For As Long As I Can

This story is more full of feelings than anything; the narrator's AND mine. I wasn't aiming for absolute perfection with this because I feel as if it's as perfect as it could be. I just hope that it means something for some people and touches at least one person's heart.

Point out any typos I missed pls and thank you.

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Grief is said to come in stages. I’d always known that. He’d always known that. And I’d always believed it. It was a part of life I thought was set in stone, but now I understand how hypocritical I was.

There is something in us—instinct, if you will—that just knows sometimes. That’s how I felt when I got the phone call. Even before the Sergeant asked me if I was Corporal Carter Blaine’s girlfriend, I knew. And even if I hadn’t known, I surely would’ve then.

The Sergeant’s voice was soft. When you’re in the marines or any other armed force, you learn that almost everyone is constantly loud. And they're only quiet when there’s death involved. Those were Carter’s words. So I knew.

This call. It was the call that I’d always hoped I’d never get. It was the call he and I talked about sometimes; when we felt like touching upon the possibility that I could get it.

Whenever I thought about the possibility, I wondered how I would react. I thought maybe my legs would give out and I would drop the phone. Or that I would burst into loud, painful, gut-wrenching sobs that would tear apart the marine at the other end of the line as he tried to relay to me what had happened. Apparently, I didn’t know myself too well then.

I didn’t do anything of the things I thought I might do. Instead, I felt as if I couldn’t breathe; as if all the air in the atmosphere around me had been sucked away and I’d been left gasping. I wobbled and I had to grip the side table beside the couch in our—our—living room.

This moment. This single life-changing moment of mine was where I knew I was a hypocrite; where I knew grief's stages weren’t set in stone. For me, there was no denial or isolation. There was no anger. There was no if maybe this had happened or if maybe this hadn’t happened or if maybe we had done this or if maybe we hadn’t done that. There wasn’t even any depression.

There was just pain and acceptance.

The Sergeant’s, “I'm sorry,” did nothing, and he knew that, but he said it anyway.

I gave him the numbers of Carter’s family because I wanted him to inform them. It may have been selfish, but I didn’t want to be the one to do it. I didn’t want to hear his mother’s cries as she went through the pain of losing someone she loved to the marines for the third time and I didn’t want to hear his younger brother’s disbelief or anger.

I spent the rest of the day sitting on our—our, our, our—couch, staring at the walls and listening to that damn grandfather clock that he put in the house tick rhythmically.

In my head, his voice was playing on repeat. In my head, the tap of his fingers against his leg as he read pounded against my skull. In my head, his letters were flashing by my eyes and I felt like I was reading them for the first time all over again.

I wanted to be angry but there was no way I could. Being angry would mean that I regretted us. And I could never. He’d given me a choice. He'd given me a choice and I'd made it. This is where that choice led me but I couldn’t be angry because it also led to all the time I got to spend with him.

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It was about a week of ignoring calls and listening to the silence of our—our, our, our—house before my coping method was interrupted by Carter’s mom finally deciding to drop by.