Me Without You (31 page)

When she was gone, there was a gaping hole in the house—and I felt it immediately. It was a grief-drenched day, the kind of day where the hours drag and dissolve into nothing all at once; the kind of day when you wake the next morning and think it was just a bad dream, until the grit in your eyes and the heaviness in your chest remind you otherwise.

It was days before I realised how lucky we were. All Lilah had hoped for was a pain-free passing and she got that. And even as I missed her so much that I felt an agonising physical pain within my chest, I knew that her end had been as perfect and as beautiful as she—and I—could ever have hoped.

T
ime now rushed
past as a train rushing through a station. I couldn’t stop the minutes, but I wanted to. Every minute I breathed through was taking me further away from the last I had with her. The only blessing was that I was in no state to register the details of each hour. At some point Peta told me she’d called the funeral director, and he came to the house the day after she died. He sat at the dining-room table and Peta made us all cups of herbal tea.

‘Lilah was in contact with me before she passed.’ He opened a manila folder and laid it on the table before us. ‘I know this is going to be uncomfortable to hear, but she has signed her body over to a university research program. She wanted her brain to be studied… something about understanding the experimental treatment she underwent?’

‘I knew,’ Peta rubbed her swollen eyes, and then looked at me. ‘She was worried you’d argue, Cal. I’m sorry that she didn’t tell you her yourself.’

I looked from Peta to the overweight, balding man whose name I’d already forgotten, and then back to Peta. I
did
want to argue. I wanted to lay her to rest somewhere, not let the thought cross my mind that some clumsy medical student might be cutting her open even as we spoke. I was outraged that she’d made this decision without me, embarrassed that she’d spoken to Peta and this stranger about it and that I had to only hear about it now. It was unfair, it was brutal, it was wrong. I was immediately terrified that she’d once again placed me in a position where there would be no closure. A sudden end to the sentence of the life of our time together, but no full stop.
Again
.

But the problem was, I was already defeated. I didn’t want
any
of this to happen, and this was just one more shitty thing in a run of utterly, utterly shitty things. I didn’t even have it in me to raise a protest.

‘So when there’s nothing to bury or cremate, how do we hold a funeral?’

‘We hold a memorial service.’ The funeral director shuffled the papers and picked up his pen. ‘Tell me about your Lilah.’

P
eta
and I sat on the couch that night. The television was off. For a while she held my hand and we stared at the floor in silence. Then she got up and filled two glasses with the $500 bottle of wine I’d purchased for our next Sunday dinner. It was rare and reputedly spectacular, and I’d been excited for Lilah to try it, and now she never would. Was it enough if I tasted it in her honour? Was I allowed to enjoy it if it was amazing?

We sipped the wine for a while in silence. It washed over my tastebuds like water, no pleasure at all registered within me. I looked at Peta.

‘Would you do it again?’

She was staring at the wine glass in her hand. When I spoke, she smiled at me very gently.

‘Do what, sweetheart?’

‘If you could go all the way back to that first day when you met James, before you were too attached, before it was too hard to walk away. Would you stay with him knowing all of the years that would stretch before you and all of the heartache they would contain?’

Peta smiled. God, she looked so much older than she had the first time I met her, but I saw the strength returning to her. Hour by hour, Peta was already healing. I felt like I was still being torn open, like every moment the pain was getting worse.

‘You might not feel it now, but you will soon enough. When the rawness heals, there’ll still be pain, but a thin layer of gratefulness will shield it. Eventually you’ll think fondly of the good times you shared with her, and how she changed you, and how it was all worthwhile. I promise, Callum. This is something I know with all of what’s left of my heart.’

I sat the wine down on the coffee table and buried my face in my hands and wept.

W
hen the afternoon
of the service came, I stood in the house and watched the cars arrive. The funeral director had arranged for staff to direct people, but I’m not sure any of us had anticipated the size of the crowd. The hire company had set up a large screen and hundreds of chairs, but even with half an hour left before the service was scheduled to start, the chairs were full and there was still a throng of people standing.

