aTRACKion

Chapter Thirty Eight

With the joy of love, comes the sharing of pain with the one that you do love.

Yesterday, Doug sadly lost his mother.

We both knew that this day would come, we just didn't think it would be so soon after Doug deciding to give up his DJ residency at Revival. It's only been three weeks, but his mum no longer could cling to what little of life she had left. Alzheimer's, finally won the war on her body.

Doug has kind of switched himself to autopilot—registering her death, seeing his mum at the chapel of rest, organising her funeral, finalising things at Chestnut House, taking his mum's belongings from the care home back to his family home in Waltham Forest—all within the quiet grip of grief.

I feel helpless.

Useless.

Doug is hurting, and I can't stop his hurting.

The whole time he has been gone, I have been sat in his apartment, thinking of ways that I can make him feel better. But remembering how I felt after losing Marcus, and again after losing my grandma—nothing will make Doug feel better.

This is a path that he has to walk along alone. Sure, I can hold his hand while he walks it, but ultimately, it's his own path of grief.

When I hear him turning his key in the apartment door lock, I nervously sit taller on the sofa. As he steps inside, he moves with a burdened gait. He wanders in with an aura of unspoken sadness surrounding all of him. "Hey." He mumbles, thoughtfully trying to greet me with a fatigued smile.

"Hey." Is my heartbroken reply back to him, heartbroken because Doug is trying so hard not to be any different with me.

Rising from off the sofa, I tread with my bare feet across the oiled wood flooring. Not saying a word, I just go up behind Doug, who is now looking sadly out of one of the large apartment windows. Nestling my body against his back, my arms move to where his rising and falling chest is. Still saying nothing, I just hold him. I hold him like there's no tomorrow. Bringing his hands up to clasp onto mine, a cluster of suppressed sobs soon dislodge themselves from Doug's anguished throat. "It's over, Frankie. It's finally over." Tremors of hurt and relief, cause his body to jerk in my hold. So I cling onto him even tighter. I cling, because I know that is all that he needs from me right now.

He doesn't need my words.

He doesn't need my tears.

He doesn't need my understanding.

He just needs to be held.

It's like the plug to his grief has been pulled, so it's emptying itself from where he tenuously stands. The mess of Doug's pain, I am mopping up with my embrace. The volume of his sorrow, I mute with my love.

"Without you, I just don't think I would be able to do any of this." Is whispered from out of his emotion-choked throat.

Still clinging to his back, I begin kissing his shoulders that are covered by the cotton of his shirt. "In whatever way you need me to be, I am here for you." More of my loving kisses meet with the fabric on his shoulders, and the more I hold him lovingly tighter.

Breathing in hard, Doug's breaths sound so fractured. "I took in one of mum's favourite dresses to the funeral directors. They had her in one of her nighties, I think she would have preferred to be cremated in one of her dresses." He's sharing with me one of his many thoughts. "And I think I'll pick some roses from her garden to be put in the casket with her...mum always loved her roses."