Losing Him // phan

"The Right Thing" (6)

"Thanks for coming." I said, my voice monotone. It was weird seeing this many people in our apartment. My apartment.

People milling about. All talking about Dan. So many people. So many lives touched. Drinking. Looking at the things on our shelves. Casting wary glaces at his closed door. Crying. People touching me. People I barely knew.

I put my life on the internet. Millions of people watch what I do, listen to what I have to say. Yet never before have I felt so exposed.

I've just been going through the motions the past month. Calling his friends and some family, inviting them to the funeral. Trying not to cry. Canceling his phone service, taking his name out of all our bills. Trying not to think to much. Getting people to help me with the funeral. Trying not to break.

Turns out, funerals suck. I have never actually been to one I could remember. My grandmother died when I was young, too young for me to remember most of it. I do remember the black. And the crying. And so many people smiling at me, tears leaking from their eyes. Why smile? Why smile ever again? Grandma's dead. She's gone. You'll never see her again. Sure she believed she was going to heaven, but what about the people who don't? What about the people like Daniel, who said that there's nothing after death? Life ends, and that's that? He had no where to go. He knew that. He knew what he was leaving behind.

I took all the pictures of him down. The ones in my room, in the lounge, hanging on the walls. I know there's one in his room, but I refuse to enter there. I clutched his note in my hand.

"You're back, are you?" The doctor asked as I entered her office. I glanced back at Louise who shrugged.

"You have something that belongs to me." I said blatantly. She gestured to the couch were I had sat last time. I sat. She did too.

"So you're talking now?" She asked. I watched her, but she made no motion to get the note. I guess I was going to have to stay here for the whole hour, just like Louise said. I shrugged. She nodded. "Are you going to talk to me? It's been a long time since you were in here. A month, at least." I shrugged again. Her face softened. "I know what it's like to deal with the loss of someone you love. Especially when it's by their own hand. You'll feel confusion. You'll feel anger. You'll feel like it's your fault. I know you're scared-"

"You don't know anything." I spat. "Can I have my note. Please." Tears burned behind my eyes. I remember crying when Dan had his last nightmare, and the ambulance arrived.

I've been crying a lot.

He had looked so scared. He was bleeding so badly from a little cut on his forehead. They gave him an ice pack, and told him to come to the hospital in the morning if he could manage. Then they left. I was disgusted with their lack of empathy. But, then again, they didn't know what it was from. They didn't ask any questions. They didn't know it was from a nightmare or that he had been having them for a week now. They didn't know. They just handed him a bag of ice.

"You're right. I don't know how you feel. Could you enlighten me?" Her words sounded mean but her voice was soft, soothing. I didn't know what to do. I wanted to talk about him, explain to her that I had no idea he felt that way. That I wished I could have helped. That I should have known, that it was really my fault no matter what people say to me. But the thought of opening up like that to a stranger when I haven't even had the guts to tell his parents that they'd lost another son yet made me sick to my stomach.

"Phil." A familiar voice snapped me back to reality. I looked up. Louise, wearing a black dress, standing in front of Pj, Cat, Chris, and loads of other people whom Dan knew and loved, starred at me. "Where are his parents?" I looked around, trying to muster a look of shock. But I gave up.

"I haven't told them." Louise looked upset, but not angry. She looked like she pittied me. If there was anyone I could call my ally right now, it was her. She was the closest to him, she understood the best what I was feeling. But no one truly, deeply understood how I felt. No one else had lived with him for nearly five years. No one else had been on this rollar coaster with him, through the good and the bad. Louise might have been his second best friend, but she didn't have to awaken him from nightmares. Pj might have had thousands of inside jokes with him, be he didn't have to clean his blood out of the shower. Cat could have gone to a thousand stores with him, but we're not standing in her house right now, trying not to make eye contact with anyone.

"They should find out from you, mate." Chris said. I nodded, slowly. Then shook my head.

"What would I say? 'Hey haven't seen you in a while, sorry to hear that Adrian died, but look on the bright side, you've still got one son left. Oh wait, about that-'"

"You know it's the right thing to do." I looked up at them. My friends. They might not understand exactly how I felt, but they came pretty damn close. They had known him, shared fond memories with him, colabed with him. They wanted to help. And all I was doing was being hard on them. I started to cry.

I hadn't cried at the actual funeral, or when they found his body, or when I had to spend my first night alone or wake up my first morning without him. I didn't cry when I called the land lord to explain his parting or when I explained to the therapist how broken I felt. I didn't cry when everyone else did. I didn't feel the need to.

But now, I bawled. I cried and I cried. The mind-numbing chatter that had originally surrounded us ceased, and everyone watched me cry. I didn't care. Behold, I thought as I collapsed into a chair, the AmazingPhil, crying. Better take pictures. Better tell the Phans. He can feel. He still has emotions.

"You can talk to us, Phil. Anything." Pj said. I looked up. Sniffed. Wiped my nose on the sleeve of my coat I had yet to take off.

"Dan had this thing he called his 'existential crisis'..." I started.

It was raining.