The Poppy Fields

by Nikki Erlick

Because they have each been told, over and over, that the only way out of a hardship is through. But nobody ever told them that they had to stay awake.

“Grief. The moment when you realize that your world and the world are entirely separate. When your world has come to a grinding halt, when you’re drowning and flailing about, and the world just rolls on without you.”

The thing about grief is that it’s never just grief. For Sasha, grief was also fear. Fear that she might never love again, fear of her unknown future. For Ray, grief was also anger. Anger at the way he’d lost his brother, at the place he blamed for taking him. And, for both, grief was also guilt. It was living with the question: How much was my fault? It was wondering what you could have done differently.

The person who was—as Ava had at least been honest about—currently residing at the Poppy Fields right now. And who was—as Ava had also said—likely to be awake by the time they arrived. Because she had been there for much longer than a month. And she’d been awake the whole time.

Even though we both lost the same person, it’s not the same experience. It’s lonely.

In life, there would always be loss, and the desire to sleep through the pain.

She told Ava that she would be all right, because a tree can still grow tall and strong even after a branch has been cut. But this wasn’t just a branch that’s been lost, Ava thought. This was a root. An essential part of herself.

But I’ve learned that the heart is a very big place, with room for many loves inside. And when one of those loves is lost, sometimes it’s too much to ask all the other loves to make up for the one that’s missing. The heart needs time to reassemble itself, to learn how to beat again when a part of it is gone.

“You know, one of the last things we studied in class . . . or, well, one of the last things I paid attention to in class . . . was this week on Greek mythology, and I remember learning about the Fates, these three powerful women, who gave every human a length of string that measured how long they would live. After their string got snipped, that was it.” Sky shook her head. “And it finally hit me that I was already, like, at least twenty percent of the way through my string. And this is the good part of the string. The part when I’m luckily still young and healthy and unattached, and I can do whatever I want. I guess I’m afraid of looking back on these years and feeling like I wasted that time. I’m afraid of missing out on life.”

‘You’re braver than you believe, and stronger than you seem, and smarter than you think.’”

How Ray hoped that all the clichés were true, that we see our full life before our eyes. That we’re able to look back and remember the beginning and the middle and the end, and that it doesn’t feel like a series of distinct events, but that it feels like a story, a journey, that now makes sense as a whole. Everything you learned and felt and experienced, all the people who shaped your life, all the people whose lives you shaped, the difference between the old world that once existed before you and the new world you now leave behind, the world that is irrevocably changed because you were a part of it.

That the Poppy Fields is this special place where they can be surrounded by other people who share their pain. Maybe the only place in the world where they wouldn’t feel so alone. Isn’t that what everybody wants, in the end? Just to feel a little less lonely?

Almost instantly, Ava’s eyes and lips and nostrils felt dry. Everything even smelled dry, if dryness were truly a scent. It smelled like sand, like dust, like something left baking in the sun for too long.

It was utterly overwhelming in its near-endless state, much like the desert outside. So many sleeping humans, in neatly organized lines, all in single beds, all practically indistinguishable, all dressed in the same bright set of crimson red pajamas. “Holy crap,” Ray whispered. “It’s like a . . .” “A poppy field,” said Ava.

There was only one thing I wanted,” said Donna. “I wanted my husband with me again. And the Fields couldn’t give that to me. No matter what people say about that place, that it’s evil or unnatural, that it’s magical or miraculous . . . there’s no real magic or miracles there. They can’t bring somebody back.”

“Losing someone . . . it’s not like a sickness or a temporary rough patch you’re trying to deal with. Even if you sleep for two months and wake up and feel less awful, the work isn’t done. This doesn’t end. This is the rest of your life. There’s no getting over, there’s just . . . getting on. Figuring out who you are now, because you sure as hell aren’t the same person as before. But maybe that doesn’t have to be all bad.”

Other landscapes announce their vitality, they boast of their abundance, they make it obvious to all who visit that they are full of life, with their vibrant flowers and rushing streams and singing, swinging creatures. The desert appears empty and inhospitable, it refuses to make a show of itself, it leaves one wondering if life can even be found out there at all. And yet, of course, there is life. Perhaps the most adaptable, most resilient life there is.

