The Last Love Note

by Emma Grey

It’s a converted fishing shack from the sixties. Rustic, cozy, and extended in sections, with much of it genuinely untouched rather than deliberately retro. Deep velvet couches sit on wooden floorboards beside the freestanding fireplace. Mismatched bookshelves line the walls, crammed with dog-eared copies of Grisham and Christie and Steel. Old boardgames are stacked in frayed boxes with split corners, held together by masking tape. Decks of playing cards wrapped in rubber bands lean against DVDs of Richard Curtis rom-coms, Midsomer Murders, and Yes Minister. Macramé decorations, crafted long before Pinterest made it cool again, hang from pieces of driftwood on the walls. Nothing is “on trend.” It’s as if generations of a big extended family have decorated this house gradually across decades, infusing it in sunscreen and stories, sleep-ins, and growing pains until it is impossible to tell where the family ends and the house begins.

Cam’s notes, fixed all around my own house and in my wallet and car and everywhere else, have kept him visible in my life. They’ve scaffolded my grief. Provided hard evidence that he lived, and thought, and wrote. I wasn’t prepared for the unexpected lightness of being here without them. Tangible relief from the daily onslaught of memories that have been suffocating the fire of my grief, holding me at a place in time when he was still here, instead of letting it rip.

I close my eyes at that first whisper of ocean spray on my face. It’s an instant relaxant. This is exactly where I’m meant to be, I’m certain.

That’s a game I like to play. Others look for feathers or rainbows or coins. I look for unexpected magic. Small miracles sparking out of black holes.

Hugh follows me out onto the balcony. He leans on the banister, inhales the salt air, and exhales about six months’ worth of stress from the office. Compared with the dryness of Canberra, the post-storm humidity seeps into your lungs here, even in winter. The air pulses with the invisible vibrations of life and the ocean itself seems to reach over the rise, caressing your skin with its spray—pulling you toward it, irresistibly, like the moon pulls tides.

Each time I stand on sand, near waves, I feel a tiny bit more human. More myself. Or some new version of me that’s a little less heartbroken and a little more together. There’s something about the unstoppable rhythm, no matter how bad things get, that comforts me.

It’s a lot like grief, standing here. You’re dragged from the shallows into the depths where it’s dark and heavy and you can’t see or hear or breathe. There were times over the last two years when, if I screamed, grief would swallow up the noise. It was bigger than my voice. A whirl of emotion for which there’s no sufficient word in the entirety of the English language.

There was so much help in the beginning. They say grief changes your address book and it surprised me who stepped up, and how. I found that I’d completely underestimated Canberra, making the classic mistake of thinking it was a sterile city, full of politicians. Instead, we were embraced by new friends, friends of friends, neighbors, strangers.… And it went far beyond casseroles and lasagna. It was sitting beside me at the bank while I closed his account. Fixing towel rails and running loads of recycling to the tip. Late-night hot chocolates in pajamas when we couldn’t stop crying. A composer friend heard about Cam’s death while she was on an interstate bus and was moved to write a piece of music, then and there, that captured the full force of our love so exquisitely, I had it played at the funeral. And then that first Christmas, a group of random friends joined forces over social media; when Charlie and I drove in after the end-of-year concert at childcare, our whole house was twinkling in fairy lights. In that moment, I felt like the richest woman in the world.

again. Normally I go away for only one night. Day one of three feels so much more expansive. It’s been the first opportunity to really gasp oxygen away from the child I’ve protected from the worst of my grief, all this time. Grief that is rushing to the surface safely in Charlie’s absence. I can’t upset him from here. Can’t scare him. I can fully lose it and he won’t know. I feel like I’ve never had this much space, nor this much emotion to tip into it.

Only fragile, desperate individuals dive fully clothed into oceans and sit in showers wearing work clothes on business trips.

“Hugh!” But it’s too late. He steps into the shower and sits down beside me, propping himself against the wall under the water, suit pants wet, white business shirt clinging to his body like mine is to me, water dripping off his dark hair as he looks at me in silence. I am floored. Nobody has ever done something so, self-sacrificially kind. Hugh doesn’t do stunts, and this definitely qualifies as one.

Eventually the water starts running cold and he reaches up and shuts the taps off and we’re bedraggled and dripping and I realize this is one of the most intimate moments of my life, second only to giving birth in front of Cam.

“Anyway, how was your day?” she had finally asked him, almost as an afterthought, having thoroughly exhausted her list of complaints. “My father died,” he’d told her. Grace and I nearly died ourselves when she told us, from vicarious mortification. There, but for the grace of God … Ever since, before one of us is about to throw ourselves into a long-winded but not life-or-death story, we check that this isn’t an “Alice O’Donoghue situation,” before safely proceeding. “All is well here,” Grace assures me. “Please go on.”

It wasn’t like that. Not any of it. But sometimes it’s hard to wedge the truth into Grace’s imagined narrative.

Someone shared a psychological model with me once about the inner circle of grief. It was all about supporting the people closer to the center of the loss than you are, dumping your own stuff on those further out in the circle from you.

