Didn’t Die in My Arms
by Rene Marie
Some thoughts sneak into our mind without our knowledge, and some thoughts are already in our mind without our knowledge. Music either triggers this knowledge, or it draws the already present knowledge to the surface. For example, this morning was like any other morning. I got up, made the bed, fed the dog, and brushed my teeth while she ate. I got dressed and took her potty after putting on the same blue leash I have put on her every morning since she was a puppy three years ago. Standing in the morning sunlight while she sniffed for the perfect spot, my mind was free of thoughts, or so I thought.
When she finished with her morning ritual, I took her into the house, gave her a pat on the head, and grabbed my running shoes. My mind was still empty as I walked to my car, hit the automatic unlock button, and put the key in the ignition. I turned the key one click and the electric system forced the radio to blast into my ears. Simultaneously, thoughts I wasn’t aware were there came to the surface as I listened to Cutting Crew sing “I Just Died in Your Arms Tonight.”
Damn one-hit-wonder-from-the-eighties-past music. I remind myself he is gone, and I have tried to grieve; it is time to move on. It has been fourteen years since middle school and eight months since he did it, and it is still right there. He is no longer here, but it doesn’t prevent me from feeling my love for him. I remember, and it stings because I cannot comfort myself with the idea that he is somewhere remembering the same shared memories I am thinking. I cannot comfort myself with the idea that he might sometimes still think of me. I can’t and don’t wonder if he is happy, or if he remembers how happy we were together at one time. All of those comforts are lost. I can only remember and know that my memories are recollected alone.
“It must have been some kinda kiss,” Cutting Crew continues with the song, and I know I should change the radio station. But, instead I see the gymnasium of our middle school. I was finally in the eighth grade, and it meant I had the permission of my parents to attend a school dance. I was excited and nervous. My arms were around his shoulders, and his hands were on my waist. I could feel his sweaty palms through the silky material of my sea foam green dress. I didn’t want him to take his hands away although I thought for a moment it would be nice if he would wipe some of the moisture from his palms. To enhance the romanticism of the childhood moment, I would like to tell you that our eyes were locked in an embrace, but I was staring at the ceiling (afraid to look him in the eye), admiring the blue and white crepe paper streamers. I didn’t realize he was trying to kiss me, until I felt his lips on my cheek. I turned to look at him, and my nose bumped his. It was awkward.
I didn’t get the kiss until a week later. It was Friday night, and we were playing kick-the-can at a friend’s house. Eddie and I were hiding in Marcy’s Park down the street from the “home base” of our rousing game. We were sitting in swings, not talking. I stared at the starry skies of the Montana night and pretended to be lost in the Centaur constellation until I felt him punch my arm. It wasn’t a mean punch; it was kinda nice, kinda sexual, kinda “hey-here-I-am.” Nonetheless, I smacked him back, lost my grip on the chains of the swing, and fell to the sandy pit below. He laughed, and I pouted. Eddie stepped out of his swing and sat on top of me. He taunted me, and I halfheartedly thrashed my legs and arms underneath him until he bent to kiss me. His lips were softer than I imagined, and they were wet, but not in a soggy, slobbering way. At that moment, I knew it was the kiss I would remember forever. It wasn’t my first, and it wasn’t my last, but it was the best.
I shivered from the memory of the kiss, and I shivered because the song still had the power to haunt me today the way it haunted me that spring and summer as I fell in love with him. Looking back, I wasn’t aware I was falling for him at the time, but now I know I was. I know because of the defiant way I pretended like I didn’t care when he and his friends would giggle at me and somehow ignore me as I walked by them at school. We continued to ignore one another for weeks after the kick-the-can-kiss. At least, I ignored him at school. At home, in the safety of my bedroom, I listened to Cutting Crew’s song and imaged our lips dancing to the lyrics while I fell asleep.
We finally stopped ignoring one another for the sake of basketball. We both loved to play, and I was great for a girl, but good for a guy. For this reason, he and his friends let me back into their game. They had been short a good player since the kick-the-can game, and although they never said anything, I knew I had been missed. I found out later that Eddie had missed me the most. He kissed me again after all the other boys went home. That evening, he held my hand as he walked me home. He was even disappointed a week later when I couldn’t join their game because I had to baby sit. He didn’t say he was disappointed, but I found out later that he was.
While I baby sat, I drowned my disappointment in missing the game by watching TV (it was cranked because Cutting Crew was singing in their video) and by playing with the baby. Despite the noise from the TV, I heard it. Before I went to the window and peeked through the curtains, I knew what the sound was and who it was. I knew the sound of him dribble a basketball like I knew his kiss, soft, but with enough force. Although he didn’t look at me directly as I stood there watching him through the curtains, I saw him slightly turn his head and look at the window like he was trying not to look. I then knew he was disappointed I couldn’t play. I then knew he liked me and liked my kisses. Cutting Crew’s song officially became our song.