“After he died, I just had to think . . . if it hurts this much now,” Donna said, “then I must have been pretty darn lucky.”

I remember my mother saying once that death anoints all sinners as saints. You read any eulogy or obituary, and you’d think that anyone who ever died was perfect. When someone’s gone, it’s easy to forget all the flaws, all the fights. But . . . that flattens them. It makes them boring.

“Some days are gonna hurt more than others,” said Donna. “You did good, just getting yourself this far. But you’ve still got a road ahead of you, and it’s long and windy as hell, with switchbacks and curves that’ll make it feel like you don’t know if you’re coming or going. So, you just drive it as fast or as slow as you need, don’t give a damn what other folks think . . . Just don’t stop driving, okay?”

Ellis had already come to believe that we all grieve on our own. Our love is ours alone to give and ours alone to mourn, and in the end, at the Poppy Fields, everyone sleeps alone.

Maybe everything that’s happened in our past doesn’t have to dictate the future,”

Love makes people do wild things, things they can’t understand, things they may have sworn they would never, ever do. So, were they ever to lose that love, I imagine they might do just about anything. But here’s the thing: They haven’t lost that love. They’ve lost the physical, the visible, the tangible layer of love, but not the love itself. The love itself endures.

Love and loss, joy and pain, are two sides of the same coin, are they not? How could we ever banish one without endangering the other?

It’s been said, many times, that we all die twice. The first, the actual moment of passing, and the second, the last time someone living says our name aloud. But what does it mean to speak of someone without igniting any emotions? Memories without feelings are mere facts, cold and lifeless. It’s not enough just to say the names of our lost. The names must have power, must grab hold of our hearts, must remind us and teach us and inspire us.

Love changes us. It strengthens us, and dents us, and lifts us, and guides us. If we sleep, if we suffer the side effect, if we’re no longer shaped by the people we love . . . who are we?

When they pressed these pictures against the wall, Ray thought, perhaps the sleepers said goodbye. Perhaps they wondered why these loved ones had left them, some willingly but most with no choice. Perhaps they whispered, It’s okay, even when it wasn’t. Perhaps they told them thank you.

And yet they were loved so deeply, so fiercely, that someone was driven to choose this strange and challenging path in their absence.

If Ellis and Ava had not appeared at that moment, and Ray had stayed to examine the wall even further, he might have noticed that one face appeared twice. He might have realized that the boy in the bright green baseball jersey was also the boy in the black-and-white photograph clipped from his hometown paper. And, maybe, Ray might have realized that two people slept at the Poppy Fields after the loss of the same little boy. That these photos were the offerings of both a mother and a medic, of Jamie Roberts’s wife and Ray’s brother, Johnny. The last two people to hold the boy’s hands.

This wall that was a tapestry of love and loss, a history of joy and suffering. A map of a world that sometimes felt too unbearable to live in. And a record of all the people who chose to build a home here anyway.

The learnings and memories, like lyrics to a song, stored deep inside of us. But what makes certain knowledge impervious to time, unable to be erased? Does all our learned experience and information leave such traces in our bodies, remnants hidden and waiting until finally called out from within?

This was the other side of love. This was the aftermath, the cost, the opposite end of the bargain. This was the dirty, damp confetti and trampled flower petals, stamped into the muddy ground and tossed about by the wind, long after the parade had ended. This was the sad, lonely echo in the hall, now that the dance was over. Here, in this room, was grief. But grief was love in its second shape.

Ray says it’s been a while now, after sleeping, since he’s felt the urge to scream. That his body doesn’t feel quite as clenched in outrage all the time. But the absence of Johnny still feels like the air: sometimes you notice it more, like when the wind picks up or the sky feels particularly humid and heavy, but always, you’re at least somewhat aware of its presence. You’ll never exist without it.

You know that the world doesn’t always work well, that it often feels downright broken, but when the fiery sun melts into the calm waves of water and the clouds turn to peach and berry sorbet, you can’t help but feel that this one thing went right.