On The Most Terrible Day

You just got the call.
You just left the hospital.
You just heard.

The worst thing. The most impossible, unbelievable, dreadful thing. The thing that only happens in movies, or to other people.

Today.

You will never forget today.

It is the day that cracks your world into before today and after. Nobody needs to tell you. You know this. You know it cellularly.

The world is atomically remade. Like a terrible chain reaction, flicking over every nano piece of reality. A tessellation of shock.

Nothing is the same as it was, just seconds ago.

It could still be a mistake. Just two breaths away, it could be different. Your mind clings to this hope. Maybe they're wrong. Maybe the doctor is mistaken, the car was stolen, the dental records were mismatched. Maybe the police were at the wrong house. Maybe the detective got the lines crossed. Maybe it's a miscommunication. Any second, a call could come-- so sorry, we've got the wrong person! Everything's fine! Only minutes afterwards, surely that's not too much to reverse. Pandora's box is only slightly opened. There's still time to snap the lid shut again. It's someone else's worst day, not yours.

But no.
It is yours.
This is your worst day.

Your body knows it. You vomit. Your stomach cramps. Breathing is no longer automatic. You have to tell your lungs. Out. In. Again. You sweat and it is acrid-- you smell like fear. You're scared shitless. All the literary hyperbole suddenly makes sense.

You faint. It's not that your corset is too tight. It's that the pain has you in a vice, hard anvil and hard hammer.

The grief is not polite. It is not sadness. It isn't pretty dignified tears.

It's sharp sand, pouring out of your scorched eye sockets, blasting your soft eyeballs.

Moments before, you were a person in a body. Now you are... something else. Your body is in convulsions of pain. Maybe your spirit has vacated the premises because whatever part of you that could, yesterday, name its feelings (happy! Sad! concerned! overwhelmed!)-- that part is absent. There is no word that can be attached to the sensation happening in that part of you that once contained feelings.

It is the screech of metal slicing metal with a spray of sparks.
It is the ragged mouth of the maelstrom.

That place in your chest, below your collarbones, was once a metaphorical seat of love, of conviction. Now it is a nest of physical pain. A broken heart is not a metaphor. The muscle is rent. It's off-beat lollop is only mechanical, the counterclockwise unwinding of a tin toy's key.

You can't eat. Maybe you won't eat, ever again. Food in your mouth is an old sponge. Water has no place to go. You can't swallow. Anything.

You have to make phone calls. You have to say the words. "The worst thing has happened." Every time you say it, the worst thing becomes more real.

And then you have to do it again and again. Your mouth moves: the parts that make it a mouth work in tandem. Your cheeks are numb and your lips are alien and your teeth which are just a clacking part of your hidden skull work against your tongue which only barely manages to not choke you.

Your voice sounds strange to you. You thank people for their kind thoughts and gestures. You hear the words come out of you as though they are on a distant radio.

What is the date? What is the time? You will never, ever forget.

It is a tattoo across every beat of your burnt-out heart.

At some point, you go outside. Your car is still the same. Your shoes are where you left them by the door. The sandwich you left unfinished is still in the fridge. The half-bottle of pear brandy for the cake is still in the fridge. This seems impossible. Ludicrous. Cruel. You have been utterly remade today. Smashed to glass-powder and reformed into human shape, but made out of pain. How is every other thing the same? The bottle should be melted like a Dali watch over the fridge shelves. The shoes should be ashes. The car should be twisted metal.

Maybe you can walk. Your puppet body remembers, theoretically, how to do it. Step, lift, step.

And maybe suddenly you can't.

Maybe the road is hard and pebbled against your knees.

Maybe you make sounds. You would be afraid to hear those sounds from anyone, but they are coming from you, and there is no way to contain them, any more than you could hold back a storm with your fingers.

Maybe there are children with you. Maybe they are looking at you with fear, asking you to go on as normal, asking you to undeliver this worst news, asking you to explain what any of it means, the way they ask-- what are stars? What is the moon? What is death? They are watching you to try and understand.

How can you shape the words to give to them when you don't have the words yourself? You have to try. The truth is the only thing strong enough to be told.

And today is the worst day.

The moment of nuclear annihilation is today. The white-blast. Your old life is a silhouette against a wall. Your new life-- every unimaginable moment after this-- is irradiated.

Maybe you try to sleep. You can't. Your body rejects it like a foul tarry medicine. You are convulsed with the horror of the day. You may never sleep again. Everything is destroyed. Every simple joy is smashed.

If you are lucky, there is someone there with you. Someone there to say, "I know, I know, I feel it too," I hold your forearms as though pulling you toward air. Someone who will mirror the stricken look on your numb face. Someone who will say, "drink this water. Just a sip. That's it. Just one." Someone who will say, "I'll do it. I'll make the call."

If you are very lucky, there is someone there with you who will say, "This is real, I believe you, I'm with you, it's not your fault, there's nothing you can do."

In a week, the worst day will be distended, like a belly in famine. Monstrous. The longest worst day. It is unrelenting. You don't have nerves or feelings, you are only pain. You have to make more calls. You have to talk to bureaucrats. The scalpel-cruelty of these conversations stuns even you, even in your stunned state.

In a month, the worst day is still unending.

But in a month...maybe... maybe you can eat. Maybe you can put something in your mouth, and it won't gag you. And you sleep again. One night. You can say what happened. Your voice sounds robotic to yourself. Maybe there was a mistake? A shrinking part of you still hopes. People look at you as though you are on fire. Their eyes are wide with pity and fear. There but for the grace.... they think, and knock on wood when you've gone past.

In a year, the worst day is the map of your new life. But you can sleep. You can eat. Sometimes you can feel your face when you talk. People around you are relieved that you are doing so well. You are more or less person-shaped living a person-shaped life. That place where your heart once was is still just a lightening struck hole. It's only charred gore, like a mortar to the chest.

In two years, you can smile. You can joke. You can tell the story of the worst day. The blasted hole in your chest remains. But it is no longer a ragged open wound. It is more like the hollow of a tree. The edges are no longer shredded flesh, but woody scar tissue. You are not seeping blood, but oozing amber. It is no longer filled with a throbbing screech of pain, just an echo of it, and the hoot of an owl.

There is the beginning of new growth. Ferny green edges to the scorch. Perhaps sometime, fronds will unfurl.
Not now.
Not soon.
But the idea is no longer impossible.

If today is your worst day. Oh god... I'm so sorry.
I'm with you.
I believe you.
It's not your fault.
It's real.

Your good body will carry you through this. Try to take a little bit of care of it. Some food, some water, some sleep. As much as you can stand. Breathe in, and out.Your body will allow you to survive this pain.

You will survive this.