“Holy shit!” the groundskeeper shouts, lifting his hands in a gesture telling me to stop. “I’m pretty sure that’s illegal or something.”
“Do I look like I care?” I ask him. “Love is dead!” Lifting the sledgehammer again, I swing it down, smashing the shit out of the side of the grave with my father’s name on it. Oh my god—it feels so damn good. I lift and swing and smash, again and again. “He was a terrible person!” I shout to the whole cemetery. “If he had supported me better, I could have been a doctor instead of a nurse. I should have been a doctor! Asshole!”
Lift. Swing. Smash.
Lift. Swing. Smash.
Soon enough, the half of the tombstone engraved for my father is smashed into rubble. I’m feeling high on adrenaline. I laugh loudly, feeling free. It’s actually really therapeutic. For the first time in fifteen years, it feels like that gravestone suits what my mother would have wanted. Okay, there are some jagged edges.
But it’s the truth now. Not some kind of pretty, socially acceptable lie.
“What did you do?” the groundskeeper asks in horror.
I swing the sledgehammer up onto my shoulder, in what I hope is a cool pose. “I just gave my mother a fucking divorce,” I say proudly.
“Oh, okay,” he responds, scratching his nose.
How many women—and men, for that matter—have chosen suicide because they were too afraid or too weak to get a divorce? Especially decades ago, when divorce wasn’t legal or recognized by certain religions or cultures, or if it carried a huge negative stigma that just made it feel like too much work, like too much of a failure… like it was better to stay and be unhappy and keep pretending, than try to really go after what you wanted in life? Or to get rid of what you didn’t want?
Maybe my mother would still be here if she could have just been strong enough to get away from my father. My chest is still heaving angrily.
I wish I could say this all to Gabriel. I wish I could tell him how angry I am at him. I wish I could tell him that I sometimes feel he’s weak, that he’s a liar. That he never should have gotten into this with me if he wasn’t going to follow through. That he never should have said those words to me.
But I also understand him, and I don’t want to say such cruel things and make his difficult situation even worse. Maybe he did mean it when he said he felt we were soulmates—it doesn’t change all the facts of his life, and it doesn’t erase years of his history. I respect him for being a good person, and a loyal person. Even if it hurts like hell to lose him and makes me want to scream and smash things. I just wonder how it all ends—whose name is going to be beside his on that tombstone. Whose name is going to be beside mine, if anyone’s?
More importantly, will my tombstone ever get to say I was a loving mother, remembered fondly by several awesome children? Will there be anyone to visit me and bring flowers decades after I’m gone, and sit and talk to me—and maybe smash some shit in my memory?
Dropping the hammer, I step closer to my mom’s newly solo tombstone, and I notice something I never paid much attention to before. She is still not alone on that rock. There’s my name. Very small, on the bottom, in italics.
Survived by her beloved daughter, Camilla.
I suddenly feel guilty. She’s survived by me. That means I have to survive. For her to survive.
Whatever it takes, I have to try to find a way to get better and survive.
“So,” the groundskeeper says. “Can I have your number?”
Ew. No, I’ll find a better way than that.
Chapter 20
Losing my job was actually a blessing for my mental and physical health. I needed to get out of that environment…. badly. I should have listened to Dr. Tanaka when he told me to take a proper break and focus on self-care, but I just felt like it was essential to keep working. I thought that my job was an important part of my identity. That I was nothing without it.
But it was killing me. All that I’ve lived and witnessed lately has just been too much. And now that I’ve had everything ripped away from me, I am starting to remember who I am. I am more than my job. I am more than my relationship.
And now I’m humming to myself happily while watering my plants and cleaning my apartment. There are no forest animals to help me out, but that’s okay. I have dust bunnies: and they are extremely satisfying to sweep away. It turns out that it’s not only having a boyfriend that makes me feel cheerful enough to hum. Not being forced to watch people die every day is also pretty amazing. Not having to rush to a code blue or listen to families crying, while I’m starving and thirsty for hours—who knew life could be so good?
It helps that my father actually left me an inheritance. There was a life insurance police I didn’t know existed and some property. It’s enough for me to survive for a little while and not have to worry about finding work immediately. I also hate my father marginally less, and slightly wish I didn’t smash his tombstone to smithereens.
Like, maybe larger chunks would have been okay. To be fair, I was sort of having a mental breakdown? Actually, it was a powerful event for me. Kind of a huge turning point in my life. It was a moment of strength and clarity. A moment of catharsis.
I’ve been feeling a lot better since
