Ereri Angst

Ereri

Levi lied. He lied to me so many times. I was naive. I was young. But I was so in love.

He promised me lifetimes of happiness. He promised me kids. He promised me a home, a sanctuary. He was closed off to most, but he gave me his world. We were in love.

The coughing fits had started months ago. He couldn’t go ten minutes without hacking up his lungs. It reminded me of Armin’s grandfather, who was a heavy smoker.

When my lover’s whole body would heave and shake as if there was an earthquake going on that only he could feel. His small frame shook, his lungs heaving.

When he wasn’t coughing, his breathing still sounded odd. Like he was wheezing. Forcing the air through his lungs and out his mouth. He was in so much pain.

We used to be able to go camping, hunting, and even just to a restaurant. He had to quit his job since the coughing and wheezing scared the kids at the local preschool.

He loved those kids like they were his own, and it broke his heart when they started crying. He came home that night and just started drinking, only stopping when he passed out at the kitchen table.

I had to carry him upstairs.

He was spiraling downward. He was going to crash. We were so happy, he just turned thirty and I was twenty six. We were happy, and then we crashed.

It was like the old greek legend of Icarus. He made wings out of wax and twigs, and he flew. He flew so high, he wanted to reach the sun.

He never did. His wax wings melted, and the twigs were on fire. His wings had broken, and he was falling. He crashed.

And so did Levi.

Levi crashed on the kitchen floor, to be exact. He crashed, and there was nothing I could do to catch him.

The nurses at the hospital had told me he had lung cancer.

He never told me he smoked, but he did. He smoked a lot. I asked him about it when he woke up on a ventilator, almost ripping the IV out of his arm. It was a habit developed from his childhood, he told me.

They wouldn’t let me stay overnight, and in the end I was dragged out by the strongest nurses they had. I walked home, not caring about leaving the car at the hospital.

It was only a few days he stayed there. I came to visit him for what I didn’t know what would be the last time.

He smiled. He barely ever smiled anymore. His eyes were filled to the brim with sadness, and his cheeks were dusted with the remnants of tears. He looked terrible, but I didn’t comment on it. He probably knew he did.

Sponge baths don’t really help anyone.

He gave me a hug. Kissed my forehead. He told me it’d be alright, that we’d be alright. He promised me he’d get out of there, he promised me we’d be together.

I guess, in a way, he did get out. He got out in an urn, but he got out nonetheless. He got out, with me holding the ashes to my chest, sobbing, screaming, wailing my pain to showcase it to the world. The world that never wanted me to be happy. The world that took my husband from me. The world that won’t let me see him ever again.

His funeral was small. By small I mean it was only me, Mikasa who was his cousin, Armin who was there for emotional support, and Erwin, a mysterious man that Levi told me was his highschool buddy.

I walked home, half of Levi’s ashes still in the urn, the other half buried under his gravestone. 

Levi Ackerman-Jaeger. Beloved husband, brother, cousin, and son. “Life was not kind, and took me too early. I hope you find peace in your flaws, and beauty in the peace.”

The quote was left in his will, and I knew it was directed at me.

Walking around our house, I stopped going into our shared bedroom and instead slept on the couch.

Walking past the photographs hung on the wall, I tried to bring a dead man back to life with only my memory. Neither of us had any parents that were still alive, Levi was a bastard child, his mother succumbing to a sickness, and mine died in a car crash. I was alone. Mikasa had her own family now, and Armin was starting up a large corporation.

The master bedroom still smelled like him. His clothes were still in the dresser, his coats and shoes in the closet.

When I walked out the front door, I’d pass the iconic Doc Martens he always wore. I would walk into the kitchen, his tea bags still in the cabinets. Washing the dishes one night, I saw the tea mug he’d been using the night he collapsed. The night he crashed, like Icarus. 

I sat on the floor, sobbing. I held the mug to my heart, like it could bring him back.

I missed falling asleep to his soft humming, his small hands running through my hair while I’d lay on his chest. I missed our laughs when we’d have tickle fights. I missed when he’d cook recipes he’d brought with him from his childhood in the slums of France. I missed him.

His presence hung around the house for months. I felt like he was still there sometimes. I could feel his hand wiping away my tears, his arms around my waist.

On the day marking a year since his death, I saw him. He looked uncertain, standing only steps away from me, but when his eyes locked with mine we both froze.

“Levi?”

I didn’t get an answer, and he started to fade.

“No!!” I screamed, the word ripping through my throat. My fingers brushed through his chest when I surged forward to reach him, and I fell on my face.

He was there. Levi was right there. In front of me. And I let him slip right through my fingers. This happened often, and I was brought to a shrink to talk about my hallucinations (Mikasa’s idea, not mine).

Levi was gone, the psychologist somehow convinced me that he wasn’t here anymore, and I haven’t seen him in weeks. His mirage was gone, so he must’ve truly moved on, too.

I kept thinking back on why he didn’t tell me sooner about the lung cancer. Why did he decide to keep the fact he was dying a secret until he crashed onto the floor in the middle of getting his tea?

Did he not trust me? Did he want us to enjoy our last months together like normal?

The last one sounded more plausible, but it still hurt. We could’ve found a way to help him.

But no. He left me here alone. I had to fend for myself now. I can’t depend on the grumpy man I fell in love with anymore. I can’t wake up to his butterfly kisses. I can’t curl into his side when we watch movies. I can’t ever see him again.

Someday I’ll have to come to accept that. But for now, I’m trying to keep his memory alive. That’s why I wrote this story. To tell you about my wonderful husband’s last days, to show you that death is not pretty, and to be able to say this. 

To be able to say Levi was the best man I ever knew. And he always will be.

Forever and always, as he used to say.

The End