secret language

OO3﹒epiphany

Betty

I sit on James' bed, his clothes on the floor when he threw them on the floor in an attempt to make his squeaky bed comfortable for my body, which he reminds me is the most delicate thing he can hold.

We sit just like any two kids who are new to this overwhelming feeling, my head on his lap, his fingers tangled in my hair, and his lips on mine. We move from one place to another, but our hands don't move anywhere except each other's bodies.

He tells me he once read a book about lovers falling in and out of love, their love hanging on by a thread but still feeling as if they're connected by an invisible string. Those two lovers would tell each other what they called "naked truths," so he asks me for one.

I choose to tell him the truth no one understood, the truth I never got out of my chest, the truth that has been weighing on my chest and I finally give him that weight and he holds it as his own, as if it's a leaf. I finally voice what I still feel after a year of lacking my father figure.

I tell him everything that has happened, starting from when a deadly disease was announced on the news as just an unfeared thing, to when that same disease robbed me of my grandfather's love.

I tell him about the letters my grandfather used to send me since he always refused to text, claiming that technology would destroy us all. Ink pens would write that he could only sleep for twenty minutes because of the stinging pain coming from his lungs. He'd write to me about how he'd wish he could hug me, to have a glimpse of relief, how he'd dream of some epiphany.

He holds me as I weep about all the news my family would gather in a stark, tiny, sunlit room to listen to, to cry over, and to wish they had never heard. News reporters would hit me with reality and make me fearful of any risk associated with this disease that has ruined happiness for me.

He massages the same waist that my grandfather used to hold when he'd dance with me to forget our problems before such a cruel disease destroyed his lungs. I tell him how I got adapted to checking my phone each day and being reminded of the reality I'm living. I tell him that the disease was haunting me and that I'd see it everywhere as if I were fighting against it with my grandfather. How I'd fall down with him when he did, how I'd serve such a disease by giving it the pleasure of victory.

I make him live in the reality I've been living in by explaining to him how everyone, someone's daughter, someone's mother, would be watching the news. People in the news, watching their loved ones breathe in and breathe out. How these people were used to the intimacy of touching each other, expressing their love through hugs, kisses, and being surrounded by one another's presence, and now they're holding hands with cold ones of dead bodies through plastic.

His face softens up more and more at my mewling, as I tell him how unfair it was that the government was lying about the horrendous numbers of cases and deaths, saying some things you just can't speak about, while people were begging the world not to let their dearest ones become strangers whose laughs they could recognise anywhere. Worn out people telling doctors the people they built memories with are crashing out.

I speak to him about how the news became accustomed to my television and how my television didn't know how to provide me with the entertainment it was supposed to provide, and only showed me the things I'd escape from by writing to my grandfather that he'd soon get better, that he had to, and that I'd dream of either being embraced by him or dying by his side. I'd tell him I couldn't fall asleep just like him, that I only got twenty minutes of sleep just like him, and that I still felt him even when he was away from me.

My naked truth gets more and more naked when I express to him my vexation about how doctors should save inmates, but something med school never taught anyone is how to get over death. I ask him how it was that there are five stages of grief yet none of them tells you how to move on. He can't come up with an answer, so I keep telling him about my stages of grief.

Denial, I tell him that even if I dreamed of my grandfather every night and slept knowing I'd never hear him wish me a good night again, I still felt his presence, still heard his voice, and still saw his eyes, which passed on to me. Although I couldn't accept the fact that he wouldn't be returning, I had hope that I could go dig him up, despite the fact that he was six feet under. I was certain that I could have him again.

Anger, I tell him I was enraged by everyone and everything I saw. I was angry at my grandpa because he abandoned me before making more memories with me. I was angry at myself for not spending every second he was still breathing with him. I was angry at my family for never speaking about him again in order not to open up old wounds. I was angry at the objects that would remind me of him: books he gave me, doodles we drew together, music we listened to together, jokes we shared and laughed about. I was angry at the world for being so cruel to me when I was only sixteen years old.

Bargaining, I tell him how I started bargaining with the world, begging it to kill me so I would be happy and do anything it wanted from me. I began bargaining with my memories, telling the ones I shared with people other than my grandfather that I hated them and how they didn't tell me I was stupid for not hugging him and talking to him nonsense.

Depression, I tell him that life had no meaning without him, how home just felt like a house without him. How I felt depression in waves every day and how that's the one stage of grief I still feel as I lay in his arms to this day.

Acceptance, I tell him, there was none.