The Seven Stages of Anna Miller's Grief
A short story by Kody Boye
TRIGGER WARNING:
This story deals with the death of a sibling.
Please take her to the place I cannot see to the land through the gate that’s a miracle to a world in which she can dream where there is no pain, no suffering, no reason for her to scream for even in silence there is a storm raging effortlessly from the moment we are born and though in moments when we feel torn it only ends when death leaves us worn.
There was once a time when I believed that nothing could separate me from my sister—that nothing, not even the universe, could tear us apart.
Today, I was proven wrong.
After three long, horrible weeks in the ICU, Abigail has finally gained her wings.
I do not know what I will do.
#
I sit at her bedside for quite some time, allowing the shock and denial of the moment to seep through my bones. As around me my mother and father cry, I look on as the nurses and doctors perform their final tasks. They take Abigail’s pulse. Confirm that she has passed. Announce her time of death. They turn to offer their condolences, and ask if we need anything further.
“No,” my mother says. “We don’t.”
My father adds, “Just… take her. Take her away.”
It is such a fleeting word. Away. Yet, the longer I sit here, listening to the sounds of machinery dying, people crying, I find that the word’s emotional impact strikes me far harder than I could have ever expected it to.
My sister—Abigail Miller, a girl of only sixteen—has left this mortal coil. She has gone with the wind, some might say, and taken her final exit.
As the nurses and doctors work to remove Abigail from the room, covering first her body, then her face, my parents turn to look at me. With eyes lost, and lips cracked, they stare at me for several long moments. I know they are trying to articulate their words, struggling to find the right things to say. But what can a parent truly say to a child who has just lost their sibling?
“Anna,” my father says, in a voice that is hollow, gravity having taken his strength away.
“I’m okay,” I reply, lifting my eyes to face them before he can speak further. “I’m… I’m okay.”
“Are… you sure?” my mother asks.
I offer little more than a nod.
My mother turns her head. Sobs a thousand sobs, which cut like knives deep into my soul. My father, meanwhile, lifts a hand to his eyes, before finally saying, “We can’t stay here. It’s… not what she would want.”
“I know, Daddy,” I say.
So I stand. And turn. And in the threshold, look back at where my sister’s hospital bed used to be, where for three weeks she fought to survive, only to succumb in the process. For days I had sat in this room. For hours I had waited in anticipation. For minutes I had prayed, and for moments I had waited for some response, maybe from God, or an angel, or something in-between. Now that Abigail is gone, there is a void here, in this place, this space. A part of me wants to cry. But what use would that be when she cannot hear?
There is a lone, almost-ungodly truth to all of this.
My sister is dead.
I do not know what I will do.
#
The pain and guilt come later, after we have arrived home. My mother cries, unbearably so, her sobs rising, then falling to the tune of her despair. I hear my father cry as well. It is the chorus of their suffering that prompts my own reaction, and for several long, unbearable moments, I feel nothing but emptiness.
Then, just like that, it all comes crashing down.
My heart throbs. My chest tightens. My nose throbs as tears rush down. I struggle to hold it together, and yet, the agony is unbearable, torturous beyond compare. Whole worlds could be destroyed, and oceans turned blue, by this emotion.
I realize, in the moments thereafter, that only God could have created such a pain.
I think, God.
Then I begin to sob.
I do not know what I will do.
#
It had happened so quickly, so suddenly. One moment, Abigail had been driving. The next, she’d been rear-ended by someone driving too fast down Harmony Road.
The man had described, in the aftermath of the accident, the fact that he’d hydroplaned. Unable to control his vehicle in the downpour of rain, he’d crashed into Abigail’s rear bumper, at which point the momentum from being struck by a four-thousand-pound vehicle had caused her to go sailing off the road. She’d hit a tree with such force that it practically flattened the front of her car; and upon arriving, the police had taken one look and thought the driver, my sister, was dead. They almost hadn’t reached in to check her pulse. Only the fire department, and the jaws of life, had been able to free my sister from the vehicle.
