Post by Dale on Sept 1, 2009 18:05:59 GMT -5
So, with my nan dying over the weekend. I've had death and such on my mind in i general, and not feeling in the mood to write X-5; i decided to work on something else. and this is the first part of it.
it's just over a page long at this point, i don't expect it to be longer than five pages. but who knows.
anyways, if anyone comes up with a title let me know; cause i got nothing.
it's just over a page long at this point, i don't expect it to be longer than five pages. but who knows.
anyways, if anyone comes up with a title let me know; cause i got nothing.
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Diary of Eloise
By Daz Murrell
Death. It’s a devastating thing. It tears families apart; it takes the life of people who have barely even lived. It came happen to anybody at any time. Death. It’s a word we all know, and a word that we all fear. And unfortunately, it’s inevitable; something nobody can escape and will loom over us like a dark cloud if we let it. It’s hard to watch someone wither away, to lose everything that made them who they are, until there’s nothing left but an empty shell. It’s even harder, to have it happen to you. I’ve never been a religious man or a particularly deep thinker. But lying there, motionless, eyes closed shut; thinking was just about all I could do.
I wasn’t particularly old, but the undeniable greying that had been creeping into my hair for the past several years told me I wasn’t exactly young either. They have hair dye for my locks, but they don’t have anything for the creaking of bones, or the wrinkling of once smooth skin. The sight I had been looking at the mirror every day for the past several years was slowly drifting away and now as I lay with my eyes closed, drifting in and out of consciousness, that felt closer than it had ever done before.
Like reaching for handle of an unknown door, wondering what majesty lay behind it; I pondered upon what came next. Which religion got it right; if any and should I be praying right about now, you know ... just to make sure. I made mental notes of things I would never see again, food I would never taste. I recalled the smell of coffee in the morning, the sound of toast springing out of the toaster and the feel of the breeze in my admittedly thinning hair as I walked down the street on a pleasant afternoon. I lamented these things in a way I had never even considered before. I wished I’d given cucumber a second chance or tried frog’s legs just that one time.
Things I wished I had said or done came to the forefront of my mind, and the sad truth that the chance had now been and gone consumed me. But most of all, I thought of how insignificant my death would be in the grand scheme of things. It boggles one’s mind, life and death. How one minute someone can be here, and the next they’re gone. How even when I have long departed, the world would still be turning; unless the conspiracy theorists are to be believed that is. I’ve read about people that came before, history books full of names of people and places that no longer existed. Creatures long since extinct. And the one question I think we all ask ourselves in those final moments; will I be remembered?
Now they say people can hear you, whilst they’re in comas and the like. I don’t know if this is true or not. I had too many thoughts and memories running through my own deteriorating mind to listen to those of others. I make no allusions that my life has been meaningful, or special in anyway. It’s a rather mundane life, boring I’m sure someone would call it. I was neither a celebrity nor special in any particular way. And if any answer had to be given to the question “Will I be remembered?” the answer would unfortunately be a resounding no. Nevertheless, it’s my story, and as such, it’s mine to tell.
***
I was born in the fall of 1956 at the Massachusetts General Hospital, in Boston Massachusetts. It was a Tuesday. I was not the only person born that day, in fact there where at least four others in that very same hospital. Reflecting on it now, I can’t help wonder what happened to those four and how their lives differed from mine. If their childhood resembled my own in any way or if they were whisked off by some rich family, living a life of luxury and travelling all over the word.
In contrast to my daydreams, I had an average childhood, nothing overly exciting ever happened to me. Although, on July 31st, 1961 at Fenway Park; my father and I were in attendance at the only Midsummer Classic to end a tie when it was called off because of rain, but then again, so where thirty one thousand, eight hundred and fifty other people. All looking like drowned rats as they exited the stadium. I remember that night vividly, the game, falling asleep in the car ride home, my father drying my hair with a towel before putting me to bed.
I had two loving parents, who worked tirelessly to make my life and future a happy one. And in kind, I worked just as hard to make sure I never disappointed them. The first time I really failed at this, was in 1971. My father and Uncle Jimmy had spent several months fixing up a beat up baby blue 1963 Plymouth Valiant for my birthday. On the way home, I tuned the radio to a favourite station of mine and listened to the music of Jimi Hendrix. My father deemed the psychedelic rock that flowed from Jimi’s guitar to be “nigger” music, and forbade me to listen to it under his roof or anywhere else for that matter. My mind drifted to the stack of Hendrix records tucked away under my bed, along with a collection of others by African American artists. I gulped and swallowed the lump former in my throat before simply nodding.
