The Last Stage
By VA Wiswell
Grief is a process. That’s what Jane says. One that requires work and time. Jane likes to talk, gets paid to. It’s fine, she can talk. And I’ll sit in that smokey room, drink their weak coffee, and listen. But Jane will never be right.
[Shock]
I’m here, across town, courtesy of two overcrowded buses and one late transfer. I rode past the clinic. Past the park. Past all the alleys. Over and over, I ignored the call of my name. I’ve kept myself still so I could come to this church on this night, despite Jane and her advice.
[Denial]
Grief isn’t a process, Jane, I want to stand in the center of the group, look her in the eye, and say. It doesn’t have a beginning, a middle, or an end. It’s a residency made permanent by guilt. And time? Grief laughs at time—no amount matters.
Instead, week after week, I keep my head down and nod.
[Depression]
In no hurry, I lumber to the spot underneath the window, the one I’ve dreamt of all week. The duffle bag drags on my arm like it’s loaded with bricks. Carrying it from shelter to shelter since picking it up from my sister’s on Wednesday has made me edgy. Its constant company is exhausting. Jane says I’m too comfortable being alone, that I need more human interaction.
She’s wrong. I haven’t been comfortable in six years, but I’ll take discomfort over the worry of losing someone again.
[Anger]
I don’t want to do this. Not anymore.
It’s my fault. My big mouth.
It’s a date. Let’s come back and do it all again—my words, spoken ten years ago.
Each day since realizing the date was near, I’ve given myself a mini pep talk,
“You can do this!”
Repeating it over and over like a phonograph needle caught in the groove of my brain.
Seeing Jess again, her handing me the bag, making her arm as long as she could so she didn’t have to open the door all the way and go back on her ultimatum, only deepened my dread.
Still, ten years to the day, here I am.
[Bargaining]
The lot is filling up. It will soon ooze with onlookers, busybodies, and those who are far worse. We’re all here, running out of places to go. The cops are everywhere now.
“Start!”
There’s no reason to wait. Guests won’t be arriving.
I set the duffle bag on the ground. I don’t want to sit. The cold will breach the thin skin of my denims. The thought unnerves me. Cold is death’s kissing cousin. Standing with the bag so far below me, out of reach, feels worse. Determined for a solution, I pause.
“Crouch!”
Like a lion waiting for prey. Like a lion preying on ghosts.
Stupid thoughts.
Intrusive, Jane says.
Stupid, I say back.
I shake my head. I’m wasting time. Or, Jane again, Time is wasting me. There’s a difference, she says.
I don’t think so.
I pull the journal from the bag and set the picture, still in the wood frame I made in my shop six years ago, on the ground. I don’t look at their faces.
[Anger]
The masking tape securing the band to the journal’s inside cover is like a rough sack of protective skin. I peel it off anyway. The weight of the gold on my finger stills my breath. Every hopeless night I spent holding it like a beacon comes back.
[Bargaining]
The grey sky is fading into darkness.
“Start!”
Before all daylight disappears.
I don’t feel ready. I never will. I want this to be over and never to begin in equal portions.
I skip past the stories, poems, and sketches of antique barns until I reach the page Sarah marked in pink.
From the church window, spilling light covers the paper in blue, yellow, and red triangles. There are other shapes, too, taught by our tenth grade, I’m Doing This For Your Own Good, geometry teacher, Mrs. Radick, but storm clouds have wrecked my brain, and after so much thunder, their names are lost.
[Depression]
I look through the translucent triangles at the black, loopy handwriting underneath. Each soft curve is a razor. I stare until my eyes burn.
[Denial]
I cover the writing and let the triangles slide onto my hand like a primary-colored glove. “Read!”
Stop playing with God’s loaned light.
I don’t. I close the journal.
[Bargaining]
Remembering. That is what I want. A clear, spotlit memory. Yellow flowers, Daffodils, and Daisies. Soft, white layers of satin. Perfect and clean. Not this, a tenebrous alley of thoughts, marked by strays and guarded by the invisible.
[Depression]
A rustling, plastic against plastic, snaps my head. I stand and look. Near the dumpster, a female wrapped in a makeshift poncho is curled into a ball. Her hands twitch as she feels her way through a dream. Next to her is something soft and small. Its perfect doll arm reaches for her and shifts closer, nearer to her warmth.
