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.
×
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.
As soon as I opened the door I regretted it because I was suddenly overwhelmed by eyes the same midnight blue as his were. I couldn’t help but remember the way they twinkled when he was feeling mischievous and something in my chest clenched. The skin under those eyes—so much like his—was red and swollen. Nora looked so tired and worn and I wasn’t cruel enough to be able to send her away.
From the moment she stepped into the house, my life revolved around the word funeral and weeks were passing by with only the word planning on my schedule.
They asked me if I wanted to speak or do his eulogy but I was soon to realize that asking was only to be kind and I really had no choice in the matter.
I don’t remember what I wrote and said because I didn’t care much about it. Eulogies are never for the dead; they’re for the living who need to feel better about the dead and I didn’t want to subject myself to putting effort into something that only had the pretense of being for him.
After the funeral was over, I found myself with nothing to occupy my time other than visiting Carter’s grave and spending time with his brother—who I actually liked, compared to most other people.
Usually people don’t like visiting the grave of the person they were wholeheartedly and undoubtedly in love with because the pain and sadness is unbearable, but visiting his grave actually made me happy.
Despite the pretenses, I actually had no part in the planning of Carter’s funeral and I didn’t get to make any choices. I pointed this out to Nora at one point—in front of a few people, might I add—and to save face, she reluctantly let me have the choice of the quote to go on his grave.
I’d known exactly what I was going to put as soon as she gave me the permission to do so and I didn’t hesitate to tell the engraver what I wanted the quote to be.
When I sit in front of Carter’s grave and stare at the words, it’s like I can hear him saying them to me as clearly as if his mouth was hovering right over my ear and I always shiver when I hear them.
“For as long as I can.”
No one else knows what they mean and no one else will ever know what they mean. It was one of the few things Carter and I held reserved just for each other and I wanted to keep them that way.
×
We met at a party. More specifically, outside a party. I don’t remember whose or which party it was but we just found ourselves hanging out on the back deck of whose-ever house it was, talking about God knows what. It was like that from then on, us always finding each other outside—the place where everyone who didn’t want to be at any party always found themselves. We were both always being dragged to parties by our “friends” and we were both always being ditched to wander alone.
Some conversations I remember and some conversations I don’t, but I do remember the conversation that first started my interest in him. I have no idea what we were talking about before it but we were suddenly interrupted by the screen door of the house of that day’s party thrower banging open and a couple vigorously making out tumbling out of it.
Their hands furiously moved all over each other’s clothes and they constantly whispered, “I love you,” every time they parted. They didn’t seem to notice us, as they were too lost in each other. I was relieved when they finally broke away from each other for what seemed like the final time because the loud slurping noises they were making had Carter and me feeling incredibly awkward.
The guy held his girlfriend’s face between his hands and looked deeply into her eyes.
“I love you,” he said, his voice utterly serious. You could tell by the look on his face that he truly meant his words.
The girl nodded. “Forever, right?”
“Forever.”
They still didn't notice us as their lips met again and their heated kiss continued, so the loud scoff that I hadn’t meant to make fell deaf on their ears.
But it didn’t fall deaf on Carter's.
“What?” he asked me, “Are they bothering you? Do you want to move?”
I shook my head at him, offering him a soft smile. It was the same smile Carter told me after a year and a half of dating that I only showed when he was around. I feverously denied it but he wouldn’t listen to me at all and the cheeky smile on his face didn’t leave as he bragged that I had a smile reserved only for him. A few weeks after that, I begun to realize what he said was true, but I never stopped denying it even though he was right. I still laugh when I think that even in the early stages of our relationship—when we were teetering on the border of acquaintances and friends—that I’d already had a special smile I showed only to him.
“What is it then?” His voice was purely curious and I gave him a weird look, finding it odd.
I shook my head again, though I answered. “It’s the forever thing, that's all. They’re giving each other a false sense of permanence and I find it idiotic.”
“What do you mean? Explain.” He sounded so utterly interested that I was completely baffled. I could only stare at him for a few seconds.
I had people I was close with; very close with. I had people I was so close with that they could claim to know everything about me and anyone would believe them. But, the truth is, those people didn’t really know the deeper parts of me. They didn’t know the parts that needed to be dug up to be found and needed to be treated with care. And they didn’t want to know either. They were so comfortable with what they did know about me that they made no effort to dig up those deeper parts. And I’d gotten so used to that fact that it stopped occurring to me that there might ever be someone who would willingly pick up a shovel and try to dig.
