Pulling away and wiping the steady flow of tears from my face, I shake my head. “I want to see everything. This is my life. Broken and destroyed. I need to see it,” I cry these words as I move toward my bedroom where I stand frozen in the doorway unable to move, but unable to pull my eyes away.
Pillows are torn open, the mattress is upside down, and a chair is flipped on its side. What I see next, as I glance down at the floor, tears through me like a knife into my heart. Amidst all the mess and chaos, are my broken necklaces and scattered dolls, the items I cherish most in this room. Pearls, white and black, cover the floor, stuck in the grooves of the wood planks; some start rolling as I finally find the courage to move toward them, picking up my Ken doll as I walk.
Totally losing any sense of saneness, I put the doll on my dresser and grab the silver-plated coffee mug lying on top of my t-shirt quilt. Collapsing to the floor, I haplessly start pinching the pearls from the ground and depositing them into the cup. Ironically it is the one unbroken item in the room; the gift given to me by Ben as a gesture to fix what was once broken between us.
River bends down and takes the cup from my shaky fingers. Furrowing his brow, and with concern in his voice, he says, “Let me do this. But first, let’s get you a glass of water and take you to the car. I think you’ve seen enough. It looks to me like random vandalism.”
Sadly enough, I think he’s right. Nothing seems to be missing, but everything is destroyed. It’s like a tornado ravaged my safe, but sad house, taking in its path anything that remained of the people I’ve loved and lost. As if my world hasn’t already been torn apart enough, now I have nothing left but my own fading memories. The house looks like how my soul felt for so long after Ben’s death. Swollen with emotion, my internal wounds rip apart and the old feelings of hopelessness start to swirl around in my mind.
He’s talking, but I can’t hear him. A haunting ringing of my broken days echoes in my mind. Dark clouds begin to settle in before I blink away the eerie feeling. I try to see outside of my own head, but the destruction I’m looking at is causing all the grief to come rushing back. Everything is broken. Everything I have left of him, of my parents, has been taken away from me. Even the memories are surfacing less and less, and now my daily reminders are gone. I need them back. I don’t want my memories to fade away.
Hysterically, I grab the cup back. “No! I have to collect these.” Then setting the cup on the floor, I crawl on my hands and knees, picking up the glistening pearls. “These were my aunt’s. She loved them. They were her mother’s, my Grammy’s, and they meant the world to both of them.”
He crawls next to me and deposits a pearl in the cup. Then stroking my cheek before gently lifting my chin, he looks at me with nothing but love. “Okay. I understand. Let me help you.”
Pulling myself together, comforted by just his simple touch and soft words, I continue to pick up what I can of the pearls before stopping and rising to my knees. He continues to collect all the magical beads and I now feel like I should explain my hysterical reaction to my broken necklaces.
Wiping my tear-stained cheeks once again, I fumble for the words. “River,” I mumble before crawling over to him, needing to be near him. Glancing up at me, he sits up on his knees and pulls me close to him, clutching my arms and not letting go.
As we kneel on the floor that the devil just walked across, he simply presses his forehead to mine. My mouth remains stoic even as the words come out, and without looking at him I begin. “When I was a little girl I would often go with my aunt to her mother’s house to visit with her. Even though my aunt’s mother wasn’t really my grandmother I loved her so much. I called her grammy and really she was like a grandmother to me, the only one I ever knew.”