TITLE: Comes the Sun
AUTHOR: Bernie
RATING: R, slash
PAIRING: Brendan Shanahan /Steve Yzerman, other Wings
are mentioned.
DISCLIMER:I neither claim any ownership to any of the
characters. And I'm not implying anything about any of the characters in real
life. Its all fiction, none of it actually happened, I made it all up.
NOTES: This time of the year makes me a bit
reflective, but I started this a couple of months ago. But I am kind of sick of looking at it,
since I have been obsessing about it for a few days. So any major typo's can be
fixed when I archive it.
A/N's 2 The title here comes the sun thematically
links this to "Sundown" It is also the title of a song by George
Harrison. I am using this title without permission, but the song really had no
bearing on the fic. It's a beautiful song though.
A/N's 3 I stole Frala's set up for the top of fics.
Without permssion ::licks her:: so I dedicate this fic to her.
* * *
I don't want to be remembered as a witness. I was no
tourist or voyeur with a camera. I was a participant in it all. I was there. I
loved and lost and now that I am very old and nearly dead I want to record what
happened. One final time. One lasting goodbye to take me from this world to the
next world.
No I don't. I want to just want to remember, I just
want to delight in what I had. I don't need to tell anyone, I was there. I was
adored once to, is that how it goes? I was loved and in love. And I still am.
I do not say this because I seek pity, it is a simple
fact. I'm old, I'm breaking down, I will be dead soon. Time ticks down. I don't
welcome death, not exactly, but I have had quite enough of life as well. I have
certainly had more than enough of being alone.
Late at night as I contemplate my passing -will it
hurt? Will I know? -I sift through my memories one final time.
It is too late to be up, but somewhere in the world
people are awake, people are preparing for funerals and preparing for the rest
of long lives.
I can feel those who died first all around me. Their
almost imperceptible touch is more insistent. I can feel their fingers sifting
through my hair, their hands brushing my cheek. Late at night, last thing, I
feel soft lips slide across my own. I sleep smiling and wake up eager for what
is next.
As I feel my death approaching I am trying to finish
everything. I try to tie up lose ends. I try to remember the past as truthfully
and dispassionately as possible, one final time. And if I am truthful, and
really I may as well be truthful as there is no need to lie anymore and almost
no one left to lie to. And, besides, I feel I owe it to him to be truthful, as
he was always honest.
And I owe it to him to be kind to myself because he
was always kind to me. The hardest thing of all. Always when you look back
there are regrets. Always we are too hard upon ourselves for the decisions we
got wrong. For the things that we could not undo.
I have found that I wish there to be no loose ends for
others to deal with. No surprises to trip up my family, who I know loved me
enough to grieve. And I want them to be as untroubled as they can at that time.
I want them to celebrate my life, not remember my death as an endless trip to
lawyers' offices and funeral homes. I want them to drink whiskey and hear that
jig one last time.
But that is for them, for me it is something
different. I want to leave no rooms un-cleared, no memories ignored. If after
death we really do cease to exist and all that we knew and were and experienced
vanishes, well then I wish to spend as much time with my memories as possible.
The old do not need much sleep anyway.
My memories and my dreams are the only places that a
'we' exists anymore. That is the only place there has been an 'us' for a long
time. Do all loves, even as great as ours eventually slide away into memory and
then wither into nothing?
Because what I am trying to do, what I am trying to
decide, is what memory I want to have playing in my minds eye when I die. If I
have any control over it at all, I want to be thinking of one thing that brings
me the most joy when I die.
I thought of the birth and life of my children, my
junior days when it all stretched out endless possibilities before me. The
winning season of which there were a few. Almost without wanting to I have
re-examined some of the darker times as well, seeking the light that existed
even in those bleak moments. Eventually my thoughts always return to him.
I can remember everything. The sun on his hair, the
way he screwed his eyes up slightly when he saw ice and the glare. His hands, and
his face, and his eyes.
