Here at Last (24 page)

“Hi. I hope you don't mind my dropping by.
I was just on my way home
after a late meeting
.
"

I shook my head.
“Not at all.
Come on in."

I took his coat and hung it in the closet.
As
Nicholas
took a step toward the living room
,
he
spotted the candles.
Turning around, he asked,
"Am I interrupting something?"

“Not yet. I was just about to do some meditation.” I gestured toward the sofa. "Would you like to sit down?"

“Sure." He walked toward the sofa and sat on one side, and I sat on the other. He turned to me. “How have you been?"

“All right, considering.
Today would've been JT's birthday,” I said quietly.

Nicholas
looked a little surprised. "That's
strange
. You've been on my mind all day. I had a feeling I should come by.”

“Really?" I asked.
"I'm okay
.”

We sat quietly for a moment.

“
Sophia
," he said.
“Can I ask you something?"

“Sure."

"Have you cried since the last time I saw you?"

I shook my head. "No."

“Have you wanted to?"

“
Yeah. A
lot of times
. I just can't
."

He looked a little perplexed. “
Why
?"

I took a deep breath.
“
Crying wasn't tolerated in my family. In fact, I don't think I've ever seen my parents cry
.
They
feel
that t
here
are
people in the world
with
far less we
have
, and there
’s
no good reason to cry.”

Nicholas
shook his head.
“
Losing someone close to you is
one
of
the best reason
s
to cry.”

"I think if I can just focus on my work and meditate enough, I can transcend all of this.
In time, I think all of this
will be easier
to deal with
."

“But you’ll miss everything. Granted, everyone grieves differently. But if you don't
grieve
at all, you
’ll
miss the grace that comes when you wake up
one
morning
and you know that everything’s going to be okay
. ”

He could tell that I was unconvinced.

“
I'm just worried that you're trying to go through
this
alone.
”

“
I'm not alone
,
"
I told him.

“You were alone tonight.”

"I wanted to be.”

“Okay,” h
e nodded and was quiet
for a moment
.
“
Sophia, d
o any of your friends
know that it was JT's birthday today?"

“Lily
from work
."

“What else did she know about JT?"

I looked at
Nicholas
for a moment, and he could
probably
tell that I
wished I hadn’t answered his text
.  He moved over to sit a little closer to me. "
Sophia, b
ear with me p
lease.”

I sighed.

“
What does Lily know about JT?”

“She knows
that we
were together for a year-and-a-
half. She knows what he looked like because she saw some pictures of us together
at
the Christmas party
.”

“Did you tell her those things
?
"
Nicholas
asked
softly
.

"No."

“She heard about
them
at work?"

“Ye
s
."
He was intentionally challenging me, and I wasn’t in the mood.

“Does anyone know what you’re really going through right now?”

I thought about it for a moment and shook my head. “No.”

“
Sophia
, what I'm getting at is that you
’re not
letting anyone
help you
."

“
That's not true
," I began to protest
, standing up and beginning to pace the living room
.
“Besides,”
I raised my voice a little
,
“
w
ho said I need to talk to anyone about this?" As soon as I said that, I realized how childish
I
sounded
, and he
knew it
,
too. “I'm sorry.” I felt myself shift back to center and quie
tly asked, "Why did you come?”

“I was worried.
Y
ou hadn't cried until you came to the bereavement group three months after JT died
.
Y
ou haven't been back since
May
, and
I haven't heard from you
. I
t’s already November
, and
I was concerned.”

I nodded and thought back to when I’d seen Nicholas at the bereavement group.
“
I
don’t
know if I ever really thanked you for everything
that
you
did for me
the last time I saw you
.
I'm sorry
I was
such
a mess.”

He stood up to face me and
moved a
strand of hair away from my eyes.
H
e said
softly
, "You weren't a mess. You were just very sad.”

