I think we can consider that done, Cam.
39
The last things to go are the neon sticky notes Cam had used to label things when he began losing his words. I remember the day I came home from work to a house covered in coloured notes. ‘Toaster.’ ‘Clock.’ ‘TV.’ ‘Mirror.’ They were on everything. It must have taken him all day. When I walked in, he searched my face, probably hoping it wouldn’t set me off – we’d learnt that, with grief, the little things are the big things. It certainly winded me, but I held it together.
‘You’ve redecorated,’ I said, and he pulled me into his arms as we looked at the vibrant labels around us and I tried not to cry. There’d been a time years earlier when I’d come home to rose petals scattered all over the house.
After a while, the labels hadn’t worked any more because, in addition to forgetting what things were called, he forgot how to read. I remember him standing in our bathroom after a shower, towel around his waist, hair glistening, studying the toothbrushes.
‘What are these?’ he’d asked me.
‘Read the word,’ I’d prompted.
‘What word?’
It was like selective blindness. Objects right in front of him were invisible. There were no words for him any more and no words for me. I couldn’t see how any person could get by without the alphabet – let alone a literature professor – but gradually words left him altogether and we could communicate only by my imagined ESP. Sometimes I liked to think he understood my thoughts as we looked each other in the eyes. Mostly I hoped he didn’t. The dark circling in my brain by the time Cam had lost the power of speech was not for innocent minds. It would have broken him.
I take a quick breath now and pull the label off the hearth of the fireplace. After he died, I’d Blu-Tacked and sticky-taped the notes to everything because they were all falling off, and I couldn’t bear to throw out his handwriting. But now it’s like ripping off a bandaid and I feel my resolve slipping.
Even harder are the longer notes where Cam would capture fragments of his mind the way the rest of us might jot down a shopping list. They were innocuous at first: ‘Kate is at work.’ ‘Have a shower then lie down.’ One day, I found one that said, ‘The boy’s name is Charlie,’ and it utterly destroyed me.
Grace and Mum had tried to remove the notes a few days after the funeral and I’d dissolved. They thought I was clinging to something upsetting, but I wasn’t. These were the last fragments of Cam’s decaying mind. The last thoughts he put enough weight on to want to record. Maybe it was the writer in me, but they seemed important. Late at night, beaten by insomnia, I’d sometimes pick one up and trace the letters. I was like a forensic linguist, marking the exact point in his disease when he would have written something down in this style. I could tell by the shakiness of the handwriting. The spelling. Whether a word was held intact by the alphabet or had descended into a string of nonsense symbols.
It sounds silly, but I was always searching for a sign. Just a gut instinct I had that one of these notes would one day hit all previous communication between Cam and I out of the park. Perhaps I’d crack the code and find a love letter from Cam beyond the grave, prepared for me in advance like I was living in some sort of real-life P.S. I Love You.
But that didn’t happen. Cam had well and truly lost the capacity to pull off a stunt that complex. I scrunch the first note now and throw it in the fire. There’s nothing romantic about labels. Another two notes combust the second they hit the flames. Before long, I’m in a pyrolytic frenzy, grabbing notes off every surface in the house, throwing them into the fire and watching them light up brightly and shrivel almost instantly. Symbolic of our relationship. And, after many tears, all the notes are burnt out, as is my hope that there was ever going to be a secret P.S., and I feel like I’ve torn down Cam’s last-ditch attempt at holding together the fabric of our universe.
‘I’m sorry,’ I whisper. ‘For everything.’
By ‘everything’， I mean, ‘kissing Hugh’。 And I’ve no sooner apologised to Cam than I’m hit by a powerful memory of how that kiss had felt, and I have to apologise again. Will the survivor’s guilt ever end?
Now it’s almost on the market and we’re leaving, the house isn’t ours any more. Not really. Charlie’s been outside, saying goodbye to the back yard and comes bustling inside now. ‘Hold my hand,’ he says, and I know this is for my benefit, not his. ‘Goodbye, bedroom,’ he says to his empty room. ‘Goodbye, toilet. Thank you for your service.’
We both laugh. The kid’s been watching way too much decluttering with me on Netflix.
As we farewell our spaces, I make sure I’m the last to leave each one. Flicking off light switches. Turning off dreams.
When we finally lock the front door and walk back up our garden path for the very last time, it’s meant to feel like walking into a new future. It doesn’t. It’s all wrong. I should have a husband. Charlie should have a dad. I’d trade all the riches that await us overseas for just one more minute to say a proper goodbye.
The people who lose their person in an instant say they wish for that. But sometimes you miss out on it after a long illness too. You’re never really sure when something is about to pass you by. There’s so much focus in grief on getting through all the ‘firsts’。 First birthday without the person. First Christmas. First day of a new year they’ll never share with you. Before that, though, there’s a series of ‘lasts’。 And by the time you’re aware of them, you’ve missed them. Things fade beyond comprehension. It’s too late for the words you’ve been saving.
I bundle Charlie into the car and close his door. In those moments of quiet as I walk around the back of the car before I open the driver’s door, I try to compose myself and fail. The poor child is looking for a leader, and has to do the job himself.
‘Don’t cry, Mummy,’ he says as I put on my seatbelt through a blur of tears. ‘We’re going to a party!’
Yes. We are.
My farewell from work has been organised in a private function room at a favourite Italian restaurant not far from the office, in Braddon. Everyone is going to be there. Including Hugh, to whom I’ve typed countless text messages since we came back from New Brighton, most of them ready to backtrack on everything I’ve planned and just give in to this and be with him. Somehow I’ve found the emotional fortitude to erase every one.
I’d planned to show up looking like a woman on a mission to rebuild her life. I’d leave no doubt that this was the right decision and would be good for us. Instead, I try not to cry as Charlie swings open the restaurant door and everyone turns in our direction. I imagine they’re all thinking, ‘Oh my God, will Kate ever pull herself together? It’s been years.’
All the words I have imagined in people’s heads since Cam died have painted a very judgemental picture. But it feels like every step you take when you’re grieving is being dissected.
Be careful, they think.
Too fast!
Too slow.
Too happy-looking.
Aren’t you better yet? When can we have the old Kate back, because this whole grief thing is getting old?