A Place In This Life

Chapter 29

"It's time to go," he said, gently poking me on the back. I turned around to face him and his calm smile. Today, for the first time ever, Alex did not wear black.

"You look different. I mean, when you're not wearing black," I commented, eyeing his brick red t-shirt and blue jeans. His hair was still black, though, and that was all I needed to remind me that Alex was there for me.

God knows I needed people to lean on. The week that followed Todd's death was a barrage of phone calls to Cheryl, trying to find out the who, what, why, where and when of it all. Something to grasp at, to make sense of a death that was expected, but not from its cause.

"The coroner said he'd had a blood alcohol level of 0.08. There was also meth, Ecstasy and a few other things I can't remember," said Cheryl, trying to put on a straight face while sitting with me one afternoon, not long after the accident.

Todd had been cremated, his ashes kept in a small wood box that Cheryl stashed under her bed until this day — his memorial service. We were headed out to Ortega Highway, to spread his ashes along the red cliffs where he liked to go by himself to get lost in his thoughts.

"It only makes sense that he goes where he always went, where he was pure and there wasn't a needle stuck in him or another injection to worry about," she said, smoking one cigarette after another. Cheryl's sister, Jane, was staying with her at the apartment, helping to go through Todd's things. There was quite a bit of stuff... several bongs, small pipes and other contraptions. Dirty magazines. Old class photos stuffed in envelopes. And a worn-out bible that he kept in the drawer by his bed. That one really surprised me, because it looked well-read, underlined and studied.

"Did you know that he kept a Bible?" I asked her.

"I would have thought he'd have trashed that. He used to be into youth group when he was younger," she said, flicking ashes and missing the ashtray.

Another surprise was Todd's poetry, which he kept high in his closet, in a folder that was taped to the wall like a pocket. It was definitely hidden for a reason. The last poem he wrote had been right before he left me.

The feel of you here

And not there

Is what I want more than anything right now.

But I cannot see beyond there

To reach for your hand when my other pushes you away.

There is nothing I can do, and so I push away

What I desire most of all.

"Please keep it," said Cheryl, pushing the paper toward my jitterbug hands. I turned it over so the words wouldn't keep jumping up at me.

Todd's bed was stripped, the mattress ready for the sidewalk where the trash man would pick it up. The bed where it all happened — where he spent time sick as a dog after chemo... and where we would spend solid hours of time talking, resting and making love in the afternoon. Now it looked like an old, faded and stained mattress you'd see in a Santa Ana alley, next to the dumpster.

I'd tried to be brave once I transformed from shock to grief to anger over the course of a few days. Acceptance was yet to be experienced, but I had no choice but to carry on and do the best that I could to support Cheryl and help her help her son for the last time.

"I bet he told you all about me. But I want you to know, Nally, that I loved him so much. He was my little boy, and when he was so sick I held him like a baby," she said, the tears flowing again.