Find a Way to My Heart

Him showing up at all was a surprise, it was a bit strained and he was gone by the next day, "Have to report to the base!" and I didn't really expect to ever see him again, if I'm really frank. I wasn't that upset, either. Strange, how I had friends I was far closer to than my own brother. I think he was as uncomfortable as I was.

On Auggie's side, she had two cousins, and that was it, being an only child, herself. Both of them showed up, and then one, Megan, volunteered to stick around for a week, never letting me out of her sight. She was nice enough, but reserved. She hadn't known Auggie that well, and was doing this out of duty, not close familial feeling. She was spelled on the next week by her older sister, Emily. She stuck around another week, just long enough for us to start getting a routine together. They were great with the kids, but kept a wide berth around me, which was fine. I wasn't feeling that sociable anyway. I don't think either one of them had a clue what to say to me, and didn't know me well enough to offer me any real support, beyond taking the kids off my hands for a bit.

The thing is, when shit like this happens, it takes a while to establish your equilibrium, to get a routine back again.

There are so many things that can happen to tilt you off center. Trying to decide what to clear out from your wife's life, for example. You have to decide what you should clear out and what stays. How much do you remove? What do you do with it? You can't just drop it a Goodwill; that's just...disrespectful, disloyal, but you can't keep it around, either. It's a constant reminder of her lack of existence in your world. If you dump it, you feel like shit, as if you are betraying her. If you keep it around, it's a constant reminder of what you've lost. You'll never move on that way. Shrines to the dead are never a good thing for mental health.

In the end, I decided to keep a lot of the pictures, but let Megan make a judgement call on the clothes. Some, like her wedding dress, went into a proper storage bag and then into the loft space. Others were disposed of by Megan. She put some stuff in the attic, stuff the kids might want later in life. I just went out and sat in a bar and stared at a TV screen while she did it, and the kids went to the zoo with Chuck and Barb and their kids.

Also, when do you stop wearing your ring? When should you? I just couldn't take mine off, until one day I tried to make a concerted effort to do so, taking it off in the morning and leaving it on the side of my bed. I ended up going home at lunch time and putting it on a leather thong, and having it round my neck, along with her rings. I couldn't bear to not have it touching me. That's where they sat for the next two years.

In the end, though, like all things, everything stabilized. We established a routine. Irv actually moved house to be much closer to us. He was over a lot, and I was totally happy about that. Most of his eccentric lifestyle got toned down, and now he lived for his grand children instead. And they loved him for it.

I tried to get used to saying "I" and not "We," and remembering I didn't have anyone else to please or run plans by, which sucked.

Chuck and Barb showed up a lot, even though the light had gone out of my eyes. They never stopped trying to get me to start living again. Sometimes Barb would come over to babysit, and Chuck and I would go out to a bar and stare at the screens with sports on them, drink one beer, saying nothing, and then come home again.

They kept trying, though, invites to dinner, Thanksgiving was coming up and I had no idea what we were going to do for that. I wasn't a cook, that was always Auggie's domain. Christ alone knows what would happen at Christmas, invites to parties, invites to just go to the movies. I went out sporadically with them, but it just... wasn't the same. I knew it was only a matter of time before they stopped calling so much.

The bowling just went away. I don't think any of the guys there knew how to treat me, anyway, so when I resigned from the team, I think there were probably sighs of relief more than anything.

I decided to work from home a lot more, and installed a top end Mac in my office den space at home. I worked from the office during the day, and then came home at three, allowing my three editors and Clarice free reign at the office.

Eventually, some of the other relatives of victims reached out to me, it's not as if we were hidden, and persuaded me to be a part of the inevitable class action lawsuit against the airlines. Again, though, I was astonished at the amount of preparedness they had for these eventualities too.

When I met with the lawyers who had been selected, they informed me of many things, many things I would rather have not known. When the FAA did its open report on the accident, we got to hear a lot, and then read a lot, in the report that was published that went along with the hearing.