Whenever people talk about family trauma, it often seems to go the other way. Trauma in the older generation, inherited by the younger. People talk less about instances in which something deeply upsetting travels back up the metaphorical umbilical cord and infects the mother. There are thirty-two years between Mum and me. Is that enough time for an adult to develop the wisdom and pragmatism to process their adult child’s loss? Not just an adult child. A grandson, too. I remember asking my grandfather once when you start to feel old in your mind. He told me you never do. Mum must have been at such a loss when life threw this at us.

Dogs know things. Knightley seemed to know Cam was sick before we did—he got clingy with him, weeks before Cam’s diagnosis. And I think his heart failed in part because his beloved owner was gone. I hadn’t been prepared for the double whammy of grief I would experience. All the way to the vet’s, I was having flashbacks to that heroic moment when Cam swung the car around, wishing I could swing it around now. Pushing myself to drive forward, only to sever another link between us, as if Cam’s death and Knightley’s were inextricably tied.

People blunder through in early grief. “I know just how you feel,” they say, when you’ve lost a human being. “I lost my pet.” At the time, I found it breathtakingly offensive. But the day Knightley died, the grief was off the charts. The aftershocks turned out to be nowhere near as powerful as losing Cam; the bounce-back was light years faster. But that initial passing devastated me in a way I hadn’t anticipated.

fluorescent lights. It’s not about appearance. Not completely. I’ve done enough work on body acceptance since having Charlie and losing Cam to be grateful for a body that gave someone life and has also managed to keep itself alive, despite all the trauma and stress it was forced through.

the human body that transcends image. Once you’ve watched a strong man fade, when you’ve borne witness to a body in peak physical condition spiraling until it’s unable to will itself into one more day, it’s harder to care whether breastfeeding has deflated your boobs or a miracle growing within you has graffitied your skin. And when you’ve spent a few minutes with a body that no longer houses a soul, so still and lifeless and empty, you really see it for what it is, and how incredible it has been, no matter how it looks.

like a hypocrite. With confidence issues. I’d reached that comfortable place with Cam where he loved me the way Mark Darcy loved Bridget Jones: just as I was. He’d seen me in the delivery suite during childbirth and looked at me like every moment of that experience brought us closer together. Since

but now I have a vague recollection that there are things a body can do beyond haul sadness around. And a vague idea that perhaps I might want to do those things again one day.

“If I didn’t volunteer here six days a week, I’d spend all my time staring into the space he once took up in my life.” The space he once took up. Space that can never be occupied. Space destined to be carried forever, everything else forced to expand and grow around it.

moment. “Take it from a very old woman. No amount of sadness is going to bring your husband back. Did he want you to be happy when he was alive?” “Blissfully.” She smiles. “Don’t take that away from him, then, in death.” I’d never considered it quite this way. Staying sad and half-living this life since he died. It’s all I’ve been able to manage and what I thought people expected. But it’s not me. Am I betraying his greatest wish for me?

The part of me that wants a generous donation to the cause is at war with the part of me that wants a block of chocolate and six hours in my PJs in front of Netflix. When did I lose my love of nightlife and fundraising galas and dancing? I used to lose myself in the rhythm of music, not long before I lost myself in a different way to Cam’s illness and the baby I will always wonder about. Is my spark ever going to return?

Not used to being this dressed up anymore, I place a hand on my chest, close my eyes, and inhale deeply to settle myself down. It’s a technique I learned in an online parent workshop from the grief camp for kids who’ve lost a parent, but I can’t dwell on that or I’ll get upset again.

I don’t want anyone looking at me, not least Hugh, and feeling sorry for me. This is the very thing he knows I go to great lengths to avoid, in case I slip into a sinkhole of despair and never climb back out of it, and he is looking apologetic. He’s probably sorry this is exposing a wound. What people don’t get is the wound is always exposed. You can’t be reminded of something when it’s all you think about, even after you learn to go about the business of the day simultaneously.

The air is charged with a type of awkwardness I’ve come to accept. I’m forever having to smooth this over for people, help them navigate the topic and reassure them it’s okay. On top of everything else involved in grief work, it’s just another layer of difficult.

Chapters is a new bar on the corner of an old street in the redeveloped central suburb of Kingston, not far from Hugh’s apartment. It’s tastefully art deco–inspired, with worn leather couches, colored-glass panels, metal accents, and high ceilings. The lighting is warm and the music soft enough to speak over. I think I’m in love with the place and, best, the drinks are named after classic authors.

of note until my eyes rest back on Hugh. He’s watching me from the other end of the couch, one leg crossed lazily over his knee at the ankle, arm spread along the back of the couch. He is a picture of someone perfectly at ease, starkly contrasting with me, the picture of anxiety.