I hid behind a curtain, watching the shock of people fill Lilah’s favourite space and wondering who they all were. It felt strange that Lilah had been central to my very happiness, but I knew so little of her day-to-day existence beyond our months together. I bitterly regretted the shortness of our life together, and as I stood there watching the sum total of her relationships mingle outside without me, I felt more alone than I had in my entire life.

‘Come on, lovey.’ Peta approached me, dressed in an outfit that would have made a rainbow cringe. She wore bright red pants, a yellow shirt, a multicoloured neck tie, and as my gaze drifted down I noticed her feet—bare except for garishly bright polish on her toes. For a long moment I stared at her feet, and then sighed and bent down to remove my shoes.

‘Seems fitting, doesn’t it?’ she whispered.

‘I suppose it does.’

Alan Davis approached us as soon as we stepped outside. He was wearing a black suit and looked as though he could just have stepped from a court somewhere, except for the box of tissues in his hand and the fact his feet, too, were bare.

‘I had a feeling today would be rough.’ He choked the words out as he embraced Peta. ‘But I don’t think I had any idea how hard it would be.’

‘I know.’ Peta held him close, like he was a brother. ‘It’s like she’s looking down on us, cursing the electricity we’re wasting with the big screen and the PA.’

We all shared a weak laugh, and Alan shook my hand.

‘Are you holding up all right, Callum?’

‘I am.’ Was I lying? I wasn’t even sure; it just seemed the polite thing to say. ‘Are you ready to deliver your part of her eulogy?’

‘I learnt that if Lilah told me to do something, I did it, or suffer the consequences. So when her mother asked me to do this, I had a feeling I’d better not cross her.’ His puffy eyes crinkled when he smiled, and I smiled too.

As we walked to our seats at the front of the crowd, I met dozens of Lilah’s colleagues and opponents. There were judges and barristers and CEOs in suits, farmers in chambray shirts and canvas trousers, activists in hemp shirts and dreadlocks. A startling number of people made comments about her being a terrible thorn in their side—one that they were so very sorry to lose.

Just as the celebrant suggested I start to move towards my seat, I saw a small group of familiar faces on the other side of the large crowd. I watched them in silence for a moment, wanting to be sure that I wasn’t imagining their presence, then I pushed my way to them.

Will and Ed were standing side by side, stiff and awkward as they looked at the garden. Karl’s hands were behind his back and he was staring at the ground. Not far from them, most of my staff, as well as the entire Tison Creative board and their spouses waited.

I approached my brothers first. It was hard to breathe, and harder to believe they were really there. The relief was almost overwhelming. It had actually occurred to me to call them, even since her passing, but what a conversation that would have been.
Hi, Will, Ed and Ed’s wife whose name I can’t remember. The girlfriend I loved but barely told you about just died. Fancy a visit?

‘What are you doing here?’

I’d always thought Ed looked a lot like me, if someone compressed him into a shorter package. He was nowhere near as tall as me, but much stockier. He embraced me as soon as I spoke and I held him close, trembling with emotion.

When he pulled away, Will took his place for a moment. Will was tall, like me, and just a little chubby these days, which surprised me. How many years had it been since I last saw them? I was sure they’d each visited Sydney since Mum and Dad died… but was that three years ago, or four, or had it really been a decade? When we ended our embrace, Ed cleared his throat and offered me an explanation.

‘Lilah emailed her old boss and asked him to track us down. She didn’t want you to be alone.’

I pressed my fist against my mouth and nodded. I should have known she’d take matters into her own hands if I didn’t do something.
Lilah always got her way
.

‘How you holding up, Callum?’ Karl asked. I took a shuddering breath and shook my head.

‘I’m okay… I just… thanks so much for coming.’ It was a hoarse whisper, but it was the best I could do. ‘Truly, I mean it. You have no idea what it means to me to have you all here.’

I had
needed
someone there for me, and now I had it—not just someone, but a whole team of people. Jesus, the twins didn’t even know her, nor did any of my colleagues—they were here only to support me. I glanced back to the front of the chairs, where my slide show was flashing onto the screen. Lilah, so many breathtakingly beautiful shots of her, as a child, as a teen, as an adult—and then as the frail waif I’d loved these last few months.

