One Moment

by Becky Hunter

‘Yeah. Yeah, she’ll be okay.’ Because that was what you said, wasn’t it? No matter the way the panic was coursing through your body, sending tiny, aggressive bolts of electricity to your nerves, no matter the way your throat was constricting, making it hard to speak at all. When you were trying to reassure each other, that is what you said.

Scarlett had been gone for two weeks now. Two weeks to the day. Evie had taken leave from work temporarily, and the time had felt both impossibly long and like she’d only just blinked since that moment in the hospital.

But these two weeks she’d welcomed that feeling of being pulled under, like her head was full of cotton wool, because that sense of surrealness, of not being quite there, was all that was keeping her going.

Because this was her one, wasn’t it? It shouldn’t be Scarlett, she thought, as bitterness rose up in her. It shouldn’t be Scarlett’s funeral that she had to go through first.

She took a breath, felt it hitch, tried to shove down the sob. She’d sobbed solidly for the first few days, had felt them racking through her, tearing her from the inside out until it had felt like there would be nothing left of her. During the funeral she had tried not to cry because she knew that once she did, she wouldn’t be able to stop – and she had to give her speech.

Because it was so much easier to have someone to hate, someone to blame, than it was to feel like it was the universe itself that had snatched Scarlett away from her.

‘Why?’ ‘Because…’ He blows out a breath. ‘Because I know what it’s like to feel sad and alone.’ I think of my funeral. Been to many, have you? One. ‘And I might not be able to help with the sad part,’ he continues, ‘but, at least for now, I can do something about the alone.’

You could ignore it all and pretend you were here, alone. And for the first time since Scarlett had died, that aloneness did not feel terrifying. It did not feel lonely.

Because it was worth it – this grief – to have had Scarlett in her life.

‘A “friend” doesn’t really sum it up. People get it if you say a parent or sister or partner. But a “friend”, well, I don’t know. To so many people, it doesn’t seem strong enough. But she was…’ She waved a hand in the air, thinking of the right word. ‘My person.’ She smiled softly. ‘Like Meredith and Cristina in Grey’s Anatomy.’

‘It won’t go away, that hurt you feel,’ she says, matter-of-factly. ‘It is stupid for anyone to tell you that time will heal all the wounds or that you’ll move on from it. You won’t. Not completely.’ I know she’s thinking about her son, Nick. ‘But you will learn to live with it.’ She squeezes Evie’s hands, before dropping them. ‘It will be a part of you always, and you will come out the other side of this changed, and that’s okay. But it’s possible to learn how to keep a space for her in your heart and not let it crush you. I promise you, you can learn that.’

So because there is no way to change anything, I do my best to be grateful for what I did have, and I try to keep the good parts of him alive with me. To remember more than the end.’