Coping (open)
Jun 20, 2012 16:13:43 GMT -5
Post by Jack Lexington on Jun 20, 2012 16:13:43 GMT -5
Jack Lexington
[/img][/center]
One day goes by and another follows. And then one more.
I'm numb, not upset, sad or angry, just numb, which I really don't know how do deal with so I stay numb: just going through the motions of daily life. Physically I'm getting better but mentally there's a big blank. Secretly I wish I could return to my job on the ranch to at least have something to do but I'm not healed up enough for shoveling manure and riding horses. Plus the Andersons have hired somebody to replace me. The good old couple has offered to give me my job back once I'm good enough but I'd only disappoint them right now. So I simply sit behind our house, take the occasional stroll with the one companion, whose presence is the only barable, Storm.
None of us speak more than what's necessary for days but eventually my mother and father manage to interact more normal with each other. Not me though. For some reason they are better prepared for loosing Noreen. Me, on the other hand, I'm completely unprepared even though I knew she would die right from the time her name was read out loud. That doesn't mean a damn thing now. I feel this incredible emptiness, the hole she left. The more I think about it the more I know what she actually meant to me. Yet I don't cry. I simply can't even though I don't know why but I'm pretty sure the tears will find their way to my eyes once I get over being so damn frozen in 'nothing'.
At night I roll over in bed just like the past 18 days and notice she's not there. I get up, walk around, howl at the moon like a lonely wolf as if that could bring her back to me. But while I stand there on my small window in the attic and look down on the dark world Devrouxs words about the tribute, whose child got sent home, come back to me and give me the faintest bit of hope. It's a small seed somewhere in this dark wasteland but it's been planted and it's starting to grow ever so slowly. A good little plant, sturdy just like Noreen.
The next morning I pad down to our kitchen table and sit down to actually look at my parents the first time in days out of red rimmed ice, that still can't cry. "Morning." I mutter and my dad nods at me and replies. "Morning, son." before he exchanges a glance with my mother.
"I was hoping you could help me cut down one or two trees for fired wood today. We'll need it in the winter. If you're healed up enough."
We all know that we have enough wood out back to last us until late fall but I nod in agreement. "Sure, pa."
My mother serves us our porridge before we get dressed and make our way to the shed, gather the axe and hand saw and make our way to a small public patch of trees, which belong to our town. Everybody is allowed to cut down a certain amount of trees per year there.
Mostly I stare at the ground and avoid talking to my father but I can't help to see the small flowers that have shot up everywhere on the side of the road. If Noreen was here I'd pick her a bunch. But she's not and never will be.