The like from eighth grade turned into love a few years later. It was the summer after our sophomore year of high school. We were inseparable. I don’t recall a day that we didn’t spend swimming in the Yellowstone River, biking through the gravel roads of our small town, and playing baseball at Riverside Park. It was the nights I liked best, however. Summer evenings in Montana were (and I imagine still are) the best for teenage make out sessions. I pulled my car into the parking lot of the gym. The song wouldn’t end. While Cutting Crew sang, “...It must have been something you said,” I remembered one summer night in particular. We were parked at quarter mile. I had lost my virginity to him months earlier, and since then our lovemaking had lost the early innocence of virgins, and we were braver. We didn’t care that we were in a public place and someone could drive up on us and catch a glimpse of my young, pink nipples, or his hairless, but muscular chest. We just wanted one another, and the rest of the little town of Forsyth didn’t matter.
He kissed my neck, and looked into my eyes before he pulled my cotton tank top over my head. He didn’t have to say anything; I knew his hazel eyes were telling my green eyes of the love he held for me. Falling with him was the sweetest. He was mine, and I was his. For the first time in my teenage years, I felt like I belonged somewhere. Here with him. That is until the flashing lights of a police car broke our eye-locked embrace. He moved off of me and into the driver’s seat, and I reached for my shirt and tried to act like I wasn’t sitting with the upper half of my body exposed in a car in the middle of the night. Eddie was smiling when he rolled down the window and handed the cop his driver’s license and registration. The cop didn’t waste time with us. Eddie’s dad was County Attorney and policemen were typically scared of him so we were told to go home, and that was the end of it. We didn’t go home, but we did find a new hideaway, and it was at the new place where he told me he loved me for the first time. It was sweet and natural, and I don’t remember exactly how he did it, but we laughed. We managed to keep the new place a secret for the next three years. Then, we were at least able to experiment with one another’s body in the privacy of college dorm rooms.
I tried to focus on the memories made in the bed of his dorm room at Dickinson State University, but it was futile. The flashing lights of the patrol car triggered another memory, and this one wasn’t funny, or sweet. College was finished, and we had been married a year and a half; the honeymoon of our teenage years didn’t last into the honeymoon of our marriage. We had been together too long, and we were too comfortable. So comfortable, we didn’t think the neighbors could hear our arguing on a Friday night and take Eddie’s threat of, “I could kill you, BITCH,” seriously. Minutes after our argument ensued, there was a knock on our front door, and I blinked against the flashing lights of the patrol car and focused on the policeman standing before me. After much convincing on my part, the officer left and didn’t file a report when he returned to the police station an hour later. We never did speak to our neighbors again, and I always turned up the stereo when I could sense an argument developing.
The memory of me turning on the stereo to camouflage our arguments brings me back to my morning and Cutting Crew singing, “I shoulda just walked away.” I exhale, and an odd noise escapes from my lips. This laugh is a sad laugh because I don’t know if I should have, but I did. After two years of marriage, I packed my belongings into a box, placed them in my truck, and drove to Colorado without looking back on my marriage, or my divorce until eight months ago when Eddie put a bullet into his mouth. Months before he pulled the trigger, I wrote a poem about not being able to remember his face. Since his death, I have had trouble eliminating it from my memory. It haunts my dreams and my nightmares, both sleeping and waking. But, I have some mornings like this one, and I think my mind is empty of him, and I turn on the damn radio, and there he is.
After six months of therapy, I have come to terms with my own life. Before Eddie’s suicide, I often found myself questioning whether I wanted to live, or die by ending my own life. Was I clinically depressed? Yes, I was, but it is something more complicated than being frustrated, angry, and tired of living. Life is tough, and it sucks. Sometimes it sucks so hard that it sucks the life out of people. I think this is what happened to Eddie. His suicide taught me that it doesn’t have to be that way. I learned, although I will never be tougher than life, I can be strong and somewhat solid. I have learned to talk through my feelings with friends. I have learned to feel anger, go running and let the frustration pour through my sweat glands. I have learned to keep a daily gratitude journal and write five reasons I am happy. With my life, I can deal, and I think I can deal with the absence of his life until I hear some stupid sentimental song, and I realize I am no further along in dealing with his death than I was eight months ago.
I shut off the radio. I can’t listen to it anymore. I can’t cry, either. The Prozac eliminated the tears months ago. Why can’t the doctors prescribe a pill for erasing the memories instead of numbing the pain? The pill could be orange instead of green, and I could have a feeling of not quite remembering what I forgot. The pharmaceutical companies could call it something interesting like “Helen’s drug” although the Greeks called it “heart’s ease,” or “nepenthe.” Actually, I don’t give a shit what they call it as long as I can feel happy and not the way I feel while taking Prozac. I get out of my car, slam the door, move four steps into the parking lot, and twirl in a circle with my eyes closed and my arms outstretched. I do this because I want to spin the memories out of my mind. I also want my mind to feel numb not because a drug did it, but because I forced it.
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