was angry. Shards of glass were being swept up for weeks as he destroyed anything he could find. He'd scream and yell and punch walls because he didn't know what else to do with his pain or grief. The five stages of it, replaying every other week when we seem to lose another person that we care about, like a sick game is being played on him from the higher powers above.

I've found myself talking into the great expanse of the universe at night sometimes, too. Not entirely sure who I'm addressing, but always with the intention of asking for help or forgiveness, because we're running out of options. Praying on my knees so much that they bruise, and I have another wound to heal, but nothing compares to those on our hearts. Especially Harry's. And he has no idea how to cope with any of them. He rubs salt into them with every day that passes in the quiet. Never vocalising what it is he's feeling, even if it does mean throwing more things in rage.

I don't care how many glasses he has to break. They're disposable, replaceable. What is more fragile is his mind, and how susceptible it can be to allowing itself to suffer.

I've taken it easy with him over these four or five weeks, letting him go through the motions of it, but always remaining close by for those moments that he needs me most. In the days, he would argue with me a lot, picking fights so he could find a place to hide his pain or simply ignore it. Tiny things that hurt at first, but I often brushed away because I understood how the brain worked during loss. I did the same with him long ago; I know it's inevitable.