I never told my father this and I never freely admitted it to myself; but I resented him for his bigotry and the high esteem I once held him in had dissipated forever. That incident caused me to drift away from my parents, it gave me my independence. Despite my father’s ridiculous demand I never stopped listening to the music that I loved. His imposed ban on it only made it all the more likeable. And finally, in the spring of 1977 I decided that it was time to move out from under my father’s roof. So I packed up my baby blue 1963 Plymouth Valiant and after plenty of tears from my mother Lorraine, I headed out on the open road.
It was at a diner, on Route 28 from Massachusetts to New Hampshire when I first met her. Her name was Eloise Summer Grey. She had been a waitress back home, although in our time together I never learnt where that was, and had planned to attend college. However like me, her teenage rebellion kicked in and she opted to hit the road. This is where she wound up, in the middle of nowhere, bussing tables in a roadside diner. As I sat down in the squishy red leather chairs at one of the several booths the diner had, I saw her approach; her hair pulled back, pencil behind her ear. All the clichés you can think of.
And to add one more; when the sun hit her fair-hair just right, it shone. She looked like an angel, halo and all. I did my best to ignore the gum stuck to the sticky red leather seat beside me as she pulled the pencil out from behind her ear, wiped her brow with her forearm and withdrew a small notebook to jot down my order. I told myself repeatedly not to stammer, be clear and concise; charming even. Do not stammer, do not stammer. I stammered.
“What can I get you?”
“I –“
“You what?” She asked, waiting for my order expectantly.
“I; could I, uh -“
I tripped over my words, like a clumsy soccer player trips over the ball. I blushed, my embarrassment clear for all to see. She laughed sweetly to herself, chewing absentmindedly on the eraser at the end of her pencil. The sound of her voice was like music, soft, sweet, like a melody that resonated somewhere deep down inside of you. Or perhaps I’d just read one too many poems or listened to one too many love songs. Nevertheless, I finally managed to order a chocolate malt.
We talked all afternoon, as the clouds began to roll in and the bright sky that had been present all that morning began to darken. It rained, not the fine small droplets that leave miniscule pin pricks where they land on the pavement. But thick, heavy rain drops that sting ever so slightly as they land on your cheek. The sound of the rain beating on the windows and the change in the weather did not dampen our conversation. It was like I was back at Fenway watching the stars of Major League Baseball duke it out in their annual all star game.
I told Eloise the story and she asked about my parents. When I didn’t answer, she chose not to push it. She had had a similar experience with her own parents and didn’t care to relive it either. Instead, she told me she had been working at the diner to pay for school. She had dreams of teaching; teaching young children about all the places around the world. At the age of twenty one, I still desired to see the world; not read about it in a book. Nevertheless, I had never met anyone up until that point that I connected with so utterly and completely. And I never will again.
In that moment, Eloise was perfect to me. From the imperfections on her skin to the mismatched color of her eyes and the burn on her arm from hot oil on her arm; they were all things that made her who she was. And I would not have changed a single one of them for anything in the world. Corny though it may have been, it’s how I felt.
As a kid, I had been infatuated with the art and storytelling of comic books. The idea that someone could be a seemingly ordinary teenager or journalist by day and a crime fighting, tight wearing, super hero by night opened my imagination up to countless possibilities. My favourite superheroes were always the X-Men. I dreamed of going off to a school where I could be taught how to control my own super powers (super hearing so I could hear what my parents were talking about what they called ‘grown up things’). My favourite characters where always Scott “Cyclops” Summers and Jean “Marvel Girl” Grey. The fact Eloise shared names with both of these beloved characters, seemed like some kind of sign to me and I told her as such. She laughed once again, still nibbling on the eraser on her pencil.
Hours passed as we shared conversation, other patrons of the diner becoming frustrated because the only waitress working was too busy talking to me to fetch their burgers and fries. The sunset and the night drew in before I even knew it. The last customers were ferried out and the grill was turned off for the evening. I could not bring myself to leave the diner or her company, but finally I was forced to as the diner came to a close for the evening. She held my hand with one hand as she held my coat over her head to avoid getting wet with the other. We rushed to the car where I fumbled for the keys in my pocket. Reluctantly I unlocked the door and opened it.
For a moment I stood there, not sure if entering the car meant I would be condemned to some kind of Eloise-less existence. I could literally hear my heart beat as I stood by that car door in the rain. I heard Eloise laugh as we stood eye to eye, neither one of us looking away. It reminded me of a scene from the type of movie I would make fun of with my friends. If only they could see me know. I could not look away, seconds seemed like hours and after a lingering gaze, by a diner on June 21st 1977, Eloise and I shared our first kiss. It’s a memory I will treasure until I die ... which I fear will be sooner rather than later.