Lying here, in my room, the morning after, I relive the moments during which my parents had received the call, the seconds in which they’d had to react. One moment, my mother was laughing, a smile on her face over a joke my father had recited from the internet. The next, she was grabbing her phone, and her face was a portrait of panic, of horror, of disbelief.
My father had asked, What happened?
And my mother had replied with: There’s been an accident.
To the hospital the three of us had fled, and for five long, unbearable hours, they’d worked to mend Abigail’s internal injuries, to reset her bones. They’d stated, in no uncertain detail, that it would be a miracle if she survived.
For three weeks my sister had slept in a medically induced coma.
To think I will never see her again is beyond agonizing. It is nightmarish.
I want to do nothing more than lie here—to simply wait, and sleep, and maybe even dream—but I know, without a shadow of a doubt, that staying in bed will only prolong my suffering. For that reason, I push myself upright, and wait for the dizziness to pass before planting my feet on the floor. Then I rise, and make my way out of the room.
It is late, at this hour of ten thirty; and under normal circumstances, my parents would be at work, and I at school. However, given the accident, and the toll it has taken upon our family, I am not surprised to find that I am the only one awake.
The door to my parents’ room is closed. So, too, is the door to Abigail’s.
I come to a halt at the threshold leading to her room, half expecting to hear her laughing, her pop music playing. Instead, I hear nothing but silence.
A moment passes, then two; a third, a fourth. When finally the fifth rolls around, I reach out to touch her doorknob—
Only to hear a throat clear.
I freeze, startled. I exhale, and whisper, “I’m sorry.”
“You don’t have to be sorry,” my father whispers back. “I… I thought about going in, too, late last night.”
“Why didn’t you?” I ask.
He pauses. Then: “A part of me thought that she might be in there. That she might be watching, that she might be waiting. But when the reality began to settle in, I… I found that I couldn’t bear it.”
“Bear what, Daddy?”
“Knowing that she is gone.”
Gone.
His word is a whisper, his voice so small, so quiet, that he can barely be heard. But that single word carries like a dagger, and it slices deep into my heart.
A single tear slips from my eye the moment thereafter.
“I’m sorry,” my father says.
“It’s not your fault,” I reply.
“I know it isn’t. But… Anna… you shouldn’t have had to—”
“What?”
“Be there.”
I pause. Allow the words, and their reality, to sink in. Then I say, “I wouldn’t have left her there to die without me.”
“I… I know you wouldn’t have,” my father then says.
He stares past me, looking at the door or the past I do not know. He says, “You can go in. If you want, that is.”
I wait for him to say something, anything, more. Unfortunately, my father is too lost in his grief to respond. He simply turns and makes his way down the hall.
Though a part of me longs to step forward—to take hold of that doorknob, to twist its surface, then to open the door to that passage—I know for a fact that I cannot.
There is no denying that I am broken.
I do not know what I will do.
#
I cannot refuse what I feel.
I am, beyond all descriptions, angry.
Over what that driver had done. Over the situation that had taken place.
I wonder, quite plainly, if there was something that could have been done—if, by some happenstance, the driver had called the paramedics sooner, my sister would have had a fighting chance; or if they had rushed my sister into surgery quicker, she would have survived. The reality is damning, the emotions that come with it even more so. What’s worse is that, the more time goes on, the greater my fury becomes, the more the tempest builds.
What, I wonder, could have been done differently?
My sister had been coming home from a friend’s house that night. The weatherman on Channel 9 had predicted that a storm would sweep into the city, and though my mother had tried to argue her case, my sister had refused to stay at her friend Tiffany’s house. I’ll be fine, she’d said over the phone. It’s just a little rain, she’d said.
Of course, a little rain had turned into a torrent; and though no one would have realistically gone out in such a storm, my sister had possessed a wildfire spirit. The firestorm that she was, little had scared her, up until the day of the accident.
Maybe that was her downfall, a part of me offers as I consider my expression in the bathroom mirror. Maybe that was her Achille’s heel.
“Her vulnerable point,” I then whisper, “most easily exploited.”