I turned back to my brothers, and in their concerned gazes I saw my parents.

‘Please, let’s catch up afterwards. I think I’m going to need a beer.’

T
he celebrant read
some silly poems Peta had found and played a few songs for quiet moments of reflection, one of which Peta of course sung to. Her voice wavered but she didn’t miss a single note, even as the tears coursed down her face. Time and time again I thought to lean over and whisper to Lilah about how her mother was
ever the performer,
even under these circumstances, and my next thought would be that Lilah was really gone, and my less-than-hilarious commentary would forever remain unsaid.

We had roughly divided the eulogy—Peta would speak about Lilah’s younger years, Alan about her professional work, and it would be my job to speak about her as a woman. When Peta took to the lectern to speak, she was surprisingly eloquent and stoic, and managed to hold herself together bar for a few dignified tears here and there. If Lilah had been sitting next to me, I had a feeling she’d be heckling her mother, demanding more. As heartfelt as Peta’s eulogy was, the raw emotion I’d witnessed over the previous days was now well and truly restrained. She was only performing a part in a musical she’d written about the grief she’d suffered over the past days.

Alan followed, and through tears, rattled off a seemingly endless list of causes Lilah had taken on over the past few years. There were sad laughs from the crowd when he spoke of her less likely wins, and then a quiet hush when he spoke of the legacy she’d left at the firm.

‘I didn’t want an environmental law wing. None of the partners did. There’s no money in it for a start, besides which, when she pitched the bloody idea, Saoirse was one of our top-earning commercial lawyers and didn’t know a tree from a lizard. She just had a way of getting what she wanted… and it was probably the best crazy idea I’ve ever given in to in my life.’

When Alan sat down, everyone looked at me. The walk from my chair to the lectern was a marathon.

‘I feel so conflicted, speaking for Lilah today.’ I looked up at the crowd, and focused on the only faces I knew—Lynn, Leon and Nancy in the front, my colleagues and brothers at the back. ‘I knew Lilah for less than a year, and I don’t know many of you here at all.’

The faces before me blurred. I swallowed and looked down at my notes.

‘But if I know anything, I know that the love Lilah and I shared was a beacon of light to both of our lives. We didn’t have time on our side, but we did have a relationship that renewed my faith in pretty much everything worth believing in.’

On the screen behind me, a single image was now projected. It was Lilah, standing in the garden that day months earlier, with her arms full of vegetables, a smear of dirt on her cheek and her feet inevitably bare. She was a mess—her hair an unruly halo around her radiant smile. I turned back to the photo and that was it—I, the man who didn’t even cry in the privacy of his home when his parents died, was weeping in front of several hundred people—and worse still, I wasn’t going to be able to pull myself together enough to say any more of the beautiful words I’d written.

Not that it mattered in the end because I think my photo said enough.

I
f you’d asked
me six months earlier to list what mattered to me most, family wouldn’t have even made the top ten. But everything had changed.

After the memorial, the twins and I retreated to the courtyard of a small wine bar in Gosford. Ed suggested we go inside the house, but I desperately needed a change of scenery and I didn’t want to watch the garden drain of mourners and become empty again.

We made an unlikely group in the late-afternoon bar scene: me, red-eyed and fragile, sitting between my two brothers in silence. The bar was quiet, but the other patrons were all young professionals celebrating the end of the working week. We sat in cane chairs in what was left of the sun and I leant mine right against a brick wall so that I could feel the warmth radiating from it. I was colder than the day commanded and it kept reminding me that Lilah would never be warm again.

We ordered drinks and sat in silence until they arrived. Will raised his glass. ‘To Lilah. It sounds as if she was a beautiful, remarkable woman. May her legacy live on.’

I raised the glass of scotch he’d ordered me and nodded. ‘To Lilah,’ I whispered. ‘And to family.’

The scotch burned its way to my empty stomach and the conversation finally began to flow.