“Um...” I scratched the back of my neck awkwardly. “Well, nothing is set in stone. There’s no way to know what’s to happen in the future, and people usually forget that or disregard it a lot of the time. They say things like ‘best friends forever’ or ‘I’ll love you forever’ when there’s a lot that can happen between now and forever. Relationships aren’t guaranteed and there’s always the possibility of falling out with each other or getting cheated on or one of them dying and the other moving on. Everything’s always changing and they’re all setting themselves up for hurting with that false permanence they give each other and it’s all really just stupid.”
Carter was kind of gaping at me after that and for a moment I felt a little foolish to say something so off-putting to a potential friend.
But that feeling of foolishness went away when he said, a bit breathily, “Oh wow. False permanence, huh.”
I was still feeling a bit awkward until he spoke again. His voice was quieter and I found myself entranced by the way the wind seemed to swirl around his words. “I think I get what you mean. My dad and my brother died and I never really considered until then how fragile everything in this world really is until then. Everything’s always changing and it never really takes much to change them.”
I think it was this conversation where we both started to regard each other as friends.
×
It was a month and a half after that party that I realized I liked Carter more than friends are supposed to like other friends. At that point, we were extremely close and we’d started hanging out other than at parties. There was some unspoken agreement between us that we didn’t invade each other’s circles. I didn’t hang out with his friends and he didn’t hang out with mine, and whenever we hung out with each other it was only just us two.
Sometimes we saw a movie that we’d both mutually wanted to see and have a long, passionate discussion about our opinion on it afterwards. Sometimes I went over to his house and ate dinner with his family (Nora didn’t exactly like me, even then). Sometimes he came over to my house and ate dinner with my family. Sometimes I went over to his house and he repeatedly destroyed me on his video games. Sometimes he came over to my house and we'd just swing on the swings in my backyard. Sometimes we’d even just lie on the floor in one of our bedrooms and do nothing.
Whatever we did together we enjoyed, and it was the first time I felt completely comfortable with a person.
I didn’t tell Carter I liked him when I realized it and I did my best not to act much different around him. The friendship I had with Carter was something I treasured because it was so easy and refreshing, and I didn’t want to ruin it with the prospect of something as fragile as romance. I think that, despite my efforts, Carter noticed something was off about me. He was good at things like that, picking up the little clues on people that others might not notice. Spending so much time with him became harder because my feelings only kept growing stronger and he was noticing things were off more and more.
I decided to try to rid my feelings by dating other people. There’d been a guy who was interested in me for a while and I decided to give him a chance in the hopes of being able to transfer my feelings to him. After a few dates I found myself accepting to be his girlfriend.
The time I spent with Carter began decreasing and he, being who he was, couldn’t not notice. He confronted me about it eventually and I had to tell him I had acquired a boyfriend.
It had never once occurred to me that Carter might have had feelings for me also and the absolutely crushed expression on his face made me regret that. Our time together began decreasing at an even faster rate and even during the little time we did spend together Carter seemed a bit irritable the whole time. We were both unhappy and eventually, after three months of dating, my boyfriend got tired of me and broke up with me.
The breakup hit me harder than I expected and I ended up calling Carter, sobbing angrily through the phone about how I was stupid and about false permanence and other unimportant things and it didn’t take him long to arrive at my house. I hadn’t expected him to come all the way just to comfort me but I didn’t question it when he sat on my bed, cradled me on his lap, and held me with a gentleness that only he could. We stayed like that the rest of the night and he kept kissing my forehead and my temple and my hair, murmuring soft words that I can’t recall now but sounded like the sweetest music then.
It was only two weeks later that Carter admitted he “liked me a whole hell of a lot”, and it was only three weeks after that when he told me that he was planning to join the marines and gave me the option to not be with him.
×
I was the first one to confess that I’d fallen in love with him. I felt it was right since he’d been the one to confess that he liked me. It wasn’t on a particularly special day. That was fitting, since Carter and I weren’t a particularly special couple. At that point, both our circles knew we were dating so they never questioned or blamed us when we stopped spending time with them as much as we’d used to. We were at his house, cuddling on his couch and watching television. My fingers drew absent patterns on his bare chest and his hands sometimes ran through my hair as if he couldn’t resist the urge.
