The Seventeen Moments of He and She
Only Him
He held her there some time: ten minutes? Twenty minutes? An hour? It didn’t matter, nothing mattered to him anymore. She was gone, he had helped her, willingly, despite his massive reservations.
As they had agreed, he took the golden crucifix from around her neck and placed it around his own, her sweat still clinging to the smooth metal.
He was spent, both physically and emotionally, but his work was not done. Almost as if on autopilot he began the macabre task of taking her body off the cross, dragging it to the grave, and covering her for all eternity. The sweat of his body gleamed in the morning sun as he moved shovelful after shovelful of dirt to cover her, periodically tamping down the soil so it wouldn’t wash out in the next heavy rain.
His system of removing the wedges from the base worked like a charm, he was able to lower the cross and place it directly over her grave, just as she requested. The titulus remained attached, serving as an ersatz headstone. He did some mild “housekeeping” at the site and made sure it was a fitting place for his love to spend eternity.
He did all this as an automaton, as if he was cleaning up a worksite after a long job. He hadn’t yet really let the reality of the past twenty-odd hours, or even the past seven months, enter into his consciousness yet.
That changed the moment he turned his back on the site, on her grave, and headed back to the cottage. In an instant everything hit him as hard, perhaps harder, than he drove those nails through her body.
Walking back to the cottage, along the path he has so painstakingly created, both his mind and spirit were a jumble of wildly conflicting thoughts and emotions. He was starving, exhausted and utterly despondent over what he had just witnessed and willingly participated in. He didn’t recognize himself in this moment.
At the end of the path his head rose and there it was: the cottage. Their cottage. The door was still open from when she made her exit, and he could see the white robe bunched up on the ground. He froze in his tracks, paralyzed by his thoughts. He thought of the two place settings for breakfast he had set up, the two cups of now-stale coffee, the smell of the putrefying bacon he planned to cook. He thought of all her things he was now supposed to dispose of, he thought of the bed they had slept in, made love in the night before her crucifixion.
He couldn’t bear it, couldn’t bear to go inside again, ever, EVER! He saw his car in the driveway... He couldn’t imagine just driving off to return to his previous life unscathed: then he realized he couldn’t drive off even if he wanted to as his keys were in the cottage...! This thought made him chuckle at first, slowly expanding into an all-out laugh: but not the laugh of humor and good times, rather the laugh of someone undergoing a vast trauma to their soul, a laugh of near madness.
He sat down right at that spot, and stretched himself out, leaning up on one elbow staring at the cottage. His laugh continued for a time then gradually dissipated to some more rational thought. He was still in control of himself, despondent beyond comprehension but still in control. His hunger was no worse and clarity began to return to his mind.
He never thought she would do it, he never thought he would stick around long enough to see it happen, and he never thought he would fall in love with her, but he did. All those things came to pass and now he was forced to live with this new reality.
Now re-focused, he rose up, brushed himself off and took four steps towards the cottage before the memories came back in a flashflood of regret and sadness. “No fucking way... absolutely no fucking way…” he said to no one in particular. He turned around and went back up the path to her grave, now marked by the lowered cross and her titulus.
He stood before it, much the same as she had. “Dear God...” he muttered. He had been so involved in the machinations of building it he never really understood how intimidating it is as an artifact, particularly when you know how you it will be used.
“My God, she must have been absolutely terrified beyond all imagination standing here. How could she go through with it...? How? How…?” In that moment realized how incredibly strong she was, how she overcame tremendous fear to be true to herself. He finally realized there was no way he could ever change her mind; it was foolishness for him to think so. Almost impossibly, it made him love her even more and mourn the fact he would never see her again.
He truly didn’t know where to go or what to do, he simply stood there crying, just crying. He knelt at the foot of the cross, her cross, and recited the Lord’s Prayer over and over for some time. Gradually he stopped crying but couldn’t take his eyes of her cross. He touched the base, first with one hand then the other, then slowly traced his way up along the stipes. When he got as far as the cross beam he stopped, turned himself over and laid down on the cross that took her life, in the exact same position. He swore he could still feel her terrified perspiration on the wood, the smell of fear still permeating the air.
He looked up at the sky, just as she must have before she was raised. How amazingly strong she was to endure this agony and suffering...how amazingly determined she was to make things right with God... it was all overwhelming, so completely overwhelming.
He must’ve dozed off for a second, his body convulsed slightly as it slid off the wood during his brief sleep. He sat up quickly trying to remember where he was. Suddenly, he swore he could feel her all around him, her presence, her spirit. He heard no voices, saw no visions, smelled no familiar scent; but her presence was unmistakable, absolutely unmistakable. He laid back down on her cross and stared up at the clear late-afternoon sky. It was a beautiful sky, he thought to himself, He lay there, waiting... waiting... waiting... waiting... waiting... waiting...
