Today, I—we—bury Joyce. We put her in the ground. Forever. I don’t want to do it, in fact I am feeling quite adamant about not wanting to do it, but what else can I do? She’s dead.
Buffy has been quiet and unusually easy going about things. I say unusually easy going, because well, I don’t know enough about her to know if she’s always easy going or if she was just a downright bitch in this one instance. For all I know she could be the nicest person on the planet save for this one thing. Who knows?
She has said little about her plans after the funeral only hinting that she wants to stay for a little while. What am I supposed to do? Kick her out? Joyce would be spinning in her grave.
I wonder what the stages of grief are. I know there are stages and denial is one of them—I know because I already went through it and remembered some damn shrink course I took once upon a time. I could ask Buffy. She finished school and took those courses.
I never thought I’d be a widower at thirty-three.
The funeral was a blur for Spike. Mostly because he had spent most of the time in tears that blinded him. Tears, he thought, were supposed to wash away pain, but these tears only served to make him want to cry and ache just a little bit more.
Looking sidelong at Buffy who was standing across the casket from him at the burial site, gazing down at her mother, he saw she shed no tears. He wondered how she could be so cold and then thought; she wasn’t being cold, not really. It was just all internal. It had to be. She was tearing apart her insides by not letting the pain out on the outside. At least, that’s what he told himself to stop himself from railing at her.
She spared no glance at him before she walked away.
October 27, 2005
The Five Stages of Grief:
1. Denial
2. Anger
3. Bargaining
4. Depression
5. Acceptance
What stage am I at? I’m not sure. I think Denial lasted all of five minutes after Spike called to tell me the news and . . . and I think I’ve been stuck with Anger and Depression. Although, I’ve been angry and depressed for a very long time so it’s hard to distinguish exactly what part of me is depressed and angry about my mother’s death and which part is just an extension of me and my overall outlook on things.
Spike and I have barely spoken since the funeral and today is the will reading, here, at the house. The only ones that need be present are he and I. Should be interesting.
The worms go in, the worms go out…
“The house is left to both of us?” Buffy asked, dumbfounded after the attorney had read her mother’s will.
“Yes,” Attorney Perkins said simply, gathering up his things. “One of you would have to buy the other out to keep it and make it yours.”
Buffy looked to Spike and he looked at her. She turned away, facing forward. For some reason, she found it hard to look at him these days. Shame? Guilt? The fact that she could see his pain? She wasn’t sure.
The attorney left after one more empty condolence and Buffy couldn’t even muster up a “You didn’t know her, why are you sorry?”
She sat there, numb. “You want to buy me out?” she said finally.
“Can you afford to buy me out?”
“I’m so broke I can’t afford to pay attention right now, Spike,” she told him honestly. It was strange having a conversation with someone without once looking at them.
“Then, I guess that’s your answer,” he said simply and got up, leaving the room.
It was on the tip of her tongue to stop him, but she couldn’t do it. She had no fight in her at the moment. Or, at all. God, I hope I get that back, she thought.
It was in the middle of the night when Buffy felt the anger bubble up and begin to boil over, causing her sadness to transform into a rage that was single-minded. Uncurling herself from her bed, she marched down the stairs and snatched up the phone in the kitchen.
“Hello?”
“You asshole,” she hissed.
“Buffy?”
“She’s dead, you son of a bitch! Dead! In the ground and you couldn’t even be bothered to come. You say you love her so much but you don’t—you never fucking did, did you? She was….what was she to you, huh? A possession? Just something that you lost like your fucking keys that you had to get back? You got a new set of fucking keys right quick didn’t you father? You couldn’t even be there for me! Why couldn’t you even be there for me?”
Dial tone met her raging and she sobbed so hard her chest hurt, barely able to catch her breath. Arms came around her just before she tumbled to the floor and she knew they were Spike’s but she couldn’t bring herself to care. It just felt good to know that for however long she sobbed and however long he held her, someone cared for her. Even if he did walk away after she was done, and even if he didn’t really care, he still came down, he still was holding her and that was all she needed at that moment. And when she heard him start to cry, she sobbed harder, feeling somehow partly responsible for it.
She was responsible for everything bad thing that happened after all.