I lean forward. Wrap my hands around the porcelain sink. Inhale a long, deep breath, then exhale it. Tears burn at my eyes, and for a moment, I’m left to reel in the feeling of it all.
I think, Why?
Why would God, if He so happened to exist, have allowed my sister to die? She’d never done anything wrong, nor anything bad. She’d always been kind, considerate. She got good grades, treated everyone with respect. She was, to me, a perfect girl. So why her?
“Why?” I whisper. “Why Abigail?”
A knock comes at the door; and instinctively, I freeze.
My mother asks, “Anna?”
I reply, “Yes?”
She says, “Your father and I have to go. To the funeral home. To… to pick out the… the casket.”
“Do you—” I start to say.
But my mother cuts me off by saying, “No. We… We want you to stay here.”
“All… All right,” I say.
Though a part of me wants to argue—to fight my case, or even state my cause—another knows that doing so will only serve to cause me harm. As a result, I simply sigh.
The sound of my mother’s footsteps recedes. My father whispers. My mother replies. The door opens, then closes. Then, for the first time since Abigail passed on, I am really, truly alone.
I do not know what I will do.
#
It is the day of the funeral, and I want nothing more than for God to take it back. To right the wrong. To return my sister to the planet Earth. I know, however, that this will not happen, and as a result, I stew in silence, staring at my reflection in my bedroom mirror, at the ghost of a person that used to exist but no longer does, now that Abigail is gone.
Whatever, I wonder, will I do?
There is a moment in which I turn to face my bedroom window, a pause where my breath catches. As I inhale, slowly but surely drawing in the air on this cold and rainy day, I find myself thinking back to a time during which we were small, and a place where we never had to worry about a thing.
On a day like this ten years ago, we’d played dolls. I’d been four, she six; and though I was stubborn as could be, Abigail was always kind, always considerate, always the dutiful sister.
When I’d throw a doll down in disappointment, Abigail would pick it up with admiration. She’d hand it back to me a moment later, and then finally say, You have to be nice to the dollies.
But why? I’d ask. They’re just stupid dolls.
You have to be nice, Abigail had said, because you never know what tomorrow might bring.
A knock comes at the door, startling me from my thoughts.
“Anna?” my mother asks.
“Yes, Mama?” I reply.
“It’s almost time to go.”
For a moment, I had forgotten what day it is, what time had brought with it. I had been so lost in the past that I could’ve remained there forever, and been perfectly content for the rest of my days. But now that I am here, in the present, and I know that my sister is gone, I find my heart aching, my mind racing.
I think, How will I ever survive?
But the truth, painful as it happens to be, is that I do not know how I will survive, nor how I will make it through this day.
Unfortunately, one thing is for certain, despite all my caution, regardless of every reservation:
Abigail is gone.
I do not know what I will do.
#
The funeral is a blur.
One moment, Father Cook is delivering his sermon.
The next, we are standing in the cemetery, on the grounds in which my sister will be buried.
There are people all around us. Some are family, many are friends. Given the funeral has fallen on a weekend, there are even a few teachers—Missus Hornbeck, the AP English teacher, included. With a single yellow rose in her hand, she stands ready to offer my sister a final goodbye.
It takes all I can manage not to break.
Somehow, though, someway, I manage to hold it together as the pallbearers step forward. As the casket is lowered into the ground. As the people step forward, then as they toss their flowers into the grave.
I have just stepped forward with my parents when Missus Hornbeck steps forward. “Hello, Anna,” she says. “Hello, Mister and Missus Miller.”
“Hello,” my parents say.
“Thank you for coming, Missus Hornbeck,” I say. “I know it would have meant a lot to her.”
“Your sister—and your daughter—was one of my best students. One of my finest writers, too, if you want me to be perfectly honest. To think that she is gone is just…” She pauses. “Unfathomable.”
It is a word an English teacher would use. Unfathomable; or, more appropriately: impossible to understand. In my time in Missus Hornbeck’s advanced placement class, I’d heard her wax poetics over the word’s origin, of its importance, of its gravity. Hearing her say it, especially in this context, is almost serendipitous, in a way. It’s almost like it was meant to be said.