***
As I lied in a hospital bed, tubes inserted into what seemed like every opening of my body; I heard a faint beeping sound, a rush of footsteps and the spinning of wheels. I felt like I was underwater, looking up at the surface. Every sound muffled and every sight blurry, chlorine stinging my eyes. Only there was no chlorine to sting, only a bright light that was pointed directly at my iris. I knew it was a light, whether it was held by a doctor, checking on my condition or the endorphins firing whatever, wherever, giving me that white light at the end of the tunnel, pearly gates experience.
Just for this one fleeting moment, I wished I had been brought up with some kind of faith. My mother had sat down with me one afternoon and explained why religion had not been a part of my family life. My mother had lost her faith during the Second World War; she questioned how God could let so many innocent people die. She dismissed her religion; cast it away like her blue raincoat that had sat at the back of the closet in the guest room for as long as I could remember. My father had felt similarly and as such they raised me without a faith, “You don’t need such silly things to believe in. All you need is family.” My mother would tell me when I asked why our family did not attend church on Sundays.
The same family I couldn’t wait to ran away from all those years ago. Suddenly I felt my stomach begin to knot up, pangs of guilt perhaps, or maybe just another organ failing. Only the doctors would know. All I could do was lie there, not truly sure if I was awake or not.
I had hoped the idea of Heaven would comfort me here. That waiting at the end of this stinging light would be all those people that I had loved and lost over the course of my life. It didn’t. All I could thing was simply, death is death; that meant I would no longer be alive. And abandoning all pretence of masculinity and testicular fortitude, I admitted to myself for the first time; I was afraid to die.
***
I spent three days at that diner where I met Eloise. I sprawled out across the back seat of my car to sleep; I ate at the diner and worked off the bill washing dishes in the kitchen. And in the afternoons I would talk to Eloise. We talked about everything, from favourite musicians, to favourite books and despite our respective hesitations; we eventually talked about our families. She would tell me about a tyre swing that her father had hung from a tree in their backyard and the countless hours she and her brothers had spent on it. She talked, I listened. I let her voice wash over me, not taking in everything she said, but finding comfort in her voice nevertheless.
I watched as she brushed the hair from her face. She kept talking, smiling as she reminisced. As she talked, the clouds parted and the sun shone out for the first time in several days. Basked in its light, Eloise had never looked better. That was the first time I ever told a girl “the big three”. It was like an accident, one that happened before I could even think about it. She laughed, the light illuminating her face as we looked across the table that separated us. Our eyes met, and the words rolled from my tongue before I could even think about what I was saying. My mouth had said it before my brain had caught up.
“I love you.”
There was no taking it back. I wanted desperately to apologize, as if I’d spoken out of turn. This time I thought about each word carefully, selecting them from a catalogue buried somewhere deep in my mind. The next words, the next sentence I spoke had to be perfect. The word that I chose to speak was something along the lines of “Uh...“ Eloise spared me further embarrassment, responding in the most favourable way. She told me she loved me too. It was like hearing Bob Dylan for the first time; it was like learning to drive, Christmas, birthdays and all the Banoffee Pie I could eat rolled into one. It was a whole new world of possibility. I felt invincible in that moment, like I could fly with the birds in the sky. It was the most exhilarating moment of my life, one that I re-lived every time she spoke those three words to me.
Maybe it was the way she said it, how she looked when she said it. Or maybe it was the words themselves. Or maybe, just maybe, it was the fact that despite only knowing each other for three days ... I felt like I knew her better than I knew anybody else. I felt like I’d know Eloise a life time and I hoped to know here for another one. I don’t believe in soul mates, that there’s someone out there just for you. But if such a thing does exist, Eloise would be as close to a soul mate as you can get. I remember thinking just that as she placed her hand in mind, stretched out across the table.
I spent two more days at that diner. It was time to move on; continue on my journey. On the day I had decided to depart, I dreaded seeing Eloise. I wanted so desperately for her to come with me, but feared her answer. That fear was more real to me than anything I had ever experienced before. It pales in comparison to what fears I would have later in life, but in that moment; it consumed me so completely. Eloise realized something was wrong within seconds. I had known her less than a week, yet she knew me better than anyone I had ever met. I was afraid to let that go. When I finally told her I was leaving, she looked down at a coffee cup stain on the table we sat at. She had never noticed it before, never having to avert her eyes, betray her feelings. It hurt me to see this.
That night; when the diner was closed and I was asked to leave by the owner of the establishment, I begged him to let me stay for just five more minutes. Eloise had disappeared an hour or two before and I could not bear to leave without saying one final goodbye. Five turned into ten and soon enough, I was once again asked to vacate the premises. Sullenly I did as I was asked.
