Now, Its Possible to Live
Emma stood at the edge of the grave, watching as the coffin was lowered into the earth.
It was chilly. The November wind tugged at the black ribbons on the wreath, crept beneath her coat, making her shiver and hunch her shoulders against the cold.
Aunt Dorothya distant relative Emma had met only a handful of timessniffled quietly beside her.
Her mother kept herself composed, though Emma felt how her fingers, tightly gripping Emmas hand, were icy.
Her father
Emma stared at the coffin, trying to make sense of what she felt.
Nothing.
An absolute, ringing emptiness. Like a house abandoned in winter after the heatings been turned off for ages.
He was a good man, someone murmured from behind. Rest his soul.
Emma nearly burst out laughing.
Good man?!
How would they know?!
They only saw him at family gatheringssober, cheerful, often joking with his accordion. Golden hands, the life of the party, a decent bloke.
Thats all.
They didnt know how he was at home.
Emma closed her eyes, memories flashing unbidden: shes about seven, jolted awake at night by a crash. Her father staggers into the hallway, missing the door, stinking of alcohol and something sour. Her mother dragging him to the bedroom, him struggling, waving his arms, yelling, You dont respect me! Emma squeezes her eyes shut, pulls the duvet up to her face so she wont see or hear anything.
In the morning, her father sits guilty at the kitchen table, sipping pickle juice, saying, Sorry, love, I lost control. It wont happen again.
It always happened again.
Again and again.
Emma opened her eyes. The coffin was buried, wreaths laid atop the mound. People began to drift towards the cemetery gate. Her mother touched her elbow.
Come on, darling. The wake
At the wake, Emma felt like a stranger. She ate, nodded, responded softly to condolences. But inside, one thought kept battering against her, desperate to be let out:
Why dont I feel anything? Why am I not hurting?
That evening, once everyone had gone, she and her mother sat together in the kitchen with tea, saying nothing. Eventually her mother spoke.
You know I had the strangest thought.
Emma looked up.
I thought, now I dont have to be afraid anymore. He cant collapse somewhere, cant freeze, wont disappear. We can just live.
Emma saw the same terror in her mothers eyes she felt herselfthe fear not of grief, but of relief.
Am I awful? her mother whispered.
Emma moved closer, wrapping her arms around her mothers shoulders.
No, Mum. Were not awful. Were just tired.
They sat like that until morning. They reminiscednot about how he drank, but about other things: how he built Emma a dollhouse, taught her to ride a bike, brought home a huge watermelon from the market one day and the three of them ate it sitting on the floor because there wasnt enough room at the table.
He had many sides. That, too, was true.
Then her mother went to bed, and Emma stayed alone. She picked up her phone, typed a message to her husband: Im alright. Ill come back tomorrow.
And suddenly she realised shed breathed evenly for the first time in days. No anxiety, no waiting for another terrible phone call, no permanent, exhausting sense of dread.
Her father was gone. At last, life was peaceful.
She knew the feeling would come back. She understood shed wake in the night many times, overwhelmed by guilt. That Aunt Dorothy and the other relatives would whisper behind her back: Such a cold one, didnt even shed a tear.
But now, in this quiet flat, where the smell of stale beer and the racket of nightly arguments were gone, Emma allowed herself a moment of honesty.
Im sorry, Dad, she said aloud to the emptiness. I loved you, really. But I was so tired of hating you.
In the morning, she left.
On the train, she stared a long while at the bleak November landscape outside, then took out her notebook and wrote a truth that finally came to her:
Children of alcoholics dont cry at funerals. Theyve cried enough throughout the years spent living alongside that sickness. Theyre not cold. They simply survived.
Emma closed the notebook, and, for the first time in ages, smiled.
The train carried her into a new life. A life where she neednt look back anymore.
