Its a choking feeling. It feels like icy cold hands shooting up from your abdomen to your lungs and squeezing out every last drop of oxygen. It feels hopeless. Like even if you could breathe, you still wouldn’t, because the pain is still too much to bear.
Its all too much at this point. Its wild and dangerous, and fills your tightening esophagus with liquid panic.
Did you hear those words correctly? Your ears are buzzing, and you cant breathe, so you might have heard wrong. It’s possible.
“What?” you rasp out past all the spit pooling in your mouth, throat too tight to swallow it all. You might gag if you try.
“I’m sorry . . . “ someone says. Its just a faceless voice on the other side. They might be standing right in front of you but they aren’t anything you can see. Just a fuzzy anonymous shape of a human. Someone with arms and legs and a head maybe. If they had a face you don’t remember it, “I’m so sorry, we tried everything . . .” the voice continues.
So you were right you did those words. “I’m so sorry . . .” you repeat, the words feel wrong in your mouth. That’s not your line here. You aren’t supposed to apologize, “He’s . . . what happened?”
“Please, sit down,” the blurry shape comes near you but you snap away from them. You grab at their hands, yanking their faceless face right up to yours. You see eyes, scared and frantic looking at you but they don’t mean anything.
“What. Happened,” the spit is too much now, your heaving and gagging all over yourself. You breath in deep, trying to stop the gagging, “What!” you scream. Your’e screaming now. You usually don’t even like raising your voice in public; you would hate for others to look at you. To notice your presence, but here you are, screaming in this poor persons face.
There wasn’t anymore words, just a loud keening shriek over the bustle of the hallway. There’s hands on you now, not hard hands, soft hands on your face and back and arms. You’re on the floor, shaking and heaving and gasping, and screaming.
“Where?” you sob, eyes clothes, hands still on your back trying to lift you up, “Where!?”
You’re standing now. You’re in a room, its not a normal hospital room, there’s a bed and machines and all that but there’s windows everywhere and people still rushing about, “I’m so sorry . . .” that blank person voice fills your head again and someone has your hands. You look away from the hospital bed and snap your attention to your hands.
It’s your mother-in-law. She’s smaller than you, always has been, but right now she looked down right childlike next to you, “It happened so fast.” her voice sounded so small and so fragile. Cracking and barely above a harsh whisper. You’ve never heard this woman be anything but confident and, if truth be told, domineering.
So this felt incredibly wrong.
Her hands pull you to the edge of the bed and you finally see what you were hoping you weren’t going to see, “That’s not Rush,” you say. It’s him though. That’s you’re husband. You’re young beautiful husband. Long honey blond hair, bright hazel eyes, sometimes blue sometimes green, but always hypnotic. And his too big nose that you loved teasing him about.
He had been the envy of your hometown, too pretty for these small town folks. They called him Hollywood and Pretty Boy, and teased him about his hair, his accessories, his tight pants. He was too pretty for their backwoods taste. Definitely too pretty for the only brown girl in town. But that never bothered you two.
“I’m only marrying you because the white girls just can’t seem to handle all of this,” he had told you one day. You were at the store, trying to find him some pants that would fit the ass that he was currently shaking in your face, “It’s too much for them!”
You were used to this. He was flamboyant and an attention seeker and always causing a scene. Shopping had always made him feel self conscious though and that made him double down on his dramatics. You saw right through his little wiggling dance, “I’m only marrying you, because my rice and beans gave you that ass and I’ll be damned if it goes to waste.” His laugh had startled the people who were around you.
You were sure they were even more startled when he spun you in his arms and planted a kiss on your mouth with a loud obnoxious SMACK, “Yer damn right, Querida!”
“That’s not him,” You say again, but it still continued to be him. That’s his birthmark under his right eye, and those are his pink lips going pale, and those are his freckles on his cheeks, and his beard, and his mustache he was so damn proud of. But it’s all empty.
Because if he was here, if that was Rush, he would be smiling at you with that stupid little smirk of his and asking you “Why the long face BooBoo?” or griping and whining about being in the hospital, complaining about the smell attacking his poor gigantic nose, and throwing the paper cups at his mother’s face because he loved riling her up.
But he isn’t; he’s still. Still as stone. and so very Empty.
When you walked into a room, he was there, smiling softly, arms open, always ready to wrap you up and cover you in kisses. “Querida,” he would say and kiss your knuckles like some old timey romance novel. His eyes always bright and shining, like little suns and if he made you giggle with his theatrics he would blush like a school boy, “Te Amo, Querida.”
Where was Rush, in this body that looked just like him? He wasn’t there.
“Where are you?” You’re hands are on his face now. Its cold, too cold to be him, “Rush?” He doesn’t answer you though. The hands in your chest are back. Squeezing your lungs and you hear screaming. Sharp and dissonant and far away but still right on top of you.
*****************************************************************
I’m not entirely sure what this is going to be in the end. Hysteria is more than just a moment or a snippet. It’s grief. My grief. Even though I’m not at that place i was before, it still feels fresh when i walk back there.
I’m sorry to anyone who has felt loss and pain. Its unfair. But it’s everywhere and it touches everyone.