Spike wasn’t sure how long he held her, and he wasn’t even sure exactly when he started crying, all he knew is that he couldn’t find the words to say that would help Buffy, and he kept thinking, Joyce would know what to say, and that was that, he supposed.
He’d heard her march downstairs, and wondered what she was doing. All that time as he lay in bed, staring across the room, he thought she’d been asleep.
And then he heard the screaming and when he realized who it was to and what she was saying, he hurt for her, a feat within itself since he seemed inclined to wallow in his own misery at the moment.
He was beginning to understand in that moment what Joyce had meant about Buffy and Hank. He couldn’t imagine what it must be like to want someone’s approval the way Buffy wanted Hank’s, and to do just about anything to get it, only then to realize that you were never going to get it. Her father had used her as a pawn in his own game to get Joyce back, and once he didn’t get what he wanted, she’d been discarded. Tossed aside as if she were nothing. He couldn’t imagine a parent doing that, his father would have never…
It him between the eyes at that moment; if the tables were turned and it was him in her place all those years ago…
God, how could he fully blame Buffy for how she felt about him and Joyce? She’d been fighting for the family she had, the family she loved and—she’d been fighting for the life she’d had with a supposedly changed father ready to play Daddy Dearest, except she’d come home to find her mother engaged to another man. A man that was not her father, and a younger man to boot. And it’d just been sprung on her out of nowhere because they’d never bothered to tell her before. Putting himself in her shoes right now… God, he couldn’t even imagine.
It had been hard for him to imagine what it was like for her all this time because he’d only seen how Joyce was left bereft by Buffy’s blatant refusal of their relationship. He’d had her tears and her pain, he’d felt for the woman he knew, not the woman he didn’t know.
So, he did the only thing he knew to do, he held her, hoping in some way, that he could make her feel his regret without actually having to tell her.
Chapter Four
“I want my grandmother’s ring,” Buffy stated, entering Joyce and Spike’s bedroom where he had started cleaning out her things.
He sat on the bed, looking at some photo album when she entered and she winced when she realized what it could be: Their wedding album. The wedding she’d never attended.
He looked up, his eyes red. “Your grandmother’s ring?”
She nodded, shuffling her feet. “My mom promised it to me. It’s been passed down to all the women in the family and so…it’s mine, you see. So I’m taking that.”
“That’s all you want?” he questioned. “She has a lot of things you might want, Buffy.”
“For what? So I can remember?”
“What’s wrong with remembering?”
She nodded her head in his direction. “It’s not doing you any good is it?”
“Are you doing any better by not remembering?”
She said nothing, but stepped inside the room and went for her mother’s jewelry box. When she came across Joyce’s clip-on earrings, her fingers trembled. Those clip-on earrings were what Joyce allowed Buffy to wear before she got her ears pierced. And then she came across a little black bag stuffed in the corner. Opening it, Buffy found her baby teeth.
God, the tears wouldn’t stop. They just wouldn’t fucking stop. When would they stop?
“Buffy, luv, it’s all right.” And he was there again, guiding her to the bed, but she wanted to sink to the floor, clutching the bag in her hands as if it were a lifeline. They were her teeth, yes, but it was what the bag represented – Joyce’s love for her. Her father hadn’t done that; he never would have thought of it, Buffy was sure. But Joyce did. How many times had she played tooth fairy, Santa Claus and Easter Bunny? Too many times to count. And how had Buffy repaid her? By turning her back on her; by shunning her because she’d shunned her father – her pathetic excuse of a father.
“It’s not all right!” Buffy screamed, “It’s not all right and you know it. Don’t pretend you don’t know it. You hate me, Spike. I know you fucking hate me. You don’t want it to be all right for me. You don’t care, and I don’t want you to care!”
Spike stared down at her small form all curled in a ball on the floor, arms around her legs and sobbing.
“I do care,” he told her, voice rising above her cries, and kneeling down next to her.
“No, you don’t. But it’s okay. You don’t have to.”
“So—what? You’re going to wallow now?” he asked angrily.
“What do you want me to do, huh?” she asked; jumping up, fire in her green eyes. “You want me to say how sorry I am? How I regret that I lost all this time? How I never got to tell her that I loved her? I know all that already. I feel it already. I know that you hate me, Spike, and I don’t care that you do. You can take your joy in knowing that I hurt now, okay? Take your joy from it.”
