Every Word Was A Piece Of My Heart
Part 4 - Goodbye
Karen H.

These past few days have gone by as a bit of a blur. Arriving at the B & B, going to bed, getting up in the morning. Seeing Gale. Trying to carry on.

The truth still not sinking in. How can he be dead?

Gale is a state. And even that isn’t really enough for everything to sink in.

I try to help, but I still find it hard to look her in the eye for too long. If I do, I wonder if she’ll see it. The guilt. The fact that maybe I could have prevented this.

Dawson blamed himself when Mitch died and now, I do the same. I blame myself for Dawson’s death. No one knows it. No one but me.

And none of them can tell me that it’s not true.

I was still holding out for a miracle. Still hoping against hope, that he’d walk through that door. That we’d all find that this had been some elaborate ploy, some sort of prank.

But it hasn’t proved this way because it’s not some prank.

Pacey has gone to run an errand, taking Jack with him. Bessie and Audrey sit in the nursery, down the hall, taking care of Lily. While Jen and Andie sit downstairs, talking of happier times and Dawson. Grams is in the kitchen dealing with lunch.

I’ve just made Gale a cup of tea and am in the process of taking it up to her in her room. Wondering how they can tell me that it’ll be okay, that it’ll get better.

I suppose that it’s how people are able to deal with it. Knowing that the pain eventually subsides. But do any of them know if the guilt goes too?

I enter Gale’s room to find her sitting on her bed, tears streaming down her face as she looks through a photo album. Trying to remember all the happy days from her once perfect family.

But it’s not that perfect family anymore. Her husband lies in a grave not far down the road. And her son, the one with so many hopes and dreams, he’s soon to join his father.

She tries to smile at me as I enter the room, probably wondering what she has to smile about. Wondering if she’ll truly ever smile again.

She knows she still has an everyday reminder of Mitch, her daughter Lily. But what about Dawson? What will be the thing, the person, that reminds her of Dawson.

Surely she can’t just have pictures. And videos. Some of his possessions. She has to have something more. She has to have someone.

I place the tea on the nightstand beside where Gale sits. "Do you need anything else?" I ask her.

"Yes." She says, nodding her head and indicating for me to sit down. "I need you to promise me something."

I sit on a chair beside her. "Anything."

"I need you to be the person that tells Lily all about her big brother." She says, as the fresh tears start to fall from her eyes. "After Mitch died...Dawson, he promised that she’d still know her father, who he was. But now, she won’t even have him to do that."

As Gale continues I can’t help but start to cry. How can she be asking me something like that.

"I can tell her about her father. But I can’t be the one to tell her everything about Dawson. And I don’t think that there’s anyone else, who could tell her all that she’d want to know about Dawson. Because no one knew him as well as you did."

I’m not sure exactly of what to say to her. There’s no point in telling her all of the reasons that maybe I’m not the person that should be responsible for such a task. Not when it’s my fault that it has to be this way.

So I just nod my head. "I promise."

She gives me a weak smile again. "Thank you, Joey."

I sit there for a few moments longer, watching as Gale starts flicking through the photo album again. She stops occasionally to take a sip of her tea, wiping more tears from her face. Then I stand up and excuse myself.

Once outside the room I break down crying, running for somewhere to find solace.