I sat behind the wheel of my car, my foot afraid to hit the gas. Finally I eased it down, felt the car lurch forward into motion. My hard grasped the steering wheel as tightly as I could, scared that if I let go for even a moment I would not be able to complete what should have been the relatively easy task of pulling out of the diner’s gravel and dirt car park. As I did, there was an urgent banging on my window. This was my escape. I released the wheel, slammed my foot on the brake and brought the vehicle to an abrupt and not to mention sudden stop. Not a moment later, the passenger side door swung open and an overstuffed rucksack was deposited on the front seat. Eloise entered after it, sitting down beside me. She sat, looking straight ahead for a moment. Finally she turned to me; I will not forget what she said to me that night.
“You didn’t say good bye.”
***
The whirring of machines, the bustling of bodies and the shining light were gone. The steady beeping sound remained. I knew I was in the hospital, I knew I was dying. And now I knew, part of me was conscious; part of me knew what was happening. The other part, drifted. Drifted through all my years on this earth, remembering moments that may seem mundane to others but moments that I treasured. Travelling from that diner to New Hampshire with Eloise was one of them.
One particular moment on that trip I remembered fondly involved my car running out of gas in the middle of nowhere. We had to push it at least two miles before finding a gas station. I had spent most of my money at the diner over the past few days and didn’t have any left to pay for the gas. Eloise offered to pay, but all the money she had left was gonna have to pay for a place to stay once we got to where we were going. So we did what anybody would do, we used the restroom at the gas station to steal water and soap and started washing cars that passed for five bucks each. The owner of the gas station was less than pleased to say the least.
But instead of asking us to leave, being an enterprising man that he was; offered to bring us into the gas station and wash cars under the gas stations banner. In exchange, he’d give us the gas for free in exchange for a cut of whatever we make; which of course meant he’d wind up making me than the gas cost to begin with, but to our naive ears this seemed like the perfect deal.
Several hours later and we’d earned enough for the gas we needed. We had almost trebled it in fact. We handed over the money, I don’t think Eloise even considered making off with it ourselves, she was such a good person that even when she knew we had been ripped off, she still honoured the agreement we had made.
I wanted to smile as I remembered this, but I couldn’t as I lay in my hospital bed. All I could do was lay there and listen. I heard voices, coming from somewhere; somehow I knew they were real. And what’s more they were clearer; I was no longer underwater.
“Has he spoken?” I heard one voice say. It was a question of inquiry, said with such practiced ease, such faux concern lacing her voice. I imagined she was a nurse.
“Just rambling; nothing coherent, although yesterday he kept repeating a woman’s name,” a second voice replied.
In my lucid state, I tried to form my lips, roll my tongue and repeat that name. My voice was dry and raspy but I uttered her name.
It was not Eloise’s.
***
Eloise and I had travelled to New Hampshire 1977. We had arrived in the summer. I had taken to calling Eloise “Summers Day”, a little word play on her middle and last name. It wasn’t her favourite nickname she’d ever had. Nevertheless, it was the name I had chosen for her, and the name in which I called her by. Teasingly at first, like a boy pulling on a girl’s pig tails in school; but as a term of affection as our time together went on.
I worked any job I could to take care of us. Finally finding one I suited best; designing and manufacturing guitars. Eloise and I moved into a small house, in 1978. The day we moved our belongings from the motel room we had occupied since our arrival in the summer was a day of joy. Eloise had hated that motel, every square inch of it. She told me on a daily basis she only stayed because of me; otherwise she would have hitchhiked back to the diner on Route 28. The night we moved in, Eloise and I ate pasta, using an upturned cardboard box as a table. Much like in the diner, I spoke without thinking. However once again, I was spared embarrassment as Eloise responded most favourably. My statement “Marry me.” Her response, “It took you long enough to ask.”
I was twenty three when Eloise and I married. My mother thought this was too young, and that I should see the world first as I had planned. To this day I don’t think she approved of me marrying a girl I picked up on the side of the road as she put it. I didn’t care; I had seen the world in Eloise. My desire to see foreign countries, to taste foreign food and to take in someone else’s culture had blown away on the summer breeze.
As the day of the wedding drew closer, both Eloise and I anxiously awaited the arrival of our respected families. I hadn’t spoken to my father since the day I left despite my mother’s attempts to talk to him on the phone. Only Eloise’s younger brother attended the wedding. He informed her that he elder brother had been killed in Vietnam almost a decade ago; a fact that Eloise had never been told or made aware of. It put the feelings I had towards my father into perspective and we managed to get along peacefully for the few days he spent in town. It was a sad day in many ways, and happy in others. It brought together and joined two broken families, if only for a little while.