“Thank you for your kind words,” my mother says.
“I will pray for your daughter,” Missus Hornbeck says, nodding first to my mother, then to my father, before turning her head to look at me “Please know that, though your grief is immeasurable, and your hearts filled with pain, that your suffering will not be endless. As the poet Fitzgerald once said: this, too, shall pass.”
She then turns and makes her way to the car, all without taking one look back.
In the moments that follow, I find myself thinking, doubting, even praying.
My father says, “Let us go home.”
The three of us turn and begin to make our way back toward the parking lot.
The whole while we walk, I cannot comprehend a life without my sister, of existing in a world in which she does not.
I do not know what I will do.
#
The days that follow leave me feeling lost. Hopeless. Broken. Like old China, I am fragile, and prone to cracking. I know that if I am mishandled, or pushed to the edge, I will undoubtedly break. It is a fact I understand wholeheartedly, given the emotional toll I have experienced, due to the undeniable state of my being.
I want to be strong. I want to be able to withstand the tsunami that threatens to push me over the edge, and brave the whirlpool that threatens to pull me under. Yet, at the same time, I know for a fact that the precipice of destruction is never far.
I discover this truth three days after the funeral, when I am standing before the doorway that leads into Abigail’s room.
My parents are gone. My heart is hammering. My mind is racing. My blood feels like it runs cold in my skin, and it’s all because I am doing the one thing I feel I should have done from the very beginning.
A part of me knows that going in will not spell certain doom—at least not in the physical sense. I have already been given permission. My mother and father won’t be mad. My sister’s memory might possibly even be glad. Yet, treading into that space makes me feel as though I am braving the final frontier—that I will be stepping through a threshold, and intruding upon a place, that should forever remain untouched.
A part of me wants to cry. Another would rather die. But I know, without a shadow of a doubt, that if I am to ever find any peace, I must enter my sister’s room. For that reason, I do the one thing I know I must: I reach out, take hold of the doorknob, and twist it in my grasp. Then, I push the door open to Abigail’s room, and prepare myself for what I imagine will be the worst.
But, surprisingly, there are no feelings of this being the worst thing ever. Instead, I am almost instantly comforted by the smell of warm vanilla, the presence of sparkly things. Jewelry dangling from a hanging stand glitters in the sunlight. An assortment of candles are arranged on the higher shelf of a desk. A corkboard features photos of friends and family—of us at the beach, of us on family vacation, of me and Abigail and Dad as we went fishing one summer, of us and Mom as we helped make Christmas dinner. The barrage of memories threatens to sweep me away as the tide rolls out, but despite the pictures, the candles, and the glittering jewelry, none of these things impact me as much as the item resting on the back of Abigail’s desk chair.
None of these things touch me more than the sweater I got her for her sixteenth birthday.
I still remember the day I found it: the day I’d walked through the mall in desperate search for something for my sister’s special day. My parents had promised a car, and though I knew that nothing I could give her could ever compare, I still tried my hardest to find something that would make her happy, that would bring her joy. I can’t remember how many times I’d walked up and down the mall’s many halls, how many stores I went into, how many businesses whose wares I’d perused. I’d almost given up—at least until I found it: that pink wool cardigan. It’d looked softer than life, and touching it summoned images of snowy days, carriages pulled by reindeer, and, above all things, the fake mall Santa Clauses that we’d go see as children.
At the time, I’d thought she’d hate the gift. Nothing, I knew, could match the car my parents had promised she would get. I’d spent over seventy dollars, tax included, on something I was sure she’d never wear, or something she wouldn’t even like. But even now, standing here, in this room, almost five months after her birthday, I can still remember the look on her face as she’d opened it—as she’d unwrapped the box, pulled up its paper flaps, looked in at the sweater.
I still remember the exact words she’d said when she saw it. She’d said: I love it.
Then she’d given me the biggest hug, and told me she’d loved me.
