Letters Written in White (16 page)

His hands formed fists and then relaxed. “There’s just this huge mountain of bitterness inside me. I bury it for the most part, but each time I think of her it’s unearthed in a way. That’s why I don’t have pictures of her anywhere in my house. I’m not like you, Des. I didn’t bounce back like you did when we were kids.”

He thought I bounced back. I never felt that way.

“I know you feel that way, but I was just as sad as you were, Dev.”

He leaned back in his chair and put his hands behind his head. “I wasn’t sad, Des. That’s the problem. I was mad. The anger turned into hatred. Sadness turns into healing. Hate turns into poison. That’s the difference between me and you.”

At that moment I learned something I never knew about my brother. And in turn I gained more perspective on how the ones left in the wake of suicide can handle it so differently.

“Do you hate Mom?” I asked.

He dropped his hands and looked at me, stumped. He pondered my blunt question for a moment and said, “What kind of question is that?”

“Well, you said being mad turned into hate. What do you hate? What have you hated for all these years? Do you hate her?”

I opened my purse that was sitting on the table and pulled a photo out. It was of Mom and Devin, one of the rare photos of her with one of us. It was taken at his fifth birthday party. He’s sitting in her lap and they’re both smiling wide. Mom had her arms wrapped around Devin lovingly. I slid the photo across the table to him. He looked down at the photo.

My heart was racing in fear that he’d just get up and bolt. But I was hopeful I’d get through to him. He was unmoving, staring at the photo intently. The tension in the air between us was thick with nostalgia and a haunting memory. Devin’s eyes filled with tears. It’s a heartbreaking and devastating sight to see a grown man cry. Especially a man as hardened as Devin. I garnered all of my strength to keep my composure intact.

He reached down and picked the photo up. He flipped it over and read the back. In the upper right-hand corner, he saw what was written on it.

My baby boy turns 5.

“It’s her handwriting,” he whispered.

“It is,” I said.

He traced his finger over the faint, worn words and then turned it back over.

“She looks so happy,” he whispered.

“She was. I remember that day. She smiled all day long. You got so many presents. I was jealous.”

He dropped his head and began sobbing. I got up and rounded the table to go to him.

Placing my hands on his shoulders, I tried to comfort him by saying, “Let the hate go, Dev. As soon as you let the hate go, you’ll feel the love. It’s there. It’s always been there, but the hate has been hiding it.”

He stood up from his chair and turned toward me. “I needed her. I needed her so many times,” he cried, pulling me in for a hug.

We stood there and cried together. It was the first time since Mom died that we cried with each other. It felt good. Grieving is good. When we finally broke our embrace and wiped the tears away, he answered my question.

“I don’t hate her. I hate what happened. I hate all the empty moments when the only thing I wanted to fill them with was the woman who once upon a time made all of my scrapes better and all of my nightmares go away. I hated being left behind, but I loved her always. I realize that now.”

Devin had carried around so much pain and anger for so long. I know he’s not the only one left behind that dealt with it that way. I think what’s important is taking something valuable from the pain and madness that follows suicide. I’ve learned a lot about myself since that fateful day. I think Devin has too, and today he learned one of the most important lessons. The only thing one needs to remember about pain is what they learned from it, and then you have to let it go.

“Suicide doesn’t take away pain,

it gives it to others.”

BACK IN THE white room, I’m destroyed and emotionally drained. Of all the bricks I broke down, the one where I saw my Desiree read part of her book was too much to bear. I’m shaking and all I want to do is go back. I want another chance. I need another chance. For so long I viewed my life as a place I wanted out of. I felt trapped. Now that I’m no longer there, I feel locked out and all I want is back in.

I want my life back.

I desperately search the room for anything that might help me, but alas it’s exactly the same as always.

The doors.

The paper.

The pen.

Nothing else. Not knowing what to do other than write down everything I’m feeling, I run across the cold floor and drop to my knees in front of the stack of blank paper. Feverishly, I begin to write.

Reading Desiree’s book has crippled me. My children needed me and I left them. All of those things she wrote weren’t even a thought in my mind when I did what I did. All I could think about was how I would no longer be a burden to my family. Now I see that I burdened them so much more by doing what I did.

Reading Grayson’s words, I could hear his calming voice in my head. His voice sank into me like water into dry sand. I’m seething with emotions and they won’t stop coming. When I killed myself I thought it would all just be over. I didn’t expect to be thrust into a place where I’d be forced to see my family and how they suffered due to my death. I’ve traded temporary pain for an eternity of loss. It was all for naught. I felt alone then and now I’m alone for real. I don’t know where to go or how to find the peace I need. I’ll never find my Key Keeper because I can never stop reliving their pain. I’ll never stop regretting.

I drop the paper. It floats to the floor and I scream out, “I want to go back. Send me back!”