A little over a year later, we moved again; this time, to accommodate a new arrival in our little family. On September 26th, 1981; Eloise gave birth to a beautiful baby girl; my daughter. Eloise and I had always joked about what we would name our kids. I recalled one evening, back at the diner where we laid out on the hood of my 1963 Plymouth Valiant, looking up at the sky. The raining had ceased for the first time in days, and visible in the sky was a rainbow. The clearest rainbow I had ever seen in my life; you could pick out every single color clearly as it arched across the grey sky. Eloise had said, she wanted seven kids, and she would name them after every color of that rainbow. She named our daughter Violet; one down, six to go.
***
I was conscious. It felt like waking from a dream. One that you can’t place, not quite a nightmare but not entirely pleasant either. I coughed, which alerted the nurse’s attention to me. She dropped the sheets she had been folding across the room and looked in my general direction. I moved, disrupting the IV drip inserted into my peripheral vein via a catheter. The uneasiness of my surroundings prompted me to thrash around in the confines of my bed.
The nurse pressed the emergency call button and she was soon assisted by a sea of white overall wearing nurses. I ripped the catheter from my hand, letting the IV drip fall to the floor. All other sound floated away as I fell back onto my pillow. My eyes flickered and I knew this lucidness would not last. It was just a reprieve from my memories and thoughts. I drifted back into my unconscious state, the sound of the IV fluid, dripping to the floor ringing in my ears as I did.
***
I barely recall the first two years of Violet’s life. I would work all day, I would sit with her, I would kiss my wife good night and we would sleep. We would sleep, until Violet began to bawl, cry and squeal in her crib across the room. The days passed by like a blur, blending into one.
However a day I will never forget is January 4th 1986. Violet was four years old and I had taken her to the Zoo. It had been the most exciting day of Violet’s short life, or so she had told me as we watched the Chimpanzee’s swing from branch to branch in their cages. This had been the first day Violet rode on the bus. The smile on her face as she handed over the change for her ticket was heart warming, and I hoped that this thrill for public transport would last into her late teen years. Eloise had to work and had agreed to meet us at the Zoo. We waited ... and waited ... and waited. Finally, we were told we could wait no longer.
I was reminded of the day at the diner when I was asked to leave. I wanted five more minutes, to wait. Waiting for something, anything seemed safer than the uncertainty of what had kept Eloise from making it to the Zoo that day.
The Zoo closed and Violet and I headed home. Unfortunately, Violet’s love for public transport had disappeared already. She sat on my lap and fell into a deep sleep, an innocent sleep; the kind of sleep that only a child could have. I longed for this sleep. As the bus drove down the streets and roads I had become all too familiar with over the years, I saw a sight that would change everything.
My baby blue 1963 Plymouth Valiant, wrapped around a nearby tree. The car was almost unrecognizable, save for the patch of rust above the rear right wheel, and the now torn and tattered Jimi Hendrix bumper sticker that I had placed on my car in defiance of my father. I rang the bell on the bus, I don’t remember screaming but people would later tell me I did. Violet awoke as I carried her off the bus, rushing to the Police Officer standing nearest to me. I pleaded, begged, desperate to know what had happened. He informed me a woman driving the Plymouth Valiant had been hit by an incoming car which had sent it hurtling into the tree. I asked if she was ok, he answered with a movement of his head. From behind the totalled car, paramedics emerged. They pushed a stretcher towards the ambulance parked several feet away. There was no emergency in their step, they took their time.
“Daddy?” Violet said to me as she saw the expression on my face. She turned her head, locating the source of my vacant stare. That was the last time she saw her mother.
***
As I faded away in my hospital bed, I heard the nurses talking once more.
“Did he say Violet?” they murmured.
If only I had been conscious to tell them, to will them on, to shout her name from the roof of the building. But I wasn’t, I was in a hospital bed, where I felt the life draining out of my fingers and from my toes with every passing second.
And so they speculated; they speculated upon any alternative to “Violet” they could come up with. However, thankfully they decided I had said Violet. They continued to talk, I could no longer hear. I was back underwater; I was back to being consumed by my own thoughts and memories. One, that stuck out in my mind above all else...
***
It had been four months, since Eloise’s car accident. She had passed away approximately ten minutes following the crash. It was fifteen minutes after the crash that the emergency services arrived; there was nothing they could have done. At least, this is what the Doctor’s told me. I didn’t remembering hearing it, I don’t remember what the Doctor looked like or what he was wearing. I don’t even remembering listening, but I do remember his words. Those words rang in my ears like bells in a clock tower.
“There was nothing we could do.” This baffled me. Why? Why was there nothing they could do? Why couldn’t they bring her back, why couldn’t they save her? Why did she crash that car? Why didn’t I tell Eloise not to come? Why, why didn’t we leave the Zoo earlier? And why can’t I change what’s happened? All of these questions ran through my head. The only answers I could think of where, “I didn’t”, “I can’t”, words my mother told me where not in my vocabulary when I didn’t want to eat my vegetables or take the trash out.