“Carter,” I whispered.
“Yeah?” he partly groaned and I could tell he’d been about to doze off.
I lifted my head to look at him and placed my chin on his chest. I made sure I was looking into his eyes as I spoke. “I love you.”
He didn’t really comprehend what I said for a few good seconds and suddenly he was sitting up frantically with wide eyes. I yelped as I nearly fell off of him and onto the floor. He helped steady me and I fixed myself cross-legged on his lap. He held my face in his hands and I couldn’t help but think that the television light made his wide, blue eyes look like the night sky during a meteor shower. “What did you say?”
I furrowed my eyebrows at him, not exactly sure how to gauge his reaction. “I said I love you.”
“But...but...but what about false permanence? What about that? Aren’t you...aren’t you worried we won’t last?”
I couldn’t stop the incredulous laugh that bubbled from my throat at his frantic tone. “Carter, I didn’t say I’ll love you forever. Calm down. I said I love you, meaning I love you—I am in love with you—right now.”
He didn’t look reassured at all and I couldn’t help but frown.
“Is that not good enough?”
“No!” he exclaimed, shaking his head frantically. “It's not that it’s not good enough—in fact, it’s fucking great. But I just...God, I don't even know what I'm saying right now.”
Carter was having trouble understanding how he felt and figuring out how to explain it to me, but somehow I knew exactly what he was trying to convey. I bit my lip, trying to think of a solution; to think of what I could do to fix his turmoil and reassure him of us.
“Okay,” I said, “What about this—I can’t say that I’ll love you forever, but I can say that I’ll love you for as long as I can. Is that good?”
His forehead creased as he considered my offer and it didn’t take long for his expression to twist into a smile. “I think I can be satisfied with that.”
His smile cause me to smile, and it was the same one reserved for him. “Yeah?”
“Yeah. And, in case my completely uncool mini-meltdown just now didn’t show you that I’m also very in love with you, then I’ll say that I’ll love you for as long as I can, too.”
And that’s how we said it from then on. Eventually Carter started complaining it was a mouthful and declared we should abbreviate it to only “for as long as I can”. For us, that was our special way to reassure each other that we were still very in love and very entranced by the other’s whole being. It was originally only reassurance for Carter but I long ago realized that it had been reassurance for me, too.
×
Nora was very put off when Carter bought a house for the both of us to live together in. It was a large fixer-upper with peeling yellow paint on the outside of it and white rimmed windows. Nora didn’t exactly object to the fact that we were moving in together, since we were both adults in our mid-twenties, but more to the fact of where the house was located.
Our house is two towns over from the town we both grew up in and it could be considered in the middle of nowhere. It’s actually on one big joint property that can only be accessed by one long, narrow, bumpy dirt road and I’ve never once seen any of the other people who live on the property because the houses are separated by miles and miles of green plains so we can’t see each other.
Nora hated that we were so far away and she hated the house even more because Carter could afford better. Carter loved this house, though, and refused to buy any other because he said it was the perfect place for the both of us.
And it was.
Carter and I were both people who preferred peaceful, quiet places and that house and property are just that. There were no sounds of traffic and no annoying neighbors who had constant parties like we’d had to deal with before. We could keep to ourselves perfectly and that’s how we liked it.
Our furniture was always miss-matched because Carter liked to collect things he thought were antique or vintage and he was always coming home with something different. I didn’t really mind...until the grandfather clock came in. We had a big fight about that. We didn’t talk for five days and he slept on the couch for that whole period of time. Eventually I gave up and didn’t care about the stupid thing because I thought it was stupid to fight with him over something that made him happy.
I even found comfort in the thing whenever Carter was deployed for months upon months sometimes and the house would usually be silent. The rhythmic ticking always soothed my nerves about if he was doing alright where he was and helped me carry on for those months upon months until he came back.
I always loved when Carter came home because I got to see his big smile form when we caught sight of each other in the airport and we got to have a big clichéd reunion every time because I couldn’t stop myself from running across the big expanse to launch into his strong arms and I also couldn’t stop from finding comfort in his marine uniform pressing tightly against me as I held onto him. Carter said he loved it too because he enjoyed seeing the different expressions of the people around us who couldn’t help but observe.
