From: Bluesea567 Date: 20 Nov 2000 04:14:51 GMT Subject: NEW: All We Need of Hell 1/1 post-Patience Title: All We Need of Hell (1/1) Author: Bluesea567@aol.com Distribution: Gossamer, Ephemeral, Spooky, anywhere Summary: Scully relives a sad time after the episode, Patience Category: V, Post-Ep, SA Spoilers: Patience, Beyond the Sea Rating: PG Feedback: I would love it Disclaimer: Characters property of 1013 "My life closed twice before its close; It yet remains to see If immortality unveil A third event to me, So huge, so hopeless to conceive As these that twice befell. Parting is all we know of heaven, And all we need of hell." -----Emily Dickinson When I visited Mom after Ahab died, she was sprawled on the floor of her bedroom sorting through his bureau drawers. It hadn't been all that long, just long enough for me to finish my case and get back into town. Yet, I could see through the half-open closet door that Ahab's half of the space was already naked, except for a few scattered hangers and his empty shoe rack on the floor. It was as if someone had waved a magic wand. "What's the rush?" I asked her, tossing my coat on the bed. I noticed that his bedside table had also undergone some sort of purge. His barometer was no more to be seen, nor his ever- shifting pile of worn leather-bound books. His mug crammed with pencils and pens to make notes of important ideas whenever they stuck him had also been transported elsewhere. The only things that had survived on his sturdy mahogany table were his brass lamp and his alarm clock. No, I was wrong. A pair of reading glasses, so small and frameless as to be nearly invisible, lay forlornly at the base of the lamp. Why had they been spared, I wondered. Mom didn't even look up, her head bent down to root through the lowest bureau drawer. She studied a pair of flannel pajamas as though she hadn't handled them dozens of times. "It's not a rush," she murmured. "It's been nearly two weeks." She pulled a box half-filled with clothes closer to her and began folding pajamas, stacking them in the box with her characteristic order and method. She still hadn't looked up. The room, I noticed, was crowded with cardboard boxes, neatly closed and labeled. How do you label a life? In magic marker, I guess. Two weeks, I thought. Is that a long time? Or a brief one? How do you measure time? They'd been married for, how long? It would be 35---or 36-- years in November. There was no way to compare two weeks to that many years. They'd been together long before I was a twinkle in anyone's eye. Thirty-five years--- for better, for worse, for richer and poorer, in sickness and health. Until death . . . yes, it had parted them. It had parted Ahab from all of us. But wasn't he still in our hearts? Did that mean we had to remove the evidence of his existence? Whisk away his possessions before they could gather dust? An impossible task, surely. I knew he would always be with me, and I was sure he'd always be with Mom. "Does it bother you to have his stuff here?" I asked. "Is that why you're giving it all away?" Mom's stack of pajamas reached the top of the box and she neatly folded the flaps over. She pulled a sticky label from a nearby pad, attached it to the box, and wrote in large black letters, 'Pajamas.' The most efficient burial I had ever seen, I thought. It occurred to me that when I'm upset I can be a raging bitch. She laid down her magic marker and looked up. What she read in my face got her attention, apparently, because she rose from her knees and perched on a nearby cedar chest. "I'm not giving *him* away, you know," she said softly. She leaned against the wall, letting her head loll back, gazing at the ceiling. "Part of it's . . . I guess, to keep busy. After all the arrangements are made and the thank you's written, you look around and you wonder, What next. And it's shocking. For the first time you can remember, you just . . . don't know. Tomorrow is . . . a blank." Mom scattered some papers and reached underneath them for a pack of cigarettes. I nearly fainted, but I refrained from saying anything. I don't think she'd smoked for twenty years. She squinted at me through a light haze of smoke. "He was my habit," she said, "the way smoking once was. But he was even more addictive," she said with a half laugh. "With him gone. . . . I, I keep expecting him to walk through the door. I just think he's at sea, the way it always was. I need to . . . to make myself realize that he's not at sea this time." She gave another uncharacteristic, nervous little giggle. "I'm the one at sea." She gave the cigarette a look of loathing and crushed it out roughly. "Disgusting," she muttered. "So, I figure, if I keep busy with things that will have to be done anyway, and if I . . . move enough of his things ^" I'll, I'll notice they're gone." She stopped and leaned her face into her hands, kneading her flesh. She spoke through her fingers, her voice almost too muffled to be heard. "Then maybe