I may, but most likely will not, reach my eightieth
birthday. Although I may have shrunk a little over the years I was once
six-foot tall, I am proud of the fact I have never been a fat ex-athlete.
I am Canadian by birth but I have made my home in the
United States for nearly sixty years. I used to return to the North every
summer, to rejuvenate and re-connect, but perhaps I absorbed enough of Canada
in my early years, enough of her lake water and her soil and her ice to sustain
me.
Or perhaps that it was the reasons for my visits began
to dry up and die.
I had a brief trip to Toronto when I was seventy for
an award, and I went to Calgary when I was 75 for a funeral. I have had no
excuse to go back since. Even so, I have it written in my will that I wish to
be cremated and for most of my ashes to be scattered in Canada.
I added "just over the border at Windsor would be
fine," but I know my family will not do that. My grandchildren will take
my remains further into the white heart of the interior.
There they will find a lake or pond, and think
"it must have been just like the type he used to skate on" and there
I will lie.
But my memories are drying than that, liquid frozen
into ice, so I will add tomorrow that I wish for my ashes to be scattered on
dry land. I do not mind my ashes blowing in the breeze, but I do not want to
spend eternity wet.
A small amount of my ashes will lay with my wife. I
loved her from the first time I saw her. One of the two things I have truly
regretted in my life was that I was not faithful to her. It seems I can never
do anything the easy way. Cathy leaving her husband was one of the worst
experiences of my life. I repaid her belief in a future for the two of us with
an affair that lasted the nearly the rest of her life.
I never had to choose between the two of them, and
although he and I were discrete, still it lasted so many years that she must
have known.
It would be fitting to be divided in death as I was in
life.
My great granddaughter and my grand daughter visited
me earlier in the week. I would never have thought I would have lived long
enough to see either when I was their age. They visit every week no doubt
reasoning that they need to get their time in now before it is to late.
My great grand daughter is named "Catherine"
after my wife, but I call her 'Carrie' and my nickname was gradually adopted.
Can I not like to add that 'ie' sound to all names? We always did it in hockey.
Her birth predated the death of my wife by only a few weeks. That was another
visit that had to be made quickly. Cathy, just ending, working around the
various tubes and dressings in her arms to hold someone just beginning.
It is cruel to live a long time; you become the sole
posesser of the saddest memories in the world.
But also the best.
As Carrie sat on my lap she counted aloud the scars
and the lines on my face trying to decide which I had more of. With the brutal
honesty of youth she decided there were to many too count.
Can I fall in love with someone again? She reminds me
of my wife. I hope Carrie has half her patience and grace. I have the brutal
honesty of the old, I have to imagine it, and I will not be around to see it.
But I have still not clearly explained what I want. I
am looking for a memory to die with. I told you, I want to be prepared. I want
to know now what I will be thinking about when I die.
I know that it will be from the later parts of our
life. I did not savor what we had when we were young. You don't bother to hold onto the moment. The first thing I
remember about him is his voice.
"We will wait for you," were the first words
he ever said to me. I was new to the team, I had fucked up in the last place I
had been, I had no clue that I was even going in Detroit. I spent the plane
ride there panicing, how I would fit in, how my past, my wife, would affect how
we would be treated.
In my mind I have heard him saying those words a
million times. They were food in the darkest times. Last night did he whisper
the words to me as I was sleeping? When his wife died, someone he had loved
maybe even more than me, tragically young really, I had thought, perhaps for a
second, that finally we would find a way.
But my wife was still alive, and his children were
grieving, and simply that last chance died without ever really having lived.
That is the saddest memory of all I think. He died only a few years afterward.
If I could change time that is the one thing I would take back. I would have
insisted we stay together, I would have insisted that we take that final
chance.
A heart attack. There is some irony in that, his heart
giving out. In the hospital over his shrunken frame I kissed him good-bye, and
I could feel he was already gone. The next day his family disconnected his life
support, his family buried him and he was totally gone.