“The point is, it’s your life. Your decision. Your timing. You might resist it now, but you’ll know the moment when it comes, and not before. And then you’ll realize the bigger risk is not taking a risk.”

listening to an episode of the podcast So You Want to Be a Writer. It’s one of hundreds of interviews with successful writers about how they got their big breaks. From what I can tell the secret seems to be to put actual words on pages. Any words at first, regardless of quality. If only the writing process was as easy as it feels when I’m emailing Grace chaotic stories about Mum or Charlie or work. Or when I’m writing about Cam in my journal and the story tells itself, like it’s downloaded from some deep, subconscious source.

Katherine, but manages to hold her tongue. I think of the hundreds of episodes on the writers’ podcast. Hundreds of other authors who were no doubt equally scared to put themselves out there and risk being shot down in the flames of criticism and rejection. But they put themselves out there anyway, didn’t they? That’s the difference between them and me.

A little bit broken, perhaps, like Mum said, when he’s meant to be whole. Always emotionally together. Hugh is the lighthouse. Never the storm.

“With Charlie and the house and all of Cam’s notes at home, being here I finally feel uncaged,” I reply. “I feel like Kate, the woman. Not the widow. Not the wife. Not the mum. Not the employee. Just a woman, with a blank page in front of her.” He nods. The emptiness of that blank page that was so confronting two years ago is starting to feel like this delicious invitation to write the next part of my story. A tantalizing glimpse of how it might look to have purpose and forward momentum into a new life.

I’ve been worried for weeks that he’s well beyond being at work, but, mental health–wise, it’s the best thing for him. Gives him purpose. So much of his identity is wrapped up in being a brilliant, academic thinker. He’s clung to it. Perhaps longer than he should have.

I look up from the cards, eyes swimming, and watch him methodically packing up his beloved library. Packing up his life. Giving up. And I weep for him.

appear. I’ve seen more sunrises since Cam died than I’d seen in my life up until then. They’re a promise; no matter how bad everything is, the world keeps turning. What was Rachel Lynde’s advice to Anne of Green Gables? “The sun will go on rising and setting whether you fail in geometry or not.” That used to bring me comfort during math-inspired freak-outs in high school. My current self shakes her head at the naïveté of my Teen Self. Life was going to get so much bigger and more anxiety-inducing than how badly you do in algebra, girl.…

I hope he realizes what he’s dealing with here: a widow’s heart. It’s just like a normal heart, but it’s made of a million shattered fragments, patched together in a mosaic. Reclaimed glass. Transparent. Easily broken.

I feel like I’ve spent the last four years on the back foot, constantly in response mode, never ahead of the game. I don’t want to do this anymore. How long is it reasonable to drag out your recovery from grief until you’re expected to get your act together again? Or maybe that’s where I’m going wrong. You don’t recover from it. There is no “healed” moment. You just absorb it into your new life, somehow, and go from there.

“Weighed down by endless deadlines at work and swamped by a crumbling house that’s less ‘flip’ and more ‘flop,’ she discovers her teenage diary and realizes she’s achieved all her dreams. She has the man, the family, the career, and even the white picket fence, so why isn’t she happy, the way her teenage self predicted?

it occurs to me that Hugh and I, perhaps for the longest time, have been involved in a dance, choreographed by my grief. It’s been me leading it, every step of the way. Always choosing the music. Always picking the pace. He’s followed so closely that there have been times when it’s felt like he was the one leading. The day I lost the baby. My first day back at work after Cam’s funeral. First year back, probably. Each time I lost my way, everything kept turning, like magic. And now he’s sitting across from me, looking at me in a way that he never has before—not once in four years, until the airport yesterday morning. But the familiar music has stopped. The dance has faltered. And neither of us knows the new steps.

I attend a session called “Almost Fiction” about how to take your own experiences and pack them into a story that isn’t exactly yours. It’s “writing what you know” without selling your own soul.

“Fill your book with details and anecdotes so personal and real your friends will question whether the entire thing is true,” the presenter advises. “If they’re not doing that from the very first chapter, you’re not infusing your fictional story with enough convincing fact.”

The fact that I’m even here, waiting for words to appear on a screen, speaks volumes about the state of play. This is my dream, this festival. But I’m just as excited about the idea of Hugh’s incoming messages dangling on my phone. If you can’t lose your head a little after you’ve been dragged through hell, when can you?

Don’t stop living, just because I do.

I feel like he’s slipping through my fingers before he’s even in my arms.

Grief is strange, when it happens in advance. Since Cam’s diagnosis two years ago, I’ve been processing this loss every day. I thought the time we had to accept it would make it easier. Sudden death must be so blindsiding in comparison. But now I’m here, I’m blindsided anyway, because I never truly believed this would unfold. Never stopped hoping for a miracle, even though we were so obviously not going to get one.

I’m struck by the fact that Cam won’t do that, ever again. Won’t wander into the world. Or feel the crispness of the night air, which makes me shiver as it hits my skin. How does my body even know to continue on? To respond to the cold. To feel. To be?

Hugh wants to lift all these burdens but can’t. He should be out of his comfort zone but isn’t. After he’s coached me through making the few essential calls, he tells me there’s nothing more I need to do tonight. He sits across from me beside the fire. There’s total silence, except the crackling of the wood in the flames and the sound of my heart breaking.