My scream echoes throughout the empty room when a slender and beautiful woman appears before me. With high cheekbones and pale skin framed by light blonde hair, she smiles and angles her head to the side.

“You don’t get to go back, Riah. Death doesn’t work that way.”

I don’t even question who or what she is. It’s obvious. Her slender silhouette of a body is outlined through the thin white material of her long flowing white dress. She stands with her hands at her sides, relaxed. She exudes peacefulness.

I look around the room and say, “I don’t know what any of this is supposed to mean anymore. I don’t think I ever really have since I got here. I keep being told to write things down. I did that and nothing happens. I’m not moving forward. I’m still stuck here all alone. I always seem to end up alone.”

Angry tears fall down my cheeks and I look up at her. The calm and peaceful expression on her face is unchanged though I’m feeling completely unhinged.

In a cool and soft voice, she says, “Have you not felt any relief or learned anything from writing down your feelings, regrets, mistakes, and seeing things from a differing perspective?”

“I don’t know what I feel other than confused and terribly sad. More than that I just want to fix all of it, and if I can’t do that, then I have no idea how to move forward.”

She raises her hands elegantly, palms facing upward. A swift breeze blows through the room. All of the snowy white pages I’ve written everything down on rustle. Soon they’re lifted into the air, floating. I look around and realize there are far more pages than I thought I had written. My eyes are drawn back to the angelic woman.

Suddenly, she thrusts her arms out to her sides, palms facing outward. In one speedy and swift motion, the pages slam against the smooth alabaster walls. I can barely make out the edges of the pages because the walls are equally as white as the letters. She then motions toward the fading door with the glass knob.

“You seek to go beyond that door, correct?”

I nod.

“Why?” she asks.

I stammer, “I don’t know exactly. I’m just very strongly drawn to it, and
they
told me my peace is beyond that door, but I don’t know how to find my Key Keeper. I don’t know what I’m doing or how to find them. Please help me. I don’t want to be alone anymore. I don’t want any of this anymore.”

She comes closer and reaches out, offering her hand to me. Without hesitation I place my hand in hers.

“Riah, you’ve never been alone. It may have felt that way, but you’ve never been alone, just as you’re not alone now. In life you always had an open door to healing, yet you could never see it. Here, you’ve slowly been cleansed and you didn’t know it.”

She gently squeezes my hand and closes her eyes. Just as her eyes close, it’s as if a crimson paintbrush begins painting the walls. I see my many invisible words bleed onto the white pages. The invisible ink is now scarlet red. My eyes can’t move fast enough as I try to take it all in.

“What’s happening?” I beg nervously.

She opens her eyes slowly.

“Do not fear, my dear Riah. Everything is as it should be. You will soon see.”

I look back to the walls that are now covered in my bleeding words. I’m standing here, face to face with all of my regrets, mistakes, heartbreaks, loves, losses, happy moments, missed opportunities, and fears. They’re all the color of red now, no longer white, which is ironic. Red equally represents loss and love. The red makes sense. I never understood the white ink until now. I wasn’t writing all of my feelings down for anyone to see. It was for me. I was living blindly, now I am seeing clearly in death.

I want to go back, change it all. I want to do it all differently. I want to scoop my children up into my arms and tell them I am sorry for losing sight of what mattered most. I want to look into my husband’s eyes and tell him it’s okay that we fell out of love. It’s okay because marriage isn’t about falling or being in love. It’s about learning to live as two partners in life and learning how to love all of the stages it comes in. Love ebbs and flows. We change, we grow. I want to tell him I am sorry for not trying harder to love my whole self, leaving him with half a person. His flaws blinded me to my own. That was wrong. I never understood that.

I want to call Darcy and tell her how sorry I am for not seeing her. I want to hug her and tell her I am there for her. I wish I had laughed more, played more, hugged more, and I really wish I had just learned to let it all go more. I want to tell my mother that she was the safest place I ever had and I’m eternally sorry for not going to her when I needed her most. I know I can’t do any of these things, but knowing I will one day see them again helps to ease this pain and regret.

I’m pulled from my thoughts when all at once, the words, sentences, and paragraphs start to blend together. The red ink begins to drain from the pages. I watch it fall in slow rivulets, moving

until the pages are blank yet again. The ruby liquid continues to move fluidly across the floor until it all gathers in the center of the room in a large puddle. My confusion and apprehension heighten just as the puddle spontaneously erupts into flames. I jump and shuffle backward in fear.

The orange flames burn brightly and with vigor. The woman then leans forward and gently parts her lips, forming a perfect
O
, and begins to blow softly. She does it so subtly like one might do when blowing out a single candle. The flames dissipate gradually. Now, in place of the flames is a man. His back is to me but without him turning around, I know.

It’s my brother. It’s the brother I lost in a terrible car crash years ago.