Boarded Up Apartment

On Thanksgiving of last year, we were just beginning to fall off the glioblastoma cliff although it wasn’t yet obvious how far and fast the plummet would be. It had been a bitterly cold day for November and N wanted to build an outdoor fire. Chris was having some trouble walking, but I held his arm and he made it to the backyard to shiver around the homemade firepit and admire the little blaze our son made all by himself. Later, we gathered for the usual Thanksgiving feast with family. I clearly remember standing next to him, my arm around him, his body solid. It had been a hard day because we all knew trouble was coming, but it was still a good family holiday.

Chris was not there at the Thanksgiving table this year. He wasn’t settled into the corner of the couch afterward and he wasn’t trying to cajole people into a posed photo. It was quiet. It was brutal.

Phoenix was with us this year, one more reminder of Chris’s absence because he couldn’t be around dogs without suffering allergenic misery. I escaped for a while to try to breathe by taking a post-dinner walk with that consolation prize dog. It was colder than I thought it would be, though not frigid like last year. Phoenix nosed around, happy to explore unfamiliar turf. I set off purposefully to walk on the street Chris lived on when we met. Like pressing a bruise, I needed to see his old apartment and feel the pain of a special time now past, never to replay again. The street surprised me in that many of the homes had been renovated and looked really spiffed up. As I approached the two-family house that held his former apartment, I could see that the building had been painted a different color since Chris last lived there, but it didn’t look fresh. In fact, the house stood out from the others on the street in its dilapidation - the doorway that led to Chris’s old place was boarded up with a piece of plywood. 

  

I stood in the blustery wind and stared at the place for a few minutes. I couldn’t help but feel a sense of desolation. All of those happy memories reduced to a rundown, boarded-up house with a collapsing front porch.

You can’t go back.

No, you can’t go back. How many ways do I have to learn this? Did I need to see Chris’s old place in disrepair and literally barricaded off to know this?

The truth is I do know this, but I still don’t want it to be true.

I wanted to break down that plywood and feel the rush of new love. I wanted to meet his roommates for the first time and see their surprised Chris-has-a-girl??? faces again. I wanted to make fun of all the dishes piled up from a week of three guys living the bachelor life and wash them with Chris.

I can’t stop wanting the holiday scene to include Chris standing in his mother’s dining room with my arm around his waist, familiar and alive.

Come back.

You can’t go back.

But I need you to come back, I miss you. I don't know what to do without you.

Come back.

The boarded-up apartment gave the only response to my mixed-up silent declarations.

He is not coming back. You can’t go back.