Buried in Sunshine (2 page)

The second floor of the house is mainly bedrooms
and the
special
bathroom. My Mother’s room—whose name is
Susan by the way (such an unremarkable name, I’ve wondered if it
ever bothered her) —exists on the second floor along with Alexis’s
old bedroom. Neither my mother nor I go in that room anymore. The
door stays shut. The bathroom Alexis killed herself in remains in
use, however, it has a fresh coat of sea-foam colored paint over
its walls…I suppose it was an attempt by my mother to fix
things—like sea-foam paint is some kind of emotional band-aid.
There is a third smaller room on the second floor. This room was to
be my father’s office. It still has his leather brown office chair
and desk set up, only after all these long years—it has become more
of a storage room for boxes and bins. I imagine the chair and desk
are sad as they sit in there, buried beneath forgotten or unneeded
possessions. After all, like me and Alexis, they were both
abandoned as well.

The first floor contains a kitchen that my
father was kind enough to update with all the newest models of
appliances (newest eighteen years ago) and new cabinets and marble
countertops. It also contains the dining room which we never eat at
anymore; we stopped eating there before I hit my teens. The family
room with the large l-shaped leather couch and shelves of books
resides just beyond the door to the spiral staircase. From the
kitchen, a small alcove is situated where one can gain access to
the basement. I do not like the basement. The basement is a dimly
lit dingy expanse that seems to stretch on further than actual
house itself. It is a series of purposeless small rooms and
hallways that almost form a small maze. I suppose in early days of
the house it was used for storage of items, maybe farm equipment
and grain—now it just sits mostly empty. There are some old things
down there, a rusty silver bicycle, some broken wooden dining
chairs, some old clay pots, and a pile of cobwebbed and dirty
canning jars.

My mother works every weekday as an office
assistant for an insurance agent from around seven in the morning
until five at night. She always pressures me to ride along with her
into city—we live approximately fifteen miles from the nearest
large city (we are rather rural but not too far to be considered
too rural.) She wants me to see my therapist more. I know she means
well, but I could care less. I often come up with excuses: “I am
not read today. I do not feel good. I will go next time... I do not
need to go. I do not need any help.” Often she just shakes her head
and gives up and the conversation ends there. I am not great at
giving excuses, but with her willingness to concede so easily, I am
never forced to come up with anything better. She usually makes it
home around five-thirty and after that slips out of her work
clothes and into her casual wear. After making sure I eat something
she heads out to the bars. Sometimes she comes back around midnight
and gets some sleep before work. Sometimes she doesn’t make it in
until
much
later. I stopped caring.

From two floors below me, I can hear the faint
ring of the telephone. I place my socks against the slick wooden
floor, careful not to slip, and press my weight against my sore
legs. I should get more exercise. I walk to the door in no
particular hurry. I know that by the time I reach the phone the
caller will have long since given up. I hear the last of the
ringing as I reach the main floor of the old house. I stand beside
the phone. We do not have an answering machine—I do not even own a
cell phone. Like I mentioned before, mom likes to live like we are
poor. We do not even own at television. I know that if it is
important they will call back and if they do not, I will be making
the trek back upstairs to my bedroom.

The phone rings once more. I pick up.

“Hello?” I ask quietly. I have never been fond
of speaking over the phone. In fact, I hate it.

“Yes, we are trying to reach Emma Corbeau.” A
female answers on the other end.

“This is,” I shortly answer. I have not received
a call in months.

“I’m really sorry Emma,” The voice begins as she
switches to a kind and gentle tone. “I… I am a nurse at Alchemilla
Medical Hospital here in city, your mother was admitted after
collapsing at work… She didn’t… She didn’t make it.”

“What?” I simply ask as I feel as though the
floor beneath me is going to swallow me whole. “What do you mean
she didn’t make it?”

“I’m so sorry,” the nurse speaks, “She died. She
just collapsed, she was brought here but it was too late…there was
nothing that the doctors could do.”