My insides swell.
“What?” the poncho lady says, lifting her head and looking right at me. My anger must have nudged her. “What the hell do you want?”
I turn away, ignoring her question. Ignoring her existence.
Jane says anger is filling me like helium gas. If I don’t address it, I’ll pop. She says this while sliding paperwork across her desk. You should at least try, she says when I don’t touch it. You deserve to find her.
And? I say back. Then what?
I know what’s next.
Sure enough, Jane leans forward and addresses me by name.
Rick, she says in her, I mean business voice, It’s what Sarah would want.
I chuckle and say, No forwarding address. I think Sarah made her wants pretty clear.
[Anger]
“She’s a sign!”
Stupid thought.
I blunt it with the back of my hand.
Sarah walked out; her back turned cold as January. Poncho Lady isn’t Sarah telling me to look. Jane’s ideas, her theories are delusions dangling on a string.
[Testing]
“A cattle prod. That’s it!”
Poncho Lady is here to shock me into motion—no more time-wasting.
“Open the journal and read!”
[Denial]
My jaw clenches in protest. A silent, private celebration would be so easy. The world doesn’t need to hear. My being here is enough.
[Anger]
My knuckles crash into the church’s brick wall, shattering my cowardice.
“Read it out loud!”
Anything less is a copout.
[Depression]
Time is slipping. Night is coming.
I start.
Sarah’s poem:
A tree is forgiveness,
A Japanese Maple, to be exact,
Planted as a sapling—
The colored triangles vanish. The church light disappears. The sky is now a black board.
[Depression]
The tip of a tail, a question about why the world is always working against me, flicks from behind a corner. It disappears, not needing an answer. I let everything drift away like spirals of smoke.
It’s all good.
Family for oblivion.
Fair’s fair—my words spoken six years ago to a closing door.
[Anger]
I skip the poem. I’m an asshole for it. Maybe Jane is right; maybe I am about to pop.
It’s dark, and I don’t have it memorized. That’s my excuse. Not memorizing it was probably purposeful. I never like the poem. Even then I didn’t want to be her Japanese Maple. I never asked for that.
I close the journal. This isn’t helping. I’m not helping.
[Testing]
Vows are promises.
Jane says this while looking at me over the red rims of her oversized glasses like it’s news. She says what I did to myself wasn’t an accident. It was a cry for help—that finding out about Sarah was a heavy rain driving my guilt and shame to the surface.
I didn’t leave, I say back. She did.
Jane’s eyebrows are like Eagles perched on top of her frames, ready to swoop down and attack my bullshit.
I don’t blink.
Acknowledging your choices, she says, when it’s obvious I’ve won, Is an important part of the process.
There is no process, I want to say.
I don’t.
I like her in that moment. She didn’t say bad choices. It was a gift. Or maybe saying it was too easy.
[Anger]
Blue lights stain the air. No surprise. Always a matter of time.
I put the journal and the picture back into the bag without looking at their faces.
Time doesn’t move in reverse, Jane says from the place she keeps in my head. Only forward.
Wrong again, Jane. Time doesn’t move at all. It stays stuck, stalling at your worst moment. Your wife leaving. Then dying. Your tiny, pigtailed daughter, vanishing into the abyss of social workers and broken systems.
“Time stops, Jane!” I yell so loud Poncho Lady sits up. “That’s why I did it! Not for help! For relief!”
“Shut up, asshole!” Poncho Lady yells back.
[Acceptance]
I look at the church window and picture the long, airy room inside. I imagine the pews, the altar, and the murals covering the high ceiling. I try to pretend it is ten, unruined years ago with Sarah, her beautiful face, and unmarred trust.
I can’t.
Everything about us is over.
We are lost spirals of smoke.
I tilt my head to the sky and whisper into its infinite apathy the only two words that remain unbroken,
“I do.”
THE END
Author Bio: VA lives outside Seattle, WA, with her human and animal family. Her work has appeared in Writing In A Woman’s Voice, The Lake, Smoky Blue Literary and Arts Magazine, 34th Parallel Magazine, Sad Girls Literary Magazine, Ignatian Literary Magazine, and OJA & L Magazine. She has poems and short stories forthcoming in Front Porch Review and Crab Creek Review. You can find her on Instagram at @vawiswell and www.vawiswell.com.