I thought that I night die then but I did not. I have
been in the world for what fifteen years without him, to long. The start and
the end of my life have been book ended by his lack.
In the dark I can feel his breath on my neck, and in
the light now I sense him. I can feel him standing behind me in the kitchen his
arms around my waist, his chin resting on my shoulder. Not demanding, just
there. It is impossible to be afraid.
It must be my Irish-Catholic blood that tells me there
is an after-life, my romantic soul that tells me that we will be re-united. My
failing body tells me that will be soon.
At his funeral his eldest daughter had said; "my
father had to great loves in his life: family an hockey, some times hockey and
family."
I wanted to jump up then and say that he had had /me/.
But I did not. I was always included anyway, included in that I was family I
was hockey, there was the warning presence of a hand on my shoulder, holding me
down, keeping me in my chair.
Not ghostly, it was Brett. I doubt I could have gotten
any words out anyway, choked as I was by tears and regrets.
If I had stood in that church, crying and not
speaking, I wonder if people would have guessed anyway. If some people that had
suspected would have nodded to their neighbors like they had known all along.
I am very nearly the last one left. And since it is
the privilege, and the duty, of the old to remember the dead I want to remember
some other people as well.
There are final good byes to be said to people I lost
a long time ago.
For years, forever we have kept in touch, slowly
dropping off the face of the earth. But first, but always, there was missing
Chris. Whenever we got together I would look around, half expecting him to join
us. His death is really the only one that could be called tragic. Dark roads,
icy surfaces, late at night, tired drivers. It is a story that is so old that
the outline is all that is needed.
Only his death could really be called tragic. Everyone
else managed to squeeze in the requisite amount of family and drama and love
and loss and laughter. Even Jiri, who it seemed would not recover, eventually
fell in love again. He fell in love again every year. Who never had another
love like that, but found that quantity was as good as quality.
But, but the last time we spoke, when I said how I
knew that soon I would be gone, he to confessed that he was waiting now. Some
things are bigger than us. Some things you can wait for.
What is everyone else now but death notices to me, who
had cancer, who fell, who had a heart attack. I can guess the words that will
be said at funerals now.
But Sean is still alive, and we communicate now
regularly. I say communicate, I mean fuck. No I don't we, share love, but don't
make love. The distinction seems some times very important to me. But the spark
of youth and humor still surrounds him no matter how old he is.
Very drunk one evening Cathy said to me; "Sean is
so fucking sparkly, it hurts my eyes to look at him."
She was right, but then it was Brett, making him glow.
And now it is, Sean is high on life, I think he always has been. Delighting in
breathing, in waking up, in everything. Sean has never distanced himself from
the world, not once in his whole life. He is still the first to suggest the
impractical, to promote the impossible. He can still be counted upon to say the
unsayable, to anyone at any time.
If I could have taken anything from him these last few
years, I would have had his bravery. He scolded me once, when I was tired and
fed up of being alone and old, that it is easy to be brave when you have
nothing to lose.
Perhaps he is right, he had left his wife, decided his
kids and Brett's were old enough to cope with the fallout of them living
together. Not that they flaunted it, publicly remaining 'friends' until the day
Brett died.
Bu to take that chance, to be with the person you have
always loved, always waited for. Sometimes when I see Sean, there is that
whisper of guilt, why did I not fight harder to remain with him. Why did I
settle?
But Brett of course had never met a convention he did
not enjoy thumbing his nose at. Brett's death, was not sad or tragic, but funny
in a sick way.
Ironic he would snort, Brett intensely enjoyed that he
had an ironic sickness and death, and told anyone who asked –and a few
who didn't- about it.
It was cancer, they said, that killed him, before
Alzheimer's could rob from him the person that he had been. I have always
suspected that his death was hastened before he totally lost all he was. Only
Sean would have been brave enough to do that.
As Sean and I have gotten older and we have given and
taken from each other all kinds of pleasure, the body requires pleasure at any
age, he has proved to me that it is better to share that with someone you love,
even if it is not in the same way you loved the great loves of your life.
