Eclipse of the Heart

Photo by Tony Detroit on Unsplash

“My inheritance is grief and sunlight and the ability to choose which to hold on to.”
― Emily Henry, A Million Junes

The ground crunches underfoot, frozen mud and sparse, frosted grass audibly marking my progress across the yard. I note the pattern of ice crystal peaks in the mud, nature’s art exhibit. I note the feathery ice on a frozen puddle. I am hyper-aware as I make this final crossing, leaving behind the land I have called home for most of my life. Except, this time, I am in reverse; walking back the memory to the moment, three months before this, when I gripped the edge of a rock ledge so tightly that my one-word-from-fiance could barely get me to hold his hand when he asked The Question. Not because I wasn’t sure of him, not because I didn’t want to be swept away from my life, but because it was finally dawning on me that I would be. I would be leaving, and that terrified me.

The ground scrunches underfoot, dried winter grass and the occasional leftover dead leaf audibly mark my progress across the yard. I note the newly swelling buds on the apple tree, the warmth of the sun overhead, the brave green of baby grass poking up through the bodies of last year’s turf. I am hyper-aware as I make my way across my yard, saying a pre-goodbye to the land I will be leaving, knowing that the sadness I am processing is not for myself in the present. Yesterday was heavy, the kind of emotional heaviness that makes it hard to move, or breathe, or do anything at all. I am feeling again what I felt before but couldn’t name; I attributed this heaviness in the week leading up to my own wedding to lack of sleep, stress, and the drain of the marathon of wedding prep. I finally have a name for it, though: dread. I was leaving, and I was leaving my siblings—the most important people in the world to me save one—behind. I was choosing to save myself, choosing to be happy, but at what cost to them? That day on the ledge I had locked away the fear, kept it fettered and gagged. I would be happy, dammit. I deserved to be happy. Little by little it worked itself free until, by the end, I could barely hear or feel anything else. But I said nothing.

A twig cracks under my foot as I approach the pond, still and black in the sunlight, and rimmed in new, brilliant green. It is silent, nothing stirring in its depths. Except, that can’t be true, can it? I think: What could I say? Years of training to hide the crazy robbed me of the language I might use to speak my fears to my brother and sisters. And if I did, what good would it do? How could I possibly prepare them? They would have to learn how to navigate our family without the shield wall I had maintained for longer than I could remember doing so. My brother would have to fight his battles with our parents without me to intercede and smooth things over. My middle sister would suddenly become Oldest Daughter, never an enviable position, with all the expectations to take my place but without the experience or training for it I had been receiving since birth. With the other two so visibly devastated, she kept her feelings to herself and was determinedly happy for me. I couldn’t even thank her for that until much, much later. It would be she who kept the family running a month later when our mom collapsed from grief and nearly died. She was only 13, and suddenly the adult in the family. I know what that’s like, but not how it feels to be abandoned by an older sibling. I don’t think she ever blamed me, but I do.

And the youngest of us…oh, Rose. My first baby, in a sense. I helped raise all my siblings, but I was 13 when she was born, old enough to be aware of what I was doing. She was the only one I held as we both cried, confessed that I was also just a little bit angry at him for taking me away, made promises of things we would do together before I left that I never kept. If she were still here I could say all the things. If she were still here this wouldn’t be so hard, this preparing for another family wedding. The last one was the day after she died, and I remember almost none of it. I want to remember this one. I want to feel everything and not crumble, or hide. I want to be there for our Merry, as she was for me. Smiling because she deserves to be happy as I am happy. Smiling because we both made it out, we survived, we are stronger and braver and healthier than we ever imagined we could be. That, alone, is worth celebrating. But…the one who didn’t make it, who won’t be there to see, she’s the only one I can think about right now.

I round the pond, slump-shouldered, lifting my eyes from my battered old gym shoes to run my fingers through the fringe of pine needles overhead. I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry a mantra to accompany my trudging footsteps. I close my eyes, face myself in a mind-mirror. It wasn’t your fault. You did what you could, and then you couldn’t anymore. It’s OK that you left. It’s OK that you didn’t have the words then. It’s OK that you were happy when they weren’t. It’s OK…I forgive you.