Turns out it wasn't pilot error. As best they could reconstruct, after reconstructing the plane from the pieces found, and lots of analysis and computer simulations, one of the blades in the fan on the engine on the starboard side had thrown, and when it did so, it did catastrophic damage to that engine, which expelled a lot of debris and broke up pieces. Because the flight was actually banking when it happened, a lot of this debris ended up impacting on the side of the fuselage, which created massive gashes, right through to the internal superstructure, and that debris, now joined by the debris from the side of the body of the aircraft, then traveled down the length of the plane and impacted on the tail construction, taking most of that out, too.

With one engine, no control surfaces at the back of the plane, another engine now dead, and no control surfaces on that wing working either due to damage when the engine exploded, it was no wonder the plane had fallen out of the sky.

The only part that was even remotely good to hear, - and good is a subjective term here, - was that there would have been instant and massive decompression of the plane, at thirty-seven thousand feet. Meaning almost instant unconsciousness for everyone on board, including the pilots. There was a very real probability that almost everyone on board was already dead before impact. That was just as well, because what the impact did to everyone on board was horrifying. The plan hit nose first, nose down, and concertinaed into itself, the back piling into the front. That happened internally, too, the bodies of the passengers were folded into each other as the chairs smashed together. Almost everyone was at the least cut in two by the seatbelts, and limbs and often heads were sliced off by the sheer force of impact. Then the burning started.

This is why it took so long for remains to be returned; they had to reassemble people from all the scorched component parts.

Auggie, - and I forced myself to read this, even though there were warning pages in the report, saying "Don't read this unless you really want to know," since I wanted to know, - had her left arm come off at the shoulder, and both legs were shattered and she was sliced in two at the midriff. She was just completely smashed, and they only had half her jaw to do teeth comparisons on because of the impact of her head on the chair in front. I just hope to god she was dead before that happened.

I wept when I read that.

There are things that make you very angry when you read them, though. Like, for example, that airlines have a good idea of what is wrong with their planes. They literally measure the cost of paying out for a crash, using the median value of a human life, against the cost of fixing their fleets. If it's cheaper to just pay the lawsuits if a plane goes down, they will make that decision to just not do the upgrades.

Now, in this case, that was never proven, and the FAA was supposed to be watching over to ensure that life threatening upgrades were made on planes, but to know that this was even a consideration was enough to make anyone angry and give the Lawyers Carte Blanch to fuck with the airlines.

Want to know what the airlines consider the average life to be worth? It's between nine and nine and half million dollars, when being used in an airline crash lawsuit. I found out that's actually a radically different figure based on which country you are in, but in the US, that's what it is.

The airline settled, as they were always going to do, and we suddenly had about seven million dollars in our bank account, once the lawyers had taken their cut.

It was a hard six months, though, and there were times when only the kids got me through.

That's the thing I haven't really talked about. The kids went to counselling; I made sure of that, and so did their school. They adjusted. It took a long time, and there were many sleepless nights crying out for their mom.

I remember just sitting on the carpet of Leah's bedroom on the night of Auggie's birthday, hugging her for all I was worth, as she cried and shook from freshly re-opened grief. They'd made cards for her, and we'd taken them outside in the garden, where we'd spread Auggie's ashes. They were inconsolable for the rest of the evening, and I wasn't far off.

I just remember hugging her, and Abby coming in, bleary eyed, and climbing into the hug, and everyone crying, and me stroking the kid's hair and sobbing, "I miss her, too." I don't know if it was cathartic or healthy or not; it's just what happened.

There's a funny thing when you are the boss, you don't have anyone telling you to get your ass to therapy or to talk to someone. Irv was as broken up as I was, and he had his own demons to deal with. He stopped drinking, which was something, but as a support for me, yeah, no. He was great with the kids, but... I dunno, he just didn't open up to me that much. Now that I look back it's almost certainly because I didn't open up to him.

Chuck and Barb were aware that I was broken, somehow, that the spirit had left me, and kept trying to reach out, but I just didn't have anything to respond with. I didn't push them away, I just... was empty.

