Chapter 3
October 25, 2005
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 reallycare, 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 then; 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.