real friend. The degree to which I was pathetic was only rivaled by my sorrow.
But I’d been living by Gram’s suggestion. I had to believe that, if given enough time, all wounds would start to heal. They’d be scabby, and surely have an annoying itch as a reminder, but the pain would subside. I hoped.
Franny was back in school, which I supposed was progress of some sort, but it was clear she was just existing. And only barely at that.
She was emaciated from lack of eating, and the dark bags under her eyes looked like the heaviest part of her body.
Blane did his best to take care of her, putting her favorite foods on her plate and making sure she made it safely from class to class.
But he had enough of his own problems.
His mom had finally decided to go forward with the memorial for his dad (tomorrow), but they had yet to find a body and questioned if they ever would. All they had to cling to were the numerous first hand accounts from people there that day. Several of those survivors reached out to them, intent to thank the family of the man who saved them.
According to their descriptions, something I’d seen on the news rather than hearing it directly from Blane, his dad had been below the actual impact zone. But instead of going down, exiting the building like everyone else, he went up. To look for survivors. To get as many people out as he could. And when he couldn’t help any more people above him, he went floor to floor to make sure all the people below got out.
The last person who had seen him and lived to tell about it said they had made the journey from the sixty-seventh floor, and exited the building just a few short minutes before the building collapsed. He said William was on his way back up, talking to a fireman about a person he’d found trapped but alive on the seventy-eighth floor in the sky lobby.
It was presumed that he was still in the building when it collapsed.
He was a hero.
But that didn’t mean he wasn’t gone.
And it was hard to watch Blane deal with it. Or maybe, to say that I was watching him not deal with it would be more appropriate.
To the naked eye, he carried on. He gave smirks or smiles to those who knew him, and he always mounted a normal assault for his time with Franny.
I kept trying to give him openings to let it go, but he wouldn’t let me in.
Don’t get me wrong. He was himself. Kind and helpful. He even engaged in civil small talk from time to time. But any attempt to go deeper, to act as a support system, was met with direct resistance. His technique was almost always avoidance.
An appointment to get to.
Something to do for his mom.
A need to meet Franny at the door to her next class.
Something. Always something.
If I was honest, I’d have to say I was even a little disappointed in Franny. I knew she was in her head, and I knew the depression she was feeling was a real thing. A living, breathing disease that twisted her thoughts and held her tight in the clutches of melancholy.
But by now, she knew the depth of Blane’s heartbreak. She knew that on top of dealing with what she was dealing with, he was dealing with more .
And yet, she didn’t fight to offer him somewhere to ease his load. She just added to it.
Again, I knew the stakes. And I knew the reasons for how she was feeling. But no matter how justified she was, I, as the friend to both, couldn’t find it in me to completely silence the building resentment. She was human. She was allowed to do the “wrong thing”. And so was I.
I tried to keep perspective, though. To be understanding of the power of depression and the loss of a child, especially by your own making. To remind myself that it wasn’t something she could control. She was already drowning in guilt, struggling to keep even her mouth above water, and the last thing I needed to do was shove her below the surface.
Costumes smattered the cafeteria, as today was the day the school allowed students to dress up for Halloween. I hadn’t
But I’d been living by Gram’s suggestion. I had to believe that, if given enough time, all wounds would start to heal. They’d be scabby, and surely have an annoying itch as a reminder, but the pain would subside. I hoped.
Franny was back in school, which I supposed was progress of some sort, but it was clear she was just existing. And only barely at that.
She was emaciated from lack of eating, and the dark bags under her eyes looked like the heaviest part of her body.
Blane did his best to take care of her, putting her favorite foods on her plate and making sure she made it safely from class to class.
But he had enough of his own problems.
His mom had finally decided to go forward with the memorial for his dad (tomorrow), but they had yet to find a body and questioned if they ever would. All they had to cling to were the numerous first hand accounts from people there that day. Several of those survivors reached out to them, intent to thank the family of the man who saved them.
According to their descriptions, something I’d seen on the news rather than hearing it directly from Blane, his dad had been below the actual impact zone. But instead of going down, exiting the building like everyone else, he went up. To look for survivors. To get as many people out as he could. And when he couldn’t help any more people above him, he went floor to floor to make sure all the people below got out.
The last person who had seen him and lived to tell about it said they had made the journey from the sixty-seventh floor, and exited the building just a few short minutes before the building collapsed. He said William was on his way back up, talking to a fireman about a person he’d found trapped but alive on the seventy-eighth floor in the sky lobby.
It was presumed that he was still in the building when it collapsed.
He was a hero.
But that didn’t mean he wasn’t gone.
And it was hard to watch Blane deal with it. Or maybe, to say that I was watching him not deal with it would be more appropriate.
To the naked eye, he carried on. He gave smirks or smiles to those who knew him, and he always mounted a normal assault for his time with Franny.
I kept trying to give him openings to let it go, but he wouldn’t let me in.
Don’t get me wrong. He was himself. Kind and helpful. He even engaged in civil small talk from time to time. But any attempt to go deeper, to act as a support system, was met with direct resistance. His technique was almost always avoidance.
An appointment to get to.
Something to do for his mom.
A need to meet Franny at the door to her next class.
Something. Always something.
If I was honest, I’d have to say I was even a little disappointed in Franny. I knew she was in her head, and I knew the depression she was feeling was a real thing. A living, breathing disease that twisted her thoughts and held her tight in the clutches of melancholy.
But by now, she knew the depth of Blane’s heartbreak. She knew that on top of dealing with what she was dealing with, he was dealing with more .
And yet, she didn’t fight to offer him somewhere to ease his load. She just added to it.
Again, I knew the stakes. And I knew the reasons for how she was feeling. But no matter how justified she was, I, as the friend to both, couldn’t find it in me to completely silence the building resentment. She was human. She was allowed to do the “wrong thing”. And so was I.
I tried to keep perspective, though. To be understanding of the power of depression and the loss of a child, especially by your own making. To remind myself that it wasn’t something she could control. She was already drowning in guilt, struggling to keep even her mouth above water, and the last thing I needed to do was shove her below the surface.
Costumes smattered the cafeteria, as today was the day the school allowed students to dress up for Halloween. I hadn’t
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