That's the way it was, though. I was so empty inside. All I felt was pain and anger and absence, if I felt anything at all. I knew what I had with Auggie. It wasn't the world's greatest love affair. Neither one of us was going to make ships set sail for battle, if you know what I mean, but it was ours. It was her and me, and we'd always known that. It was like a bedrock. You didn't need to acknowledge it that much, although we did as often as we thought about it, it was just there. Our relationship was good, the good outweighed the bad by a large margin, and we loved each other.

We really did. And when she was gone, I understood how much I took that from granted, and how much she did, too. It was always going to be there, and both of us took great comfort in our lives from that.

I'm making it out like we took each other for granted, which isn't true, I'm not doing a very good job of expressing how we felt about each other. We loved each other, and we knew we'd be there for each other as long as we lived. When she was gone, I was just... full of nothing.

I existed for work and for the kids. I was so dead inside. I went through the motions of life without actually living it, if that makes any sense. I didn't talk to anyone, I just "had to be strong for the kids."

I thought about suicide constantly. I knew Auggie would never have forgiven me if I'd followed through, but the absence of feeling anything except pain and memories was hard sometimes. Really hard. I remember once, when the kids were doing overnights with their friends, going down to the garage and just starting the car, and sitting there, wondering if I had the courage... ha! "Courage"? Shows you how far gone I was that I'd call it "Courage," to just let it go and drift away.

I didn't, obviously, but, there were a couple of other times like that. The kids generally kept me from taking the last step. Maybe it was that I was just too much of a coward. I can't decide which.

I had no interest in dating. Other women were... just other women to me. They weren't Auggie and therefore they were of peripheral interest. They might be important in some way, like a school teacher or client, but as a romantic target, there wasn't any chance of that. It was like that whole section of my life was just gone. I didn't spend any time thinking about it either.

And as for sex, yeah, that didn't happen at all. Any attempt at self-manipulation inevitably lead to thoughts of things Auggie and I had done, and that was an instant wilting moment. That just didn't happen either. It was all just switched off.

I even had a night out with Chuck where we sat in his back garden, Barb was off with the kids, doing god knows what, and we just sat all afternoon, drank beer and we talked. Well, Chuck talked. I listened and occasionally grunted agreement, and then somehow the conversation got around to sex and I don't know what happened, must have been the beer, and I broke down and told him I wasn't even taking matters into my own hands, so to speak. He sat there in stunned silence, and then started talking about physical and mental health and I remember feeling like I'd said too much, so I just thanked him for his concern and ordered an Uber to get home.

I didn't see or speak to them for over two weeks after that; I was just ashamed of my own weakness in spilling that. When we did see each other, I could see he wasn't going to mention it and I was just glad, because I sure wasn't.

I was fundamentally broken inside, and existing for the children, and utterly incapable of being able to actually do anything to change it, because I couldn't recognize what had happened to me. I was dimly aware I wasn't right, but as to doing anything about it...

I'd loved my wife. My other half, and I was utterly rudderless, going through the motions, making sure the kids were taken care of, and waiting for death. It sounds very dramatic, but that's essentially how I was.

And that went on for just over a year, before it changed.

Part 2 -- In the Air tonight.

It all came to a head one night when I was supposed to go over to Chuck and Barbs. The kids were with Irv, he tried to make sure that I had at least one evening a week free 'to myself'. Why, I've no idea. I didn't have anything to do that I needed a night a week, but whatever; I wasn't going to deprive him of the time with the kids.

They'd left that afternoon, Irv promising them ice cream if they were good, because apparently they were going to visit nineteen fifty four. As they'd left, I'd heard him talking about, "When I was yeet high to a sporal.." -- whatever the hell that meant.

I honestly just cried off going over Chuck and Barbs place, I needed to decide what I was going to do for Thanksgiving, did I try and learn to cook a turkey, get a precooked Ham, what? Planning a menu was not my forte, but there was no one else, so there I was, sitting with my iPad surfing websites with recipes and stuff like that, and then there was a ring on the doorbell.

I got up and padded to the door, and was surprised to see Chuck and Barb on the other side of the door. I winced. Barb did not look happy.