I think, when I saw Jiri he seemed guilty. I won't ask
either of them. When Sean arrived at the Red Wings he revitilised Brett, and he
woke up Steve who took sick joy in thwarting Sean at every turn. He was a great
source of comfort and energy. It is not strange that he would still be that way
now.
Sean and I were never together when we were younger,
perhaps that was for the best, now we have nothing to compare our fumblings to.
Sometimes when I see Sean I see myself. And when I see
him I see him as the puppy he was, and now I think that we are and are not
those creatures anymore. When I look down to his hands sweeping over the plane
of my stomach, I can think still flat, but not what it once was. I can turn my
head and see our hands grasped on the pillow beside my head; I can see the
lines the groves on his knuckles from years of fights. I can see how folded the
skin is, how it doesn't stretch to cover our bones properly anymore, how the
colour is changed, how they can't hold as firmly as they once did.
Our grip loosening enough to let things go, and then I
forget everything in pleasure.
The name, the shape of the body on mine, it is every
time I have ever had sex. It was, unusual to be with Sean, to be with someone
different. It was like learning all over again, what tickles, what makes
someone scream.
When we finally fell into bed, after we got ourselves
drunk, I had felt like coming and crying. It turns out we both did both. To
long, to long between lovers, to long away from feeling like that, losing part
of myself. Finding myself fresh in someone else.
And I was surprised the second time to feel alone in
the bed. That it became something just between the to of us without the ghost
of Brett and him in the bed like you would expect. Like I had expected.
"I miss you." I told him when he called me
from his daughter's place. Sean, in between Brett and me, or perhaps during
Brett's second marriage, had managed to have a couple of children of his own.
One had moved to the other side of the world, and Sean
delighted in visiting his grandchildren and avoiding cold winters. I think he
taught them to fight. He has two grand daughters, but that would not stop him.
"I will soon miss you more." Sean had
replied, and he laughed, but a bit sadly, so I knew my eminent death was
visible to others as well.
I am tempted to call him now, doing some quick
calculating he would be awake where he is, but I do not. It's not like I am
saving up my sleep for anything in particular. And in the words of the old
song, soon I will have plenty of time to sleep.
In the kitchen I drink black coffee. When I arrived in
Detroit I stayed for a while with Sergei. Before we found out we were totally
unsuited as roommates. But we became, if not friends, allies of a kind. For
years he would tease me about drinking sweet milky coffee. No matter how many
times I told him that drinking a double double was simply part of what I was.
I'm Canadian, I can't help it.
Now I can't stand it, I always have my coffee black. I
don't recall how it happened, just one day I found that is how I wanted it. I
fell into love that way. One day I had everything I wanted, if not in the way I
wanted it, and I could not recall how it happened, but I did not want to
analyze it in case I jinxed it.
It is so unusual to not go downstairs to get to the
kitchen anymore. I lived in my old house for over forty years. But my creaky
old bones don't handle stairs they way they once did.
I had made love on the stairs of my old house. With my
wife and with him. In those sudden magical moments when you could not wait,
when you found yourself half-naked and kissing and did not remember even
getting out of the car or walking in the door.
You did not remember walking up the stairs, and were
amazed to find yourself half-way up, pressed together and going no further.
Perhaps it is fifty years too late, but I have come to
understand Sergei. Not only his fondness for bitter coffee, but also his life,
which ended so recently in Moscow. He is why I am melancholy and reflective. He
was one of those people I thought would never change and would live forever.
Even the most glittering lives come to an end. Feds
died in his sleep with his much younger girlfriend lying next to him. Although
the gap between early sixties and nearly eighty is so unimportant. Maybe the
woman was only a few years younger than Sean. It is so much easier to
understand when you live through it yourself.