The next few months were like a dream, the type of dreams that seem endless; until you wake up at the end and only a few minutes have passed by. This was not a dream I could wake up from. I was trapped in this endless nightmare and there was nothing I could do about it. My Summers Day was gone, and all there was left was a bitterly cold, unending winter. Violet was so innocent, she could not understand the pain I was in. She still expected her mother to walk in through the front door to our quaint little house, with the roses outside that Eloise had planted last spring. I didn’t have the heart to tell her it wasn’t going to happen.
Countless nights I spent, sitting against the wall in my bedroom. I looked towards the bed I had shared with my beloved, my wife, my Eloise. I stared at the bed, a slight dip in the mattress where she had laid; her hair still resting on the pillowcase, the smell of her perfume forever caught in the very fibre of the duvet cover. And I wept, for it was all I could do. I sat there, as tears streamed from my ears, silently sobbing in the night. Looking at all that was left of the person I had planned to share my life with. I was forced to come to terms with the fact that she was no longer there, her life was over and what we had was now gone.
One afternoon, I waited as I had done so many times outside Violet’s pre-school. I could feel all the other parents’ eyes on me. I could feel their pity, “There’s the single dad whose wife died in that car crash.” Finally I heard a bell come from within the building. Minutes later, the double doors swung open and a swarm of children rushed out. Among them was Violet. I scooped her up in my arms and we began the two mile walk home. It was hard enough trying to make our way with two working people in the house, with only my wage I could not afford to replace the car I had lost along with my wife.
On the way home, Violet told me about her day. How she built a sandcastle in the sand box, and how she cried when Timmy O'Dwyer had crushed it. She told me that after lunch, she had laughed so hard at a story about a caterpillar she had squirted milk out of her nose. And then, she told me she took her nap; just like mommy. I held Violet close to me, hugging her tightly as I ran my hand through her hair. I could not contain the tear drop that escaped my eye lid and rolled down my cheek. The flood gates were open and there was no way to turn them off now. I kissed Violet gently on her forehead, my tears soaking her hair. She didn’t know this at the time, but this way my way of saying goodbye.
That night, I put Violet to bed as usual. I read her favourite story, about a young boy named Max who wears a wolf costume and has many great adventures with creatures named “wild things”. She fell asleep before I could finish the fourth sentence. As she slept peacefully in her bed, I gathered together all the money I had and finally purchased a replacement for my scrap heaped Plymouth Valiant. A 1984 Pontiac Fiero Coupe, previously owned by Mr. Wesley Baum, my neighbour. Violet did not wake as I placed her in the back seat, her head resting against a pillow as she clung tightly to a bunny rabbit rag doll Eloise had made her. She did not wake as I loaded it up with as many belongings as I could. And she did not wake as I pulled out of the drive way.
I tried not to look back at the house Eloise and I had made, keeping my eyes on the road in front of me. Before I rounded the corner of our street, I couldn’t help myself. I lost all will power and stared in the mirror, looking back. The street lamps illuminated our house, the red roses that Eloise had planted slowly dying outside. Neglected and wilting without the care she had given them. Staring at that house, I realized one thing; that without Eloise it was no longer home. Finally I turned the corner, beginning my journey heading from our house in Concord, New Hampshire to Manchester, New Hampshire.
My mother had moved to Manchester following the death of my father the year previous. My father had a previously undiagnosed heart condition which caused it to fail. I had glibly said to Eloise that his heart failed long before his inevitable death. My mother wanted to be closer to us and so moved to the same state. It was so late it was early when I arrived at my mother’s house. She answered the door in a bath robe, sleep mask pulled above her eyes pushing her hair back in a wild fashion. I asked her to look after Violet who still slept soundly in the back seat of my car. My mother agreed without hesitation, but upon noticing the belongings packed every which way into the vehicle, she asked when I’d be back. When I didn’t answer, she knew everything she needed to know.
***
I have asked myself so many times how I could abandon my child when she needed me the most. I never had an answer. I suppose it was how much of her mother I saw in her. They had the same fair-hair, the same bright exuberant eyes and the same endearing laugh. I could not look at my daughter, and resent her for begging me to take her to the Zoo. I wouldn’t let myself. At first I convinced myself running away was the best option. Lying in a hospital bad, knocking at heaven’s door, having missed out on my daughter’s life; I knew it wasn’t.
