Seventeen:

The funeral had gone off without a hitch. (Which seemed a strange thing to think because when I hear the word "hitch" I usually think of getting married. Lou was never going to get married. She was never going to be a mother, a grandmother, drive me insane with early onset Alzheimer's and leave post-it-notes all over the house even more so than she already did with the two of us combined keeping the post-it-note manufactures in business. So how was it that her funeral went off without a hitch?)

Towards the very end, just before the coffin was walked out of the room to be loaded onto the hearse for the short journey to the crematorium, I remembered a movie Lou and I had watched in Queensland a little while ago. It had been the non-ratings period and the major digital stations had revealed nothing but repeats but we'd stumbled on a movie from the 1950's on one of the lesser digital channels. The majority of the movie had taken place during a funeral and at the end, as the coffin was being lowered into the grave, the grief-stricken wife had flung herself into the grave, on top of the coffin, prostrate with grief at losing the love of her life. Whether the lowering mechanism failed or, in the ensuing bedlam where family members and fellow mourners had tried to get her out of the grave, she went up and down a number of times before a couple of people managed to get hold of her legs to drag her back up, her resisting the entire time, and ending with her losing her skirt and flashing her undies.

Lou had stopped laughing suddenly, almost as if she'd been hit. "I want that at my funeral." She had declared.

"What- you want your loved one to flash the mourners? I suppose it would liven up a sombre occasion." I'd said, deliberately misunderstanding as I regularly did whenever our conversations ventured towards morbid or depressing topics. (If I were in a movie I'd be the comic relief. Or the one who said random things or inappropriate jokes or comments. Like my foster Uncle essentially who made Prince Phillip's gaffe's look mild.)

"No. I want someone to love me so much they didn't want me to be buried, didn't want to part with me." Lou had replied, rolling her eyes at me. Well, given she was lying in front of me with her head on her chest I didn't technically see the eye roll but I knew every nuance in her tone and I could just tell.

Lou had always talked about being buried even though she had a fear of being buried alive and had once asked me to sneak into the morgue and shoot her to make sure she really was dead. (I swear this is true.) But somewhere along the line she had changed her mind and, in a very simple document that she'd signed and left with her Mum and with her sister and on her laptop for me to find down the track, she'd instead requested I have her cremated and spread the ashes at a special place. My first thought had been the M.C.G but then I remembered Lou's frequent moaning about being a footy and cricket widow and decided she'd probably haunt me if I tried spreading her ashes on the hallowed turf.

The right special place had come to me instantly: on the foreshore at Rosebud Beach down on the Mornington Peninsula. It was our first time away together six months into our relationship. It was summer and the day we left was one of those hot Aussie summer days where the dry heat saps your energy and you can literally feel your skin burning the moment you step outside. But overnight the weather changed and the remaining five days were spent cooped up in our little caravan while it pissed down rain outside. In fact the rain was so bad many campers were rained out and while I might have been willing to follow them Lou was not. "Fuck that." She'd declared. "This is our first holiday together and if we just pack up and go home how does that bode well for the rest of our relationship if we can't handle a bit of stormy weather?"

So we'd stayed. Our tent held up pretty well with only a little bit of flooding as Lou had made sure I dug a trench around the sides. At the time I'd been inclined to refuse because it was too damn hot to be digging in the dirt but Lou had been insistent. "If it rains and there is no trench do you really want to wake up floating in water?" So I'd dug the trench. Thank God. And Lou had endeared herself to me by not saying I told you so.

And we'd made the channel seven news about the rainiest weather over the summer holidays at the beach which Lou was quick to point out wouldn't have happened if we'd gone home early like I'd been keen on. Unfortunately the producers of "Home and Away" either didn't see or weren't impressed by our star turn on the news because I received no casting call.

After the service there were refreshments in an adjoining room and everyone commented on how the service was beautiful which seemed strange to me and they told their own Lou stories. Some I listened to and forced a smile or laugh, others I tuned right out. Her Mum told about how kind she was, even when she was in kindergarten. She had always befriended the odd-ones out- the shy kids, the loners, the ones who were a little weird, the boy with mild brain damage and the girl in the wheelchair. And how from the day she turned ten every year she requested her birthday gift be money to give to charity, usually the RSPCA or the Lost Dog's Home.

Her high school best friend told about how she'd started a pet food drive for homeless people who had dogs or cats.

Her old neighbour told about how during the winter a duck would arrive daily to swim in her pool and would then wander down for some bread. Day in day out for a good three years. And how one time she'd decided it might be fun to let the duck into the house and the duck had promptly left green-white pooh on the carpet which she never had been able to remove. The next year the duck didn't come back and Lou had always been convinced that her Mum had killed the duck and they'd eaten it one night for dinner.

Her uni friend told about the time they had taken a short course in Mandarin and how at the end of the course they were allowed to come up with questions they wanted to learn how to say in Mandarin. People asked things like how do I say hospital, how do I ask where the nearest police station is, how do I ask for a taxi or how do I ask for help. Lou's two questions were how do I say beer and how do I say wine. The whole class thought it was brilliant. (FYI beer in Mandarin is pronounced ju-ju.)

Amanda talked about the time Lou had said someone was a unicorn but actually meant a eunuch.

Ted spoke about how Lou had been one of the most amazing women he had ever met. I'd wondered if I should have smacked him, defended Lou's honour so to speak. I half imagined myself going up to him and slapping him across the face with a glove and demanding satisfaction. (Which of course got me singing "Glove Slap" from "The Simpsons" the moment the idea popped into my head.)