I also loved when we got to drive home together and Carter would turn the radio up loudly and we’d sing some old eighties song we both knew until our throats hurt and we wouldn’t be able to stop laughing. And I loved when we arrived home and I got to hang his uniform up in our closet and let it stay there, even for a short period of time. And we were able to fall back into our normal, peaceful routine of living together and being together, and it was a better life than each of us would have ever expected to live.
I loved our house and I loved being with Carter in our house and I still love our house because it’s still our house, even when he’s not here.
×
Carter,
I didn’t think I’d finally get started on your eulogy so late, but after two years it’s better late than never, right? I mean, even though this is more of a letter, I’m considering it your eulogy because this is actually for you. By the way, it wasn’t a recommendation from some shrink to write a letter to my dead boyfriend; this is of my own choice.
There’s a lot of things I want to say in this letter, and there’s a lot of things I don’t know how to say in this letter, and I’ll probably end up forgetting to say certain things in this letter and remember about them later, essentially pissing myself off, but I’ll try my best to get this just right.
I’ve never regretted any of my decisions regarding you. You told me right away how your dad and your older brother had fought for the marines for a long time before they lost their lives, and how you wanted to follow their footsteps and join the marines, too. I knew you wanted to be strong when you told me this, but I saw how scared you actually were that I wouldn’t want you anymore after telling me something like that. I knew what pain my choice could lead me to, yet I chose to be with you anyway because you were so determined about your dream and I found that admirable. I knew then (and I’d known long before) that you were worth any possibility of pain you brought with you.
I’m glad that I met you, honestly. I believe you and I suited each other best for the kind of relationship we both desired in our hearts and we gave each other that. You gave me that. You gave me a relationship better than one I could have with anyone else, no matter how unspectacular it seemed to other people, and I can’t find it in myself to feel anything but glad when I think of the choice I made.
I miss you. A lot. Just so much, and I keep expecting the intensity to dim but it doesn’t. Two whole years and I still miss you immensely. I keep thinking of the little things you did that nobody else knows about but me. Like how you would wash your car while I was gardening so we could both use the hose at the same time and save water, and you would always end up spraying me with the hose when I was picking weeds and had my back turned to you. And we’d always end up soapy and soaked because I couldn’t let that slide without paying you back and we’d end up in a water war with each other, our laughter piercing the air. And I loved how after a while you would purposely come outside whenever I was gardening with the pretense of washing your car, just so we could have those water wars (don’t think I didn’t know). There’s also how you would sometimes get nightmares—the kind that came with military experience sometimes—and how you would try to hide them from me. That’s one thing I regret—letting you keep trying to hide them and not having comforted you like I should’ve. I wonder sometimes what you’d been having nightmares about and if I could’ve helped you if we’d talked about it. But I try not to dwell on the ‘should’ves’ and the ‘could’ves’. There’s also how you liked to dance with me sometimes. You would turn to the eighties station on the radio we kept in the living room, and you would convince me—no matter what I was doing—to come dance with you. And you would twirl me around and dip me like you knew what you were doing, when in truth you had no idea. But I loved it because you would smile brightly at me the whole time, like there was nothing you’d rather be doing in the world and the way you looked at me made you stepping on my feet incredibly worth it.
I love you. A lot. A whole hell of a fucking lot. And I still love you. And it surprises me constantly how strong my feelings are because they feel no less than the last time I saw you—on that Skype call—and they feel no less than the first time I realized that I was utterly in love with your existence. There are not many things that we can say are written in stone, but the fact you’re dead is. It’s written on your gravestone and it’s a painful reality I’ve learned to accept. I don’t dwell on it, though. I don’t dwell on it because the fact that I (still) love you is also written on your gravestone. I don’t know if I was quoting myself or you when I made them engrave it but the fact that we loved each other is set in stone and it can never be erased.
Maybe it’s fitting that I’ll be the last one to say it—I can promise you right now I'll never say it to anyone ever again, even if I do fall in love with another person—since I was the first, but I’m promising you this one last time because I want to be able to say it while I still mean it (you and I both know it doesn’t take much to change things).
Carter Blaine—the love of my life at this moment, the best boyfriend I know I’ll ever have, and my ultimate false permanence—I’ll always love you for as long as I can.
For as long as I can.