Well, into the breech. They knew I was home. The Beemer was in the driveway.

I opened the door and attempted a smile.

"Hey guys. You didn't have to..." I got out before Barb stepped up and just pushed past me.

"Can it, Jonas," she said brusquely, and she brushed past.

I glanced at Chuck who looked apologetically at me and shrugged.

I turned and followed Barb in, Chuck following behind.

"Right, sit your ass down. We are done with 'Mr. Nice guy'" demanded Barb, standing in the middle of the room, arms on her hips, glaring at me.

"Barb, I..." I started to say.

"Sit!" she barked. I did, involuntarily. When her dander was up, even though Barb was a slip of a girl, she was formidable. Chuck took the seat opposite, in the couch opposite. Barb waited till we were both seated, and then plonked herself next to Chuck, sitting on the edge of the couch, her pert ass barely on it.

"Right, we need to talk about this," she started.

"Look, I..." I interrupted, before stopping as she glared at me. Twice I hadn't managed to get more than two words out, now.

"Don't interrupt. You'll get your say."

I glanced at Chuck, who stared back implacably. No help there.

"Look, Jonas. We can see what this whole situation is doing to you, and we are, frankly, worried. We've given you time to grieve. We've given you time to get past the hurt and loss, but you aren't coming back to life. Do you know what your kids call you when they come to our place? 'Empty Dad.' They think you are an empty shell. There's nothing behind your eyes. You can't carry on this like this. You HAVE to snap out of it. Talk to someone. Anyone. Just... stop letting this destroy you. Auggie would never have allowed that if she was here. Well, she's not. I am, and I was her friend, and I'm not going to allow this to continue. Not anymore."

The whole speech was delivered really fast, almost staccato. She'd obviously been rehearsing what she wanted to say, and she wanted to get it out without me interrupting.

Chuck put up his hands in supplication, as I glanced over at him again.

"Dude, she's a little riled up, but... I gotta go with her on this. We are losing you, and I don't want to lose my friend. This is the shittiest thing that could have happened, I get that you didn't even get to say goodbye, but... you gotta do something here. Come back to us. Come back to your kids. I know you are trying for them, but there's just... nothing else to you. Barb's right, Auggie would be so angry at you right now."

He was probably right there, I reflected ruefully. Auggie hated self-pity. The thing is, I did feel like I actually had cause here.

I sighed. "I know you guys mean well... but... it's just so hard."

"I know," said Barb sympathetically, looking very intently at me. She got up, came and sat on the love seat next to me and grabbed my hand.

"I know, Jonas. I miss her more than you'll ever know, too. I know it's hard, but you can't be the dad those kids need the way you are. Auggie is gone, much as the world sucks for having an Auggie shaped hole in it, but now you have to step up and be twice the dad for those kids, and, for yourself. You think Auggie would want you to disappear up your own asshole?"

I sighed again, and I could feel that rattle in my chest that indicated that I was going to break down. I needed to get a grip.

"You guys just don't..." I started. "It's just so hard. I miss her so much. You know I've not changed the pillows slips on her side of the bed since she was gone? I need to smell her at night, to sleep."

My voice broke and it started to come out, the tears streaming down my face. I started shaking.

"Oh Jonas..." sobbed Barb, grabbing me and hugging me.

"I still pay for her phone account, so I can call and hear her voice mail message," I sobbed.

I was pathetic, but that's who I was at that moment.

Barb just kept hugging me, and Chuck had gotten up and was standing next to me, an arm around my shoulders. There were tears in his eyes, too.

Eventually, I got control of myself a bit, and Barb sensed it, pulling back and wiping her face, mascara streaming down her face.

"Right, well, that seals it. You are coming out with us on Friday. We have a party to go to, and you are coming. I'm not asking you Jonas. I'm telling you." She glanced at Chuck and I see a look I couldn't decipher pass between them.

"Get the kids to Irv that night. Be ready by seven. Dress up a bit. Casual. We are going to a friend's house who is having a party. We need to stop by and pick someone up on the way."