FlashFic: After the Funeral
I'm not at all sure where this story came from. I'm glad it did, though; I think these characters needed to talk to someone. I try to be strong enough not to turn away those who need to speak.
He lies dozing in my arms, finally having cried his fill. I still pet the pup's long, silken headfur tenderly, wishing that I could take away from him some of the pain, but knowing that pain at least as well as himself. It's not an easy thing, losing your mother. My own had passed some years before, at an age not much more than his own, but it was more merciful. Cancer is a cruel, unforgiving demon, whatever form it takes, however long it takes, and it had taken its toll over months and years.
I'm glad that he's been able to cry. The poor collie was always afraid to, when he was young, as if crying somehow makes you less as a being but particularly as a male. However, after the various disappointments and devastations of high school, college, so-called real life... The diagnosis of his mother's illness overwhelmed him. He came to me first to talk, then to scream out his pain, and finally to cry. I didn't turn him away. I wouldn't. He needed me too much for me to be cruel to him. During the last year, he clung to me whenever he could, and I never once said no. I've loved him too long and too deeply to be cruel. We clung to each other and held on for dear life, for both of us had come to realize just how dear it is.
He shifts a little in his doze, his long muzzle resting just below mine, his arms still wrapped around me, mine around him as he uses my bare chest as his pillow. He had asked me to come to his home with him after the funeral. I knew the tone in his voice, something that I had always come to understand was his way of conveying, without actually saying so, that he needed me. Of course I came back here with him. We took off our clothes, not as a prelude to sex, not today, not now. We needed to take off the formal mourning of the day and just be together. My chestfur is still wet with the pup's tears, and I feel blessed for having taken them. I was no less moved, as my damp cheekfur will attest.
I did my best to carry him through his grief, now and over the last year of his mother's bravery and suffering. We both needed the comfort, and we took it, and damn what anyone else might have to say about it. We knew the truth, and we saw it through together. We became so much more to each other during that terrible year, and our loving was good.
I look over his bare shoulder, gazing at the photo in the silver frame on his bedside table. It is his favorite picture of his mother, and she looks so beautiful there beside her husband. I have the strange feeling that she is looking at us now, from the picture, from somewhere else, and she is telling us that we'll be okay, that we'll be here for each other, and that's what's important. I understand, she is telling us. I have known loneliness, and there is nothing worse. Don't let each other be alone. I wouldn't want that. Be strong for each other.
My tears begin again, silent, but I'm not at all sure who I'm crying for. A pup losing his mother, a lover feeling his lover's pain, a husband losing a wife. Too much pain... yet we will get each other through it. Together. I hold him closer, whispering, as I had done so often, softly so as not to wake him...
"I love you, my son... always..."