“Died?” I mutter in a stupor.

“Do you have any family that can bring you into
city—is there anyone else that we should notify?” The nurse
asks.

“It’s just me now… I don’t have the car.”

“Hold on,” the nurse says as I can hear the
voice of a man speaking in the background.

“Emma…,” A man says as he takes over the
conversation.

“Yeah,” I whisper, not knowing what more I could
state at that moment.

“This is Brian Metcalfe—I’m very sorry that you
had to find out this way,” The man says as he attempts to speak in
a tone which I imagine he would find comforting to me. The truth is
no tone or manner of speaking will bring me back from my sense of
complete withdrawal from reality. “I was your mother’s boss—you
remember me right? I want you to just stay there and sit and wait.
I will be there as quickly as I can, alright? Everything is going
to be okay.”

“Sure,” I quietly speak as I wrap a bit of the
phone cord around my arm. I hear a click on the other end followed
by the familiar drone of the dial tone. I collapse to the floor as
the phone crashes down beside my feet. I feel as though my world
has completely ended. My mind returns to the idea of ending it all.
After all, I have no one now. Not my mother, nor Alexis, nor a
father—no family that I am close to remotely, no good friends…at
least, not since I withdrew from society after my sister killed
herself. I pushed them all away; one by one they fell away from me
like dominoes.

I look around for some kind of way to end it.
Perhaps, I should go into the kitchen and slit my wrists—then the
idea pops into my mind that I will not do it right and that I’ll
end up like my grandfather, in pain slowly dying in a smelly
depressing hospital. I know that I do not have much time, this
Brian Metcalfe guy will be here soon—I do not remember him, and I
am sure that everything is not going to be
okay
. I’ll be
forced to ride with this stranger to a hospital to see my mother’s
dead body. I’ll be forced to attend another funeral. I can’t deal
with any of this. Just the thought alone sends my mind spiraling
into throes of anxiety. Despite the overwhelming urges, I find it
impossible to remove myself from my spot. It is almost as though I
am glued to the floor with a small length of phone cord wrapped
around my arm like so many bracelets. Moments and moments pass. I
curse my mother’s dead name when the door opens without any
resistance. Once again, she has failed to lock the door despite my
constant requests that she do so.

With heavy tears flowing down from my eyes, the
large old man picks me up in his arms and carries me like a
firefighter from a burning building—only it is not the building
that is on fire, instead… it is me. The rage, desperation,
depression, and overwhelming sense of loss are so great that I feel
that I might simply explode from all the pressure.

7/23/2012

It has been a little over a year since my mother
passed away. I went through the motions, despite not feeling as
though I had a single ounce of strength to do so. I attended her
funeral. With the help of Brian Metcalfe, I filed all the paperwork
necessary. I inherited all of her possessions, the car, the house,
and the savings account with a little over three-hundred thousand
dollars in it. To an outsider this would seem partially like a
blessing—all that money, the nice house, the newer car—yet, to me
it is a curse. I do not want any of it. I mean it is great to not
be homeless, or poor, but what I want most out of life is to not be
alone. I do not have that comfort. Instead, all I am left with is
depression.

I am sitting in a waiting room. The décor around
me is adorned with different sized earthen pots that sit upon the
floor. A dark marble table sits across from a brunneous couch.
Different shades of brown seem to be the major choice of color for
the waiting room aside from a large paneled painting of a foggy
road that travels through a brilliantly emerald green forest of Elm
and Dogwood trees.

“Emma?” My therapist asks as she nudges me from
my relapse into memory.

“Julie,” I quietly say as I nod and follow her
into the office.

The office is filled with shelves containing
numerous books on psychology and its various disorders and supposed
treatments of said disorders. I suppose I am, however, a bit jaded.
More pictures of serene countryside landscapes fill the wooden
slatted walls and a tiny waterfall spills over a small pile of
polished stones on an end table. I sit on a different couch that is
also brown; however, contains many variations of brown in a
crisscross pattern of different shaded lines. Julie Riley sits in a
huge black brown office chair with bronze metal supports for its
armrests. She relaxes in her chair as she thumbs through a small
notebook that she holds in her hand.