In my mind I amend that, the woman lying below him, I
think, as maybe his family felt compelled to clean up his end. But what a way
to go. He would have appreciated going like that, and he appreciated his life
so much more than people knew. But I admit I would always attempted to do some
quick mental math whenever I meet the new person in his life.
I am not going to attend the funeral.
It makes me angry his death. I wanted to shake him
when I saw him. Why didn't you have kids? Why didn't you marry that woman, why
did you marry that other woman? Where you ever really happy?
Once, maybe forty-five years ago, he drunkenly told me
'your heart will take you where it will.' In response to my equally drunken
'what the fuck were you thinking?'
"You stole someone's wife Brendan, and half of someone's
husband." Sergei was always too damm perceptive. Or maybe just recognized
a secret relationship when he saw one. "What the fuck were /you/
thinking?"
"I love her." I protested. "I love
him."
"Well there you go." He responded. "You
always regret more the things you did than the things you don't." And then
he brought us more drinks.
Anna's story was the sad one. The beginning the middle
and the ending. I always admired her toughness, her refusal to be crushed by
her history. But I could not like her. I don't know how much Sergei was
responsible for the wall of ice around her.
Not much I think, he had tried to pierce it, to be
close to her enough times. But Anna was always a surprisingly solitary person,
more comfortable in her own company that being surrounded by others.
When I looked at old photos of her, I had always
thought she was somewhat vacant. But now I can see a part of her was never
there. It was always missing, or else Anna had held it so closely to her heart
that no one else could be let in.
It always burned her that she was not the athlete she
could have been. A mixture of bad luck and bad management.
She is remembered, if she is remembered at all, for
her pretty exterior rather than what she was. And when it all got to be too
much, when she disappeared, when the bright lights began to blind her rather
than light her way forwardÉ I don't know what to say about her. I wish she had
been happy as well.
Being sickening in love as I was, I wanted everyone to
have been happy.
If Anna were here she would no doubt tell me that we
all die alone anyway, and what dies it matter if I am here surrounded by family
or in a small crowded house in Berlin like her?
I wondered when I heard about her body being found
what she had done there. Played out her days I suppose, she had had enough
drama for two lifetimes before she disappeared from the public eye.
I had not heard of her, or even thought of her for
years until I heard she had died.
It will be dawn soon. I rest my head on my hands on
the table, even though my neck will be unforgiving when I wake up. Soon, but
not now, tomorrow I will call Sean, and Carrie and her mother will visit me.
Tomorrow I will fall in love with life again, even as now I fall in love with
my memories.
Because there is no question to me what my happiest
memory of him is.
We had won the cup, and our families were with us and
we were in cottage country.
They had all gone into town, and he had told me he was
leaving. We were wet, lying on the dock and the sun shone like it had decided
that the earth was facing that way, and it was summer right now, for the
express purpose of falling upon his face and making him squint in the glare and
making him glow and my heart ache for how perfect he was.
We had been chasing each other around the lake on jet
skis, forgetting for a minute we were grown ups and had docked them and he had
shoved me into the water. Of course I had pulled him in after me and now we had
dragged ourselves out and were gasping in the sunlight.
I rolled on top of him and kissed him and his skin was
cool to my touch.
"I am retiring you know?"
"I know."
"Even though we are going to be apart a lot now,
I still love you, you know that?"
"And I love you to."
"You're not going to be captain." He
whispered when I lay against his neck after I had kissed him.
"I know that too." I said and laughed. He
laughed as well.
"I could have timed that better." He
admitted. Leaning down my head on my hands I can feel the sun cleaning up the
beads of water on my neck and him under me.
But he couldn't have timed it better. Honest and
forthright, telling me what I need to hear, good and bad. Telling me he loved
me, mine under me on a hot summers day. This is the best memory I have.
"I will always love you," I said. "No
matter what."
"And I will always love you." He said back,
looking surprised at me saying that.
I look up, and the sun is peering over the horizon and
I raise my cold coffee cup. To the day and the night to all I have lost and
had. Even in the saddest of moments, here comes the sun.
End.