By casting her away, I had let go off a piece of Eloise; something so precious to the both of us. The only things I took of Eloise’s that night were a hair brush that still contained strands of her golden hair and a Diary that Eloise had been keeping since childhood. More a leather bound book that had been worn over the years, and the ink inside faded than a typical diary you’d expect a young girl to keep.
Violet, was the last surviving part of her, she embodied everything Eloise was. Violet was very much her mother’s daughter, and I let her go. This was a mistake of monumental proportion, the kind of mistake you wish you could jump in a time machine and go back and fix. Unfortunately, there are no time machines. And I will pass away, leaving this earth, having known my daughter for only the first four years of her twenty eight year long life. For this, I am ashamed of myself.
I am more ashamed than I have words to describe.
***
Over the next few years, I moved from place to place. I continued making guitars, although admittedly my heart was no longer in it. I lived in a music free existence without Eloise in my life. It was like the Wizard of Oz in reverse. I had stepped from the Technicolor land of magic and possibility, to the black and white real world. For Dorothy there was no place like home, for me, there was simply no home.
I sent my mother and Violet post cards wherever I went, telling them what I was doing. I never heard back. It didn’t surprise me; I wouldn’t have written back to me either. In 1997, I was working in Chicago Illinois. One evening I received a phone call from a hospital in Manchester, informing me my mother was ill. I sighed deeply; the thought of losing another loved one deeply affected me. It had been many years since the death of Eloise but still it haunted me. I could not run away from it, no matter how hard I tried. For the first time in eleven years, I decided to return to the place I had made my home.
A plane journey later, I arrived in New Hampshire. I headed to the hospital where my mother was being taken care of. I had brought with me Eloise’s Diary, a book with pages that will never be filled and a red ribbon that could be used as a bookmark. I bought flowers at the gift shop down stairs before getting on the elevator and ascending to the third floor. I made my way down a corridor, passing nurses and porters pushing gurneys, doctors rushing in and out of rooms as they made their rounds. Finally I made my way towards my mother’s room. I saw her laying in that bed, a teenage girl sitting beside her, clutching her hand. The girl’s hair was dark, with purple streaks. But her face was unmistakable, she was Violet.
I dropped the flowers to the ground, instead choosing to clutch the diary with both hands. Time almost stood still for me; I could feel my hands trembling. Fear, excitement, I couldn’t tell you which it was. It took an eternity for the flowers to hit the ground. I could not bring myself to walk three more feet, to open the door and enter the room. To see my mother and to greet the daughter I had not seen in so long. My feet seemed glued to the ground and no matter how much I wanted to, no matter how much I tried I could not seem to move closer to the room. It was as if some invisible barrier was blocking my path. I turned and hastened away, disappearing in the sea of activity. I did not know that a nurse had found the flowers outside my Mother’s Hospital Room, nor that Violet had seen me that day and had remembered my face...
***
“Are you awake sir?”
This was the question that I heard in my disorientated state. It took a moment for my eyes to flicker open and the room to come into view. I was still in the hospital. I saw a nurse looking over me, she repeated her question and I recalled her voice. She looked at me expectantly as my eyes continued to flicker. Finally I groaned, telling her that I was.
“Can I get you anything” She asked, the same faux sincerity lacing her voice.
I shook my head side to side and with a nod of her head she left the room. I was conscious at last. I took in my surroundings, it seemed like an entirety since I had laid eyes on this room, in truth it had probably only been a few days. I turned my head on the thick, uncomfortable pillow beneath me, looking towards something on the table beside the bed.
I reached forward it, every bone and muscle in my body aching as I did so. With more effort that I would have liked, I lifted Eloise’s diary from the side table and placed it on my lap. Slowly I flicked through it, seeing page after page of her handwriting; the curly “Y’s” the loop on her “G’s” and the odd heart replacing the dot above an “I”.
I found the first empty page and taking a pen, also from the side table, I began to scrawl. The pen barely held between my fingers, the book at an angle as it rested unevenly on my worn out knees.
I’m aware, that this will likely been the last thing I ever write. It doesn’t make me a better writer. I don’t really know who I’m writing for, who will read this story. But knowing that the answer to the question “Will I be remembered?” is “No” I feel the need to pass my story onto someone, anyone. They don’t even have to know my name, as long as they know my story. As long as they know how much I cared for my daughter, the life I spent with my beloved wife Eloise and the regrets and actions that I have taken that have left me alone quite literally on my death bed.
And most of all, they know that I was sorry.
***
I had written until I couldn’t write any longer. The weight of the book had been taken away and to myself I thought a nurse must have placed it back on the table at my bedside. I guessed I must have passed out at some point, as I could not remember anything other than writing.
“I saw you. The day Grandma died. You were standing outside ...”
I heard her voice, so much like Eloise’s. I felt her take my hand, clutching at it as she had done my mother’s.