I looked at him, and his face was extremely kind.
I said,
“When we met, you’d lost your wife and become a single father. I
should
never have told you
about my dream
s
.
”

Nicholas shook his head.
“
I’m glad you did
. I
didn’t feel
ready
for
what you
told
me
, b
ut I needed to hear it anyway. Everybody had been telling me that
I needed to
move on with my life
, but I resisted it
.
T
here was something about what you
told me
that gave me hope. It made me feel like things
would
be okay
and t
hat I might even fall in love again.
T
hat helped me to get through some pretty lonely times. ”

I nodded. "
And how are you now?"

“I'm just about there."

"Where?"

“In a place where I can almost see the horizon."

I looked at him for a moment. "What does that mean?"

"It means that I can almost see my life ahead of me. I'm almost
to
the point where I can start dreaming and making plans for my life again. I'm not so wrapped up in my grief anymore that I can't move forward. I'm almost ready to start living again."

“How do you know?"

He shook his head. “It's hard to explain. At some point, you just realize that you're done with the grief. You're not
going
to let it run your life anymore."

I nodded. Given what he had been through with
Rachel
, I felt that there was probably a lot of wisdom in what he said. While I couldn't imagine being done with the grief, I hoped that there would come a time
when
I would be able to move on. However, if that meant letting go of JT, I wasn't ready for it.

Nicholas
sensed this
and said,
“No one's going to make you
let go
. You have to decide when it’s time."
He
glanced down at his watch. “I'd better get going. I need to pick up Hannah and make dinner.”
We got up and walked toward the door, and Nicholas
reached
for my hand
. "Sophia, I'm here if you need me." He gave me a brief hug before heading out the door
, and I locked up behind him
.

Then,
I walked over to my candles, blew them out, and went to bed.

Chapter
2
3

My birthday and
Thanksgiving fell
a few days later
, and I had made plans to stay busy. I decided to
spend Thanksgiving in Chicago and
invite friends over
who
didn't have family nearby. We called it the
"orphan Thanksgiving." Everyone
brought a dish
while
I supplied the Tofurkey. I'd kept busy that day cleaning the house and putting things in order and had found that the busyness helped me to keep my memories of JT at bay.

Nicholas
sent me a text message asking if I had plans. I told him that I
might
take myself out to dinner for my
birth
day and
that I’d
have friends over for Thanksgiving.
H
e was happy to hear about Thanksgiving
but
wasn't
too keen on
my birthday pla
ns. He said that h
e would
like
to
take
me out, but there was a
meeting late
that
afternoon
, and he'd be on daddy duty after that. I appreciated
him
thinking of me and
ended up spending
a quiet evening at home
alone
.





Christmas was a different story. I knew that it
would
be difficult since I had a lot of memories around
my
two
Christmas
es
with JT
.
I declined the invitation to the company party that year.
Not only would the holiday be a challenge, I realized, but the entire season
would be difficult
.
I decided to get out of town and go home to New Jersey. Given that
I was renting out
my house
in Morristown
, I planned to stay with my parents.
I flew into Newark
Liberty International Airport
on December 21
st
and rented a car before driving to my parents’ house. We were happy to see one another, and the first few days went by fairly smoothly.

When my sister and her husband and kids showed up, howeve
r, everything change
d
. Though m
y niece
and nephew
s
were
well behaved
, my parents seemed flustered by all of the activity in the house
. My sister Rhonda and her husband
Matthew
were as happy as ever, and
I was
glad
to see
it
.
However
,
their public displays of affection
reminded me of what I was missing
with
JT
, and it
didn't take long
for me
to realize that I was
beginning
to feel anxious. There was so much going on in the house that
I was sure that
no one noticed
when
I
slipped
upstairs to my room and closed the door behind me.
I felt like I couldn't breathe.
I lay down on the bed and unbuttoned my blouse
and
un
f
astened
my bra.

After a few minutes, my mother knocked on the door. "
Sophia
, are you all right?”