She’d forgotten it on the night she’d gone to Tiffany’s—had claimed, in no uncertain detail, that she didn’t want it to get ruined by the rain.
Just thinking about it is enough to make me cry.
And yet, crying, cathartic as it happens to me, does not compare to warm summer days, long autumn nights, hot chocolate, or talks about what boys we’d liked, what boys we didn’t. It especially does not compare to the joy of her laughter, the smile upon her face, the cardigan—which, as I set my hands upon it its fine wool surface, inspires a flood of emotions, a torrent of rain. A tornado could have ripped the house apart around me, and nothing would compare to the pain I feel now.
It is, undoubtedly, the storm of the century.
In experiencing this room—in smelling its smells, seeing its sights, touching its things—my grief is amplified tenfold. And though I wish it was not real, I once again face a terrible truth:
Abigail is gone.
I do not know what I will do.
#
The passage of time, they say, will eventually heal all wounds. That it will eventually mend all injuries. That it will eventually cause all the world’s woes to wilt and wither, then fade away. The human body—and, especially, the human brain—almost always finds ways to recover, even if it’s just by applying scar tissue to mend the wound. There is, I understand, a method to this school of thought.
I discover this truth three months to the day after Abigail passed away.
On this day, which feels so monumental to me but for many would be inconsequential, I am standing on the hill that overlooks my hometown, and gazing out at the distance. My chest is tight, and my heart is aching, and no matter how hard I try to find the majesty in the world around me, I can think only of life without my sister.
Abigail, I think, is gone.
She has been for three months; and during each of these moments, all of those minutes, every countless hour, and the number of passing days, I have found that all those moments I’ve suffered, and the traumas I’ve experienced throughout them, have begun to lessen. They have not faded, I understand—for the feeling of loss never truly ends—but they have been tempered within my body, my mind, and, most importantly, my soul.
When we were children, our mother and father would take me and Abigail to this very spot. In the winters, we would sled; in summers, we would roll down the hill; and during autumn, we would jump into piles of leaves swept by wind to the very bottom. It was during these days that I had thought of nothing but fun—of freedom in the sun and the ways we could run. As the two of us had grown older, we often avoided this place, but not out of an aversion. Childhood places, many might argue, are just steppingstones to the rest of our lives. Some return to the places they once haunted. Some never do. But everyone, no matter their present, always remembers their past.
On the last of winter, during which time the world is on the cusp of spring, I look out into the distance and try my hardest to remember the way Abigail laughed, the way she smiled, the way she breathed. My smartphone holds countless pictures of her—of the two of us as children, as young adults, as the women we were meant to become—and though I have voicemails where I can hear her talk, hear her laugh, hear her breathe, they cannot compare to what I would feel if I were able to hear and see these things now, in the present.
Abigail was meant to have a future. She was meant to finish high school. Go to college. Find love, maybe one day marry. She often spoke of wanting to start a family one day—of wanting her children to have children, and then them to have children of their own—and though I never could imagine the future ahead of me, Abigail had been a dreamer. She’d been able to see the years ahead. The months foretold. The days of the rest of our lives.
But now—
Now—
Abigail is gone.
I was never one to believe in Heaven—of a life beyond this one like my own, of a world fantastical, a golden kingdom extending as far as the eye could see. But in standing here, looking out at the majesty of the world and everything in it, I find myself longing for that for my sister, who I feel would have deserved all of it and more.
They say that death is for the living, and those left behind are the ones who truly suffer.
I understand, now more than ever, the words that Missus Hornbeck spoke to me that fateful autumn day.
Through all of this, there has been one lesson—and one mantra—to be learned:
That this, too, shall pass.
And though I stand upon the precipice of a place you cannot see in a land where I feel God is watching and the tempest has turned into a breeze your pain has become my suffering and my suffering they have been made to see where calm ocean waters have been cast over me and yet, I have forgiven you for leaving me far too soon for taking your exit for leaving this room I love you more than words can show don’t ever forget me even though He has taken you home.
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