“So today is a very big day for you…” Julie says
as she averts her brown eyes towards me and nods.

“Today is the day that my sister killed herself,
today… three years ago.” I respond almost robotically.

“And how have you been holding up?”

“I thought it would feel different today…but it
really doesn’t. I woke up today and drove into city. It was on my
mind all last night. I was dreading it. Today though, I feel just
empty—kind of indifferent. Is that bad?”

“There is no good or bad here,” Mrs. Riley says
as she wheels herself over and adjusts her large frame in the
chair. “There is no concrete way on how you should be feeling right
this very moment. If you feel a certain way then that is how it is.
It is what it is. Every day is going to be a little bit different.
The main thing here is that you are improving.”

“I do not feel like I have improved much,” I say
as I think back. I still mostly stay at home—although I do get out
a little bit more. I don’t go grocery shopping; I get all my food
delivered. However, I attend these sessions three times a week. I
pick up medication to help control my severe depression.

“You have improved a great deal I would say. Do
you remember the depressed girl who would sit for nearly the entire
hour without saying a single word?”

“I do…I’m still depressed.”

“But you opened up. You learned how to talk to
me. All you need to do now is to allow others into your life the
same way that you allowed me in.”

“I don’t trust people very easily…and if I
do—what is to say that they just won’t die? I almost feel that it
is better for me to be alone even if I hate it. At least then I
don’t have to lose anyone.” I say as I look away and attempt to
hold back a tear that threatens to trace down the slender features
of my face.

“Eventually you’ll come to realize that you have
to accept that life and allowing others in—is ultimately
unpredictable,” Mrs. Riley says as she places a hand reassuringly
upon my knee. “Just because there is a possibility that the worst
could happen does not mean that you should deprive yourself of any
happiness. I know you’ve been dealt a bad hand.”

“A series of them…”

“Yes, a series, but you cannot give up. You have
come so far. You took responsibility for yourself and did what you
needed to do in order to survive. You did not give up on your own
life. Now the next step would be to not give up on other aspects of
your life.”

“I’m only here because I’ve always been too
scared to kill myself,” I say honestly as I finally break and allow
a single tear to escape which I quickly wipe away with the cuff of
my sleeve from my light jacket. “I only do what I have to do to
live because I do not want to die a slow or painful death…”

“You said there was more… That you wanted to be
remembered, that you wanted to matter.”

“I cannot see any possible way that I could ever
matter to anyone. I see no opportunity to be remembered well, or
even cared about when I do finally die,” I say sadly. I regret
disclosing that bit of information for I knew that it could be
easily used against me—even if that was not the intention.

“That will come later,” Julie says as she nods,
“You do small things for yourself and eventually you’ll be able to
overcome the larger tasks that you need to get yourself back on
track. It could be small—you could go to the beach.”

“It’s not a beach, it’s more just some sand and
a lake,” I say out of spite.

“Well you have the money to travel, leave
Wisconsin for a while and see some of the world—go and visit a
proper beach.”

“The thought of leaving this area, sometimes
even my house, seems impossible. It is almost as if I get these
hooks buried into my skin and they pull me back. “I’ve tried to go
somewhere else…it just doesn’t work.”

“Then that is another thing you should work on…”
Julie says as she fills out a short list and hands it to me. “You
have made great progress in the past six months. I just want you to
work on a few simple tasks. The first one being: Try getting out
more, small steps. I know it’s not an ideal beach, but I’ve been
told that it’s nearly indistinguishable from the ocean… Second: Try
and make contact with someone…anyone that could bring you the
slightest amount of happiness, and finally: Do something. Travel,
return to college. Work on something artistic—I know you say that
you have no ability but perhaps you just haven’t discovered your
talent yet. This last one you can take all the time you need—but
the first two…those are important first steps. Can you do this for
yourself?”