I'll start to believe it," she said. "That he's gone." She dropped her hands and stood up, drawing a deep breath. Her face was ravaged, at least ten years older than it had been just a month ago. "It's inconceivable," she said. "He was gone so often, but he was never really gone. I can't believe I won't see him again. The thought makes me want to, to curl into a little ball and hide in the closet. God," she exclaimed, "how damned trite!" She shuffled over to sit beside me on the bed. Her head, its hair soft and ticklish, nestled into the side of my neck. I encircled and squeezed her soft body. She smelled like comfort to me, yet she was the one who needed my comfort this time. I wished I had some words, but I too had lost him. I felt empty and incomplete, wishing for just five more minutes for us---Ahab and me--- to talk, really talk. I told her that, holding her tight. "At least you parted with him on good terms," I said. "I'll bet you kissed him shortly before he died." She nodded. "Of course I did. I loved him. And now he's gone and I can't make myself believe it. So I have to make the physical changes that'll remind me. The. . . the daily surroundings have to change in such a way that I, I, I won't . . . count on him coming home again. I can't keep reliving that realization. I have to make it clear to myself every day, every minute. Otherwise, I'll just experience this constant. . . fresh pain of the loss. It, it pierces. And," her voice broke, "I'm afraid that'll kill me. I have to know he's gone," she sobbed. "I *need* to accept it or I'm lost." I held her and murmured non-words until the two of us fell over onto the bed and wound around each other, our bodies tangled and our tears mingling. I hope it was some comfort that day for her to share our grief. Grief suffered alone is . . . almost unbearable. Which is a fact that I am now unfortunate enough to know better than I'd ever wanted to. "Parting is all we know of heaven---and all we need of hell," as the poet said. And she was so right. Parting is like being torn asunder. And the feeling does not go away. You can try to bury yourself and your feelings in everyday activities, but the minute you pause, it hits you again and knocks you to the ground like a fierce typhoon, rubbing your face in the mud with the truth of what has happened. Every time. Over and over and over. I finally remembered what my mother, a wise woman said, long ago when we lost Ahab. Put his things away. She didn't move out of the house, but she did change it enough so that she would realize that she was now alone in the house. Bringing that unpleasant truth to the forefront is one way to avoid constant pain and surprise that you're alone. Now I know. She was right. Like her, it took me two weeks. I stood in the office, the day before we went out on the bat case, about to put the . . . his nameplate away. It pained me every time I looked at it. Ripping my heart open many times, every day. Like Mom said, it pierced. But it was so hard. He wasn't dead. At least, I want desperately to believe that. It's all I have left, my belief. I'm living on those beliefs, trying to breathe their fumes to stay alive, to keep functioning. Just as Mom suffered in the bedroom she shared with Ahab, I spend so many hours in the office we worked in, an area crowded with memories, a place where---yes, she was right---I *do* expect Mulder to come charging in with his latest outrageous theory. And two weeks after my first attempt to remove that painful nameplate, the pain is still overwhelming. I can't throw out his possessions. Besides, I expect him--I do, damn it, I do, I do!- --to come back and bitch if something gets moved in what he always saw as his domain. But I can take this one small action. I'm not packing it in a box, nor am I calling the Salvation Army to pick it up. I'm putting it in a safe place for his return, which will come. I believe. I want to believe. None of this is Doggett's fault. He's a good man, a conscientious agent, and far more respectful than most of the guys who could have been assigned down here. He doesn't sneer, he reasons, he supports me even when I'm too tired to support my own point of view. He's a lot more open-minded than I was at this stage, to be honest. Poor man. He's not Mulder. That is maybe the central fact about him. But he deserves proper treatment, my respect, my loyalty, until Mulder does return. And a desk. But he can't have this one. The true occupant's nameplate is sitting in this drawer. This small gesture has removed one of the spears which pierces my heart daily. It^^s a first step, and one that relieves the tiniest bit of the pain. The pain is not to be believed. The longer time goes on, the more the numbness wears off. And it painfully sinks into my entire being that he is gone and I have no guarantee that he will be back. Like Mom, I have only the consolation that we parted on good, loving terms, that we held each other. Parting is hell. END