“The Nurse, she gave me a diary. I didn’t know whose it was at first. I couldn’t bring myself to read it...”
Violet’s voice was shaky, like she was trying to hold back the ever growing emotions behind some kind of internal dam. It didn’t take long for the dam to break...
“Why did you leave?”
I could hear the sadness in her voice; I could feel the wetness of her tears, falling onto the sheets around me. I wanted so desperately to answer her, to tell her why. I wanted to see her face, see the woman she had become. My eyelids felt like they had weights attached to them.
“I read all your postcards, so many times. I pinned them on my wall and read them every day. I kept the last one you wrote by my bed, so I’d feel close to you. I felt like you needed me; you always sounded so sad.”
I tried to force my eyes open, I tried closing my hand around hers. Show her I knew she was there, show her I cared. My body was failing me, as I had failed Violet.
“I miss her too. Mom, I mean. I only remember little pieces, like how she would sing to me before I slept. Or how she sprinkled cinnamon on my cereal, she used to call it her magic fairy dust. And the roses outside our house, I always remember roses.”
She laughed to herself. I wanted to smile.
“And that Hendrix bumper sticker the day she ... I remember that.”
Her voice began to break as she continued.
“I needed you; to tell me about her. To tell me what she was like. I just ... I needed you.”
It took all the force I could muster, all the energy I had left in my body. I felt my eyes flicker, my hand shake. Violet lent over me as my eyes opened. Wearily I smiled.
“Daddy?”
Summoning the strength I had left in my body, I uttered.
“I never said good-bye.”
I thought back to the night Eloise jumped into my Plymouth Valiant, the drive to Manchester and the house with the roses. My daughter held me tightly as the rhythmic beeping of machines ceased, to be replaced by a single high pitched note.
***
“My name is Violet.”
Violet stood at the counter of the diner where my parents met, talking to an elderly gentleman that looked like he spent his whole life there, washing glasses with the rag in his hand and shouting orders to the cook in the back.
“My mother used to work here.”
“We’ve had a lot of people work here lady.”
Violet nodded. It was a long time ago, but still she hoped without hope that this man would remember her.
“Her name was Eloise. Eloise Grey”
The man chuckled.
“Yeah, I remember Eloise. Best waitress I ever had.”
The man walked out from behind the counter, his sixty two year old frame supported by a cane. He headed over to a board that had been adorned with pitches, spanning many decades; a visual timeline of the Diner’s existence.
“This board, this is the reason we ain’t never gonna be replaced by one of those McDonald’s Arches. We got character and we got history. The people that pass through here, well they only spend a short time with us. A footnote in history to them I’d wager. But to me, to all of us here at the diner, you can’t imagine what it means. Eloise, she was something special.”
The old man continued; an unmistakable fondness in his voice. He reached the board, scanning through it with squinted eyes. Finally he found the picture he was searching for...
... And there it was, a picture of Violet’s parents, sitting at the booth with the coffee ring stain on the table, where her father had first told her mother he loved her.
“We hated to lose her. But, we’d never seen her so happy. So was only passing through here when I hired her, ended up staying for six months; until he drove into town. If I remember correctly, he had a blue Plymouth Valiant. That was a nice car. Never did catch his name though...”
Violet looked up, tears of longing to know the parents she never had filling her eyes.
“Henry. His name was Henry.”
“Was?”
The Old Man caught Violet’s glance, he instantly understood her meaning. He saw the tears in her eyes and how tightly she clutched the picture in her hand and did not hesitate to say...
“Why don’t you hang on to that?”
Violet nodded her thanks and made her way out into the parking lot. She knelt in the dirt, in the same spot where her father’s Plymouth Valiant had been parked, the day her mother picked out her name from the rainbow she saw in the sky above.
The rain poured down, just as it had over thirty years before. With the sound of passing traffic, and the beat of the rain fall filling her ears, Violet scooped up a handful of dirt and she began to dig a hole in the ground. In it she placed the picture of her parents. From her jacket she withdrew a small urn. Drawing it closer to her face, Violet kissed it softly. This was her final goodbye. Violet delicately placed the urn into the hole before shovelling the dirt over it. As Violet returned to her car, a Jimi Hendrix bumper sticker of her own stuck to the back of it; she took a seat in the driver’s side.
Violet gathered up the leather bound book in her arms, holding it tightly, much like her younger self clung to the Bunny Rabbit doll her mother had made her. She drew in her knees, resting the book against it. With a breath she opened the book for the first time, reading the opening page aloud.
“The Diary of Eloise”
Violet read, and as she did the clouds above parted and the sun began to shine. Soon, the sky was clear; the makings of a rainbow.
