The Death of Chatterton, Henry Wallis (1830–1916)
A name is nothing more than that: just a name.
It has no identity, it reveals no one’s life, it does not make known the moment something begins or ends. It’s a shot in the dark, a vain attempt to define the undefinable, the first of many things which are taken for granted through a life full of guarantees and countless others things that can never be assured.
Your name was the first thing I screamed as I ran to you and held you in my arms: Augustus.
We spent so much of our time dismissing the importance of names, emphasizing identities instead, yet in an instant everything was reduced to your name, and nothing else remained: only your lifeless body collapsed on the floor of our living room, and the echo of the only thing that never defined you. Augustus, and nothing more.
I swear, in that moment when I saw you lying there helpless, I tried to leave you and even called the ambulance. There was a pause in that moment as I gazed into your sweet brown eyes, strewn at your side.
I love you.
I love you.
Warm hands, intertwined between despair and suffocation with all the strength of the world, and then silence and the inevitable darkness, your still body, and the cold floor. I kissed your lips as you drew your last breath. There is always a kiss to save a life or to sentence a death. I lay beside you, for this is the last of the moments to share.
Everything is so relative now.
Just as you died, it could have been me, in a kind of discontinuous continuation where for you the end of your life begins, and for me life with you ends. The thing about death is that it has its own philosophy, even in the face of despair, and when faced with the undeniable fact that everything is because of you (or the absence of you).
The scent of the end won’t let go of me.
What a bittersweet smell for something that brings nothing after the end. Nothing, nothing, not a sound, a single movement, and yet, so much noise, so many echoes and screams in a cacophony of despair. Am I losing my mind? No, we were the crazy ones. Maybe this is what people call “being normal.” Yeah, that’s it. Without you, I am normal, ordinary, undeniably mundane.
What do I do now?
What will become of me without you, what do I do with all the plans we had for so many years? What will happen to our family now that we are ships without the harbor that you were, so many plans, and you will never see me grow old, never meet your unborn grandchildren, or watch them grow.
What will become of our daughter without you. Augustus, why did you go so suddenly and leave me in this state of desolation, not knowing what to think or feel? Because I think and feel everything, and all of it is nothing but desperation and longing.
What if you were here now, not like this but truly here, holding on to me with that smile of yours that filled me with so much warmth, loving me the way you did all these years? What I would give to start this day over, to go back to last night, or maybe last week. What would I do differently if I could go back?
Imagine what it would be like, had we known this morning would be the last of life together, wake up early to a warm, bright sun, my head on your chest and your lips pressed to my forehead.
’Good morning,’ you would say with your gentle voice. ‘Only thirteen hours left. Let’s be happy.’
I can see myself stretching lazily in the white linen sheets, and you, with strong hands tracing my body. How many of those hours would be spent making love and simply looking into each other’s eyes while you told me that you loved me? Perhaps you wouldn’t waste time with that, because in all these years you made sure that in each moment I knew your truth.
How would our final moment play out when we checked the clock and there were mere minutes left? A crushing embrace with heads hanging low, the scent of our mingled perfumes in an everlasting kiss, and finally the taste of salt.
That could have been our ending, but it was never meant to be.
Your favourite song is on.
Suddenly, I remembered one of those soap operas we used to watch religiously every night on the couch. I still recall your smile, the unexpected laughter, and the way you lived through the characters’ stories as if they were your own. You would always say, ‘They’ll end up together in the end!’ And I believed you, because I saw us in them, and we should have ended up together in the end too, but look at us now.
What a song to be our soundtrack… the one that played through our life together, the one you loved so much. And look at this scene, our living room… all of it feels like a soap opera, but this one had no happy ending.
Just a tragedy.
How did it end with me without you?
My soul’s deepest sorrow is knowing there was nothing I could have done differently, nothing I could have said that would have changed the outcome. My greatest sorrow was watching it all unfold before my eyes, and in that precise moment, as if in slow motion, knowing I was utterly powerless to stop it.
Watching your lashes brush against each other softly and being unable to do anything, your lips parting only to close again into a fine line. Simply hold your hand, glue my lips to yours, knowing that was all I could do, and that it was not enough.
The wind is blowing outside.
I almost expected it to bring a flood of memories with it, but it brought nothing, and my mind is so empty. Is it supposed to be like this? Is this how we process the death of the ones we love most, by thinking of nothing? And yet, I feel as though I am thinking too much. The ambulance is still not here.
Cold. You’re so cold.
How many hours have passed.
Did we ever stop to count the tiles in the living room? I bet if I touched them now, they would feel just like your skin, cold, uneven, porous, allowing the air to pass through them, just as the breath of life once passed through you.
Outside, dusk has fallen and the hours passed as if playing hide and seek, dragging me closer to the moment when I must let you go. It’s time. It is always time when anguish is this raw.
Someone knocked at the door.
I should go check, satisfy my natural curiosity, like a cat unable to resist a closed door, but that would mean letting you go, and I can’t. How do I let go of someone who spent his whole life by my side, never once letting me go? One day, I will be free of you, but for now I belong only to you.
The ice of your body freezes mine.
Let me stay here, just a minute, an instant to think of how many conversations will be left behind unfinished. Let me feel you just a bit, after all, I am so tired, and how many more chances will I have for one last embrace? There is always an ambulance to save a soul and mine has just arrived.
Is it night already? May I kiss your lips one last time before it all ends?
There is a moment that defines all others. Now is the moment I decide if we remain swallowed by the darkness of the night or if I turn on the lights, like the end of a play with no audience nor applause. We have the living room for stage, the curtains closing and God as witness to this romantic tragedy in which you are the fallen hero.
Applause for me. Applause for you. This is the final act.
Augustus, Augustus, and nothing more.
Who would have thought it would be so hard to part from you? It consumed my heart seeing you in that blue bag, amongst so many moving bodies, running, shouting, ravaging our sacred home. I refused to let you leave without me; the ambulance is big enough for both of us. What is my worth without you?
Look at the world and see how it progresses without you. What made me believe we had eternity ahead of us when it was always obvious that one day you would be torn from me? What good are all these hands holding me, when the only hands I want to feel are yours, rough and strong, capable of holding me up when everything else makes me fall.
The sirens reek of death, a kind of opium for a saturated brain, exhausted from pondering what is and what is not.
Do you want to trade places with me?
So peaceful in that deep sleep. You always had a theory for everything, great philosopher pointing the way, a sparkle in your eyes that supported every word you professed with conviction. What would you say now if you could speak?
Martin Heidegger said that ‘death is not an event; it is a phenomenon to be understood existentially.’
What a bitter existence mine has become.
I could believe every beginning must have an end, but then, what would that make you? Just another circumstance, a misstep of human reproduction that happened to stumble upon me all those years ago, when we ran without knowing where to or why, strong legs to endure the trials of time, our chests full of air so we’d never lose our breath.
How do I tell people what happened? You were there, looking at me, and then suddenly, you were gone; just like that. No reason, or at least there wasn’t one in that moment.
What a plot. I can almost picture it now, their twisted minds crafting conspiracy theories of who, what, why and how.
The wife is always the suspect in stories like this.
Heartbreakingly well written.
Profoundly written and with sentences that strike at the heart. Thank you for this. What a great read.