“I don’t take joy in that, Buffy,” he told her softly. He shook his head and whispered, “I’m sorry.”
“What are you fucking sorry for?” she demanded, completely outraged by the notion.
“For how it all happened…I didn’t realize--”
“Shut up, shut up, shut up!” she screamed at him and ran from the room.
He stared at the doorway, stunned. He thought an apology, and letting her know he did care, would help. But Buffy wanted him to hate her; she wanted him to hate her and berate her for she felt guilty now for not coming home, for leaving Joyce, and for being wrong about Hank. She held tremendous regret and resentment inside her and she wanted to wallow in it, wanted him to punish her, and wanted to punish herself.
Buffy was a masochist.
October 27, 2005
Spike thinks I’m fucked up. I could see it in his eyes. I can’t blame him. I am.
Where do I start to make things better? Do I say, “I’m sorry”? Would Spike take it? Would I mean it? If he did, would it be like saying I’m sorry to her too? Is it really all me? Or is it him too? Was I justified in all my anger and resentment all this time? He’s confused me…
It’s hard to be so angry at her now, still, and yet, I am. It’s eating at me...how do I let go of it?
Buffy avoided the task of cleaning out her mother’s things. Though, avoiding for her meant she’d stay out of the room for so long until curiosity got the better of her and then she’d walk by and step in, make a comment or two and watch Spike sort through things and she’d be off.
After the third day of doing this, Spike finally turned to her and said, “Will you stop walking by here like you’re ‘supervising’ me and just help me? I can tell you want to.”
That seemed to work, funnily enough. She jumped right in, not sure how him asking her in a roundabout way made all the difference, just that it did. Maybe because she felt she didn’t have the right to without admittance from him. Him. Who was him? Her mother’s husband. Widower, now. But there was more to him than that even if that’s what he’d been all this time. Just the guy that married his mother and made her father incapable of getting back in her good graces. He had become the epitome of so much to her and looking at him now, at his lithe, and yet muscular body, his bleached blond hair that looked as though he hadn’t washed it in a few days, his blue eyes that appeared dead – he didn’t look like much. He didn’t look like the monster she made him out to be.
“You really loved her, then?” she asked, holding her mother’s shawl in her hands.
Spike looked up at her, a framed picture in his hand. “Of course I did.”
“What was it?”
“What do you mean?”
“What was it about her that you loved the most?”
Spike smiled fondly. “Her heart.”
“Was she happy?”
“I think she was.”
That seemed to satisfy her curiosity for the moment and she continued to sort through the various articles on the bed. Damn, the woman had a lot of crap.
“What about you?” Spike said, breaking the silence.
“What about me?”
“Have you been happy?”
“You mean have I been happy not talking with my mother all this time?” Buffy couldn’t help but snap. Okay, so it was a sensitive subject for her and she felt a bit defensive about it. That couldn’t be held against her, right?
“No,” he shook his head, “I just mean have you been happy at all? You can take that question any way you want, but that’s not how it was intended.”
”If it wasn’t how you intended then I have to take it how you intended, don’t I? Not the way I would read it.”
“You’re being confrontational,” he said, pointing at her.
“Tell me something I don’t know.”
He sighed heavily as if talking to her was exhausting and too much. It probably was. She was exhausted being her; she could only imagine what it was like for him.
“How about this question, free of entrapments of double meanings – how long do you plan on staying here?”
She quirked a brow, “How is that free of entrapments and double meanings? Do you want me to leave?”
“I …I will have your check for you soon.”
“So you do want me to leave.”
“Do you want to leave?”
She stared down at her hands for so long everything blurred. “I have nowhere to go,” she said finally when she could no longer see.
“What do you mean?” he sounded aghast.
“I mean I used last months rent to pay for a ticket out here. So, I’m most likely kicked out of my apartment and since I wasn’t able to get back, I most likely don’t have a job now either.”
“Do you want to go back?”
“Well, I don’t mind Boston…”
“That wasn’t an answer, Buffy.”
“I don’t want to go back. I have nothing there.”
“Not even…?”
“I have nothing there,” she repeated quietly.
“Then you can stay for as long as you need to.”
That kindness was not what she expected and she didn’t know how to handle it. She looked up at him, blinking the blurriness away and stared.
“You can say thank you,” he prompted.
“Thank you.”