The kid in the stroller (fiction)

Before Joseph died he told me that if he could find a way to come back to me, he would. Sometimes I think that’s a beautiful sentiment and it captured and expressed his love for me. Other times I think I might go out of my goddamn mind as I question – for the thousandth time – is there a reason that I have just met this particular person? Is that small child looking at me with knowing eyes? What are the odds that this particular individual would bring up the obscure place that Joseph and I had once spent a week exploring and enjoying? Are these signs? And if they are, what in the hell am I supposed to do about them?

My friends and family have informed me that I am not the same person that I once was. No shit. They’re all waiting for me to bounce back because I’m young and I have the rest of my life ahead of me and all those other trite clichés that people say to you to make themselves feel less uncomfortable. I don’t know what to say to them. I feel bad that they feel bad. I’m the same person; I’m just a little different now. How am I supposed to explain the feelings of guilt that I have? I just took for granted that Joseph was in my life, that he was mine and I sometimes wonder if I had appreciated the tenuous nature of life, the way it can be so quickly and randomly changed, that perhaps he wouldn’t have been ripped away from me. How, also, am I supposed to convey the way I currently feel? Every day is a goddamn blessing. Flowers in the concrete and all that shit. I’ve cried to see the sun rise and set. I’m infinitely grateful for all that hasn’t been taken from me: my family and friends, my health, my career. But it’s like that dog you had when you were a kid: the dog that allowed you to maul and paw it, the dog that followed you everywhere, that eat the gristly bits of meat secretly under the kitchen table, the dog that you taught to ‘give me five’, that you thought was going to be around forever but then started to suffer from hip dysplasia and started going to the bathroom in the house which was a nuisance for your mom to clean up, but still thumped his tail soundly on the kitchen floor when you came home and struggled to get up to greet you and eventually had to be put down. It’s like that dog. You fucking loved that dog, but you don’t know if you could ever bear the heartache of having another one only to lose it again. I’m like that. I don’t want to hold on to anything quite so tightly anymore, because I can’t bear to lose any more. I just can’t.

People start to treat you differently, too. They handle you with kid gloves. They don’t mention Joseph because they’re afraid all go on some unstoppable crying jag. I don’t go on unstoppable crying jags anymore. At first it was the Xanax that took care of that, and then one day I decided that feeling sad and bereft was valid and that I’d rather feel that way than feel nothing at all, so I flushed them down the toilet. Some friends, not extremely close friends, but friends nonetheless, sort of drifted away. I think it was a mixture of them not knowing how to react to me after Joseph’s death, and their inability to accept that I wasn’t going to return to the person that I once was. Not that that person was all that, anyways. I mean, maybe that person was a little naïve and cocky and didn’t recognize the amazing fragility of life. My parents sometimes treat me like some kind of invalid. My mom will “just happen to be in the neighborhood”, and for some reason she has a casserole with her. My dad calls a lot more often. My more intimate friends see me more for coffee and for lunch now, and there are significantly less invites for crazy nights out on the town. I suppose I’m a downer, but what exactly am I bringing to the table? Drinking is a depressant and when I drink I tend to think about Joseph, so I prefer to get tanked in the confines of my own home. I’m not exactly eager to start dating anyone. It’s funny how, on some of those internet dating sites, guys will make comments about wanting to date a girl that doesn’t have any baggage. I don’t know if baggage even begins to adeptly quantify what it is that I’m lugging around here.

I kept his clothes for months. Sometimes I would just smell them, smell him. I read and re-read his books and tried to understand them the way he would have understood them. I know he wouldn’t want me to be sad.

Work has been good. They gave me all the time I needed and didn’t ask prying questions when I returned with swollen, red-rimmed eyes. They didn’t question me when I had to cut out to go cry in the bathroom, when I called in “sick”. Actually, of all the people in my life they have been the most staid. I was never particularly close to anyone at my job, so none of them feel compelled to take me out for a coffee and to try and suss out how I’m doing with “all this”. I think they were relieved when I started taking the Xanax to control my random spurts of crying, though.

Sometimes I wake up thinking he’s in the bed next to me. I would often, at that point, get up and pull one of his shirts out of the chest of drawers and sleep with it, but I’ve since given them all to the Salvation Army. I remember the look the woman gave to me when I brought in all the bags of his stuff. She knew what it was, and I was trying to hard to be big and strong. She must’ve been in her late fifties or early sixties and she looked at me really kindly and it almost set me off and she said, “Do you want to keep anything from here? Are you sure you want to donate it all?” and I choked out yes, it all had to go and then I left the store, not crying but with tears streaming down my face and I got into my car and I just sobbed for like five minutes. Snotty nosed, fists grinding into your eyes kind of sobbing. Sobbing that leads to hiccups.

Maybe I’m giving you the wrong impression here, that I’m some kind of emotional, depressed nut job. I’m not. I’m pretty even keel these days. The only point that I’m trying to make is that when you love someone, don’t hold back: you never know what’s going to happen. And I realize that that’s about as Hallmark as one can get, because people told that to me all my life and I never really paid attention. And yeah, I am young and there is still a lot that I can accomplish. Maybe meet someone, settle down – the whole scenario. I’ve always wanted to go to Europe, too. It’s funny though, how I would toss all those ideals away for just one more day. For one more day where he slipped his hand into mine and told me he loved me. Where I leaned over and ruffled his hair as we were eating dinner and he told me in that concerned voice of his to “settle down”. His phone calls to me at work where he stiltingly told me what he and his classmates had done that day. The way his eyes lit up when I all too infrequently picked him up after school. How he would unabashedly run over to me when I picked him up from a play date, crashing into my legs, throwing his little arms around my upper thighs. The epic struggle to get him into the bathtub, and the even greater battle to pull him out of it. Carrying his slumbering body from the car to the house.

I saw this toddler in a stroller downtown today. His eyes met mine and locked on, and I turned as his father pushed him past and all the time he was staring at me, turning his head to meet my gaze. It’s stuff like that. What am I supposed to do with stuff like that?