Thanks to last night, today is almost okay. I didn't think it would be.
If you've done your math or read here for any length of time, you'll remember that it was a year ago tonight that Jacob told me he was leaving us. And he never came back. Well, he came back the next day and took almost everything he owned and went very very far away and spent many days straight praying, locked in a hotel room overseas and the night before his 37th birthday he jumped off the roof.
We're not going to talk about that. I can't. I am peanut brittle and I can't handle more than the odd random memory or offhand comment. I'm so not ready for my closeup, Mr. DeMille.
Instead I'm going to tell you about the freezing-fucking-cold motorcycle ride I had last night. Ben borrowed a bike from a procrastinating neighbor who hasn't put his bike up yet and warned me to go and add as many layers as I could. Even chaps. I never wear the chaps he got for me. Well, not outside anyway. He likes many layers of protection on a bike. Just in case.
I thought he was nuts. Figured we'd be out for a ten minute tear across the city and back and then we could light a fire.
Nope.
Ben drove for thirty minutes in the six-degree moonlight, until the city was a memory far behind us. And his wife was a Popsicle, clinging to his waist, head down, chattering teeth and all. He managed to extricate himself from me finally when he stopped the bike out by the fairgrounds. Across the road is an endless hay field, lit up with endless stars in a prairie sky that is so beautiful sometimes it makes living here almost bearable.
He put the kickstand down and took off his helmet and walked about a hundred yards into the field. Gloves and leather jacket making him almost invisible since he left the headlight on.
He walked back and opened his arms out wide, gesturing.
Is this the perspective you need?
I just shook my head. Defiant. Frozen. Still sitting on the bike. My knees were locked against it and my teeth were clamped together so they didn't chatter so badly.
He threw his arms back down to his sides and walked back to me and pulled me off the bike and half-carried/half-marched me out to where he had walked. He put one hand on the back of my head and one under my chin and forced my head up and then he let go of the back of my head and pointed up into the stars.
Where is he, Bridget?
In heaven.
Where are you, Bridget?
Down here. On earth.
Say it again.
Ben-
Say it again, princess.
I'm on earth.
He can't run your show anymore.
I know.
You know but you're letting him anyway.
I don't know what else to do, Benjamin.
What do I always say to you when things get hard?
Take your own advice, then.
This isn't about me. What do I say?
Just be, bee.
He walked back out into the field.
Just be, little bee. Just let him go. Let the sad parts go and the mad parts and all of it. Let it go. I don't know how to help you. I want to and I don't know how. I can help with as much as I can and it will never be enough until you get to a place where he doesn't exist in every breath you take in. He's not your air anymore, princess, you've been breathing without him now for a whole year and there's a lot of years left that he won't be in. I just want you to take a full breath because Jake is gone and he isn't coming back and we're going to make a life here!
Ben was done. He got it off his chest. Maybe not so smooth anymore. Not eloquent, not articulate, just plain straightforward Ben as only Ben can be.
Yelling.
And it made perfect sense.
So when my brain revolted and exploded all in the next moment I was surprised to see the regret on his face when I fell apart. I went down on my knees in the dirt and let go of my helmet. It rolled away from me but I didn't see it because he was running to me and pulling out his phone and I very slowly keeled right over and everything went black. Dramatic self-preservation to the finest degree.
I woke up in PJ's truck, Ben saying he was sorry. Holding me close to his chest like a baby. Heater blasting in my face.
My head knows when it has had enough and between that and the rolling vertical blackouts I have had from all my higher-dose medication lately I'm now getting the walking coma I wished for for this very difficult time. True to form, I'll keep writing, it just takes that much longer to get out what I want to say.
And I've talked to a lot of people about time recently. How time is marked for me in terms of before and after, pre- and post-, individually, in Cole-time, Jacob-time and Ben-time. How in the blink of an eye you pass a milestone like a year and in that blink everything changes, absolutely everything.
Adapt or die, princess.
It wasn't Ben's voice I heard when I went down.
It was Jacob's. And something tells me I'll never hear it again.