I managed to stay seventy-three minutes (yes, I checked the exact time) before I could take it no longer and had to leave. I thought if I didn't get out that exact instant I might scream/cry/pass out/murder the next person to say "what a lovely service, Lou would have loved it." Though I felt like I was wrapped in the love of people who had loved Lou and felt the same pain I couldn't be there any longer. I had to go.

I'd heard it said on a number of occasions that after the funeral of a loved one had finished you felt better. Not instantly miraculously better like some kind of magic cure-all but better. Perhaps because you'd had the chance to say your own final goodbyes, perhaps because you were surrounded by people who all felt your pain, perhaps something else entirely. I'd never felt so truly alone as I had when I'd gone to the supermarket the night before Aileen came up. I'd watched, incredulous, as people had gone about their shopping, alone or with another person or child, laughing or not, happy or not, and I felt like shouting out "Lou is dead. She mattered. Why are you all still normal?"

Ruth, Jordy and Amanda walked out with me and for the short walk to the car I felt a little like a celebrity surrounded by bodyguards to stop paparazzi taking my photo or fans coming up and asking for an autograph and picture. I had to stop myself from pulling my jacket up over my head for privacy but decided- wisely- that kind of action might get my photo taken or on the nightly news and the police might think it suspicious.

"Thanks." I said.

Amanda gave me a hug and she and Jordy went back inside, leaving me and my short-term foster sister alone.

"Do you want me to come and stay with you for a bit? Or you can come up to Queensland and spend some time with us? I'm sure Ted will give you a little longer if you need." She offered.

I almost said the first thing that came into my mind which was that I couldn't think of anything worse than being somewhere Lou had never been and with a few people who'd not even met her properly. Instead I just shook my head. "Thanks, but no. I need some time alone before I go back to work." I explained.

Ruth frowned slightly, like she was going to question or argue, but then she just nodded. "I'll speak to you every day though." She said.

"You don't have to check up on me." I said.

"I know I don't have to but I will just the same. And if you change your mind then just come up or I will fly down." Ruth assured me, like a big sister would.

I'd driven home with tears blurring my vision but unfortunately I didn't have windscreen wipers for my eyes. But by the time I got home I had stopped crying. It was at that precise moment after farewelling Lou forever that I had finally run out of tears.

Three days after the funeral for most people who knew Lou life had gone back to normal, or some semblance of. In my case it was a grey version. I felt a little like I was Dorothy stepping out of the house and into the magical world of Oz except reversed. Life with Lou had been bright, full of life, and colourful. Life without her was dull, and black and white. Lou's family had returned to their respective homes and I to my incredibly empty Lou-free home and I was due back at work. As much as it felt an injustice to Lou the world continued to turn, life continued and I had to find a way to exist without her. No matter how hard, no matter how much I loved her I could not sit home and wallow in my grief forever. I would force myself to get out of bed, go to work, come home and go to sleep. I would do exactly what grief counsellors advised by taking it one day at a time.

When one of my foster parents had died when I was eleven I'd been forced to speak to a child psychologist and I remember clearly sitting in the chair and listening, dry-eyed, as he told me that it was all right to cry, that males could cry, that keeping all those emotions in with no outlet would be an even worse thing. But the thing was I hadn't been keeping tears in, I hadn't felt pain, or grief or loss because my foster parent only had me for the fact he got money from the government for fostering a child in need.

God knows what the psychologist reported back to my case manager. "Child is a psychopath, complete lack of feeling or empathy. Or, possibly, child is a robot. Probably a robot. But sadly does not display any particular skills or specialist attributes like the Terminator."

As a thirteen year old another foster parent told me that I was "built wrong in the head" because I didn't feel emotions.

And at sixteen a girl I'd had a serious crush on had diagnosed me as having affective blindness (God save us all from VCE Psychology) which manifested as a failure to express feelings either verbally or non-verbally, especially when talking about issues that would normally be expected to engage the emotions. This blunted affect could be symptomatic of schizophrenia, depression, post-traumatic stress disorder or brain damage.

I had done some research of my own, not wanting to admit even to myself that maybe, just maybe my former foster parent and friend had a point and I'd discovered a condition called Alexithymia. Alexithymia is where a person appears devoid of their emotions because they are functionally unaware of them. By extension they are also unable to appreciate the emotional motivation of others and find emotions of others irrational and confusing. A person with the condition might be highly intelligent and pleasant but will be humourless, unimaginative and have some unusual priorities in decision making. Some cases of alexithymica are neurological in origin, caused by a deficiency in the brain pathways that process emotion, others develop psychological alexithymia as a self-defence measure against the emotionally indigestible like a terminal illness of post-traumatic stress disorder and as a coping mechanism the mind simply shuts down the pathways that process emotions resulting in a stoic emotionless state. That type of alexithymia is usually reversible through psychotherapeutic means and sometimes with the assistance of anti-depressants.

I'd had anti-depressants between the ages of twelve and sixteen before my foster mother- my last foster mother as it would turn out- had found out and refused to let me get another script. She thought the anti-depressants were suppressing my personality and she hated that Gen X and Y were becoming the pharmaceutical generation. Have trouble concentrating, take a pill to pep you up, that stops you sleeping, take a sleeping tablet. Feel sad in winter because you're not getting enough vitamin D; take a tablet to pep you up. A vicious cycle.

My lack of emotion had often made me feel like a human shell with no human soul because I lacked the receptors in the brain that caused empathy. My greatest fear was that I might turn into a murderer, rapist or dictator.

But then I'd met Lou and had discovered I actually had emotions. Now that Lou was gone would I regress and lose that empathy and the ability to feel emotions?