recollection_of_a_death Soma So, you think you have the perfect girl... And then all of a sudden something happens. Suddenly, there's a break in your world, a split smack dab down the center of your heart. You've broken up-- you didn't want to, but you had to. You think of her for about 2 weeks, then you're done. You forget her, like a dull memory. You've finally let go, and you are living the life; single again and it's almost just like how it used to be. Then she comes back. It's unexpected. It was unstoppable. WHAM! BAM! You lay eyes on her and you fall back in love all over again. She doesn't even have to say a word. It just happens just like that, like a mouse stepping on a mousetrap- SNAP! CRUNCH! You're trapped. That quick- like a reflex you were born with. Now, you don't know what to do. You hate her for loving you, and you hate yourself for letting all her love go to waste. So now you're stuck in the middle, and dont know where to go. You're mad at her for breaking you like this. You just want to scream, and cry, maybe just sleep for a hundred million years. In fact, you already exhausted the options that were possible. You've even exhausted yourself. You can't hold yourself up anymore. The scotch tape has lost its stick, and the glue is dried out. A peice of you is trying to let loose, and once that one piece falls, it all comes undone. She's the cat, and you're the knitted sweater. You cant avoid it; you cant deny it; you cant let it go (you dont want to let it go.) But you have to want to let it go, then you hate her for doing this to you. She knows your not strong enough to let something that you love so much go away. She knows your weaknesses- what can you do? She's trying hard not to break you, and that fragile_rainbow_world you created apart. You may not see it now, but she feels the same way too. But worse than all of that, you are just looking at her. You aren't doing anything. And the simplest blink of an eye can mean "I want you back," or "I love you," or even "Look at what you have done to me." And a single step can mean "I can't do this anymore," or "let it go" or "I want to spend eternity with you" What now? Look what you did... you got yourself here. YOU created this moment; and you didn't even realize it. So now what can you do? Are you going to run to her, hold her tightly and never let go? or, are you going to turn around and leave her standing there all by herself? So many decisions.. what now? You can't fight it. You run to her, and hold her as tight as you can, never letting go- nothing else matters anymore. It's just you and her, and all the world cannot pull you apart as long as you are together. You two are as one, one immortal being. You finally found it, true love, a perfect match! And you look down, yearning to kiss her head, but she's gone... She's gone, and you cannot follow her into that dark night. You waited too long...... 060706 ... doar hmm. 060706 ... pSyche She sits next to me on the pavement, all tears, makeup, and quivering lips. Her clean white wrists, so fragile, lay softly beneath the jumbled waterfall that is her hair. She's so soft, so innocent, so uncertain yet again. Knees up, arms supporting her head, eyes cast down to the ground, and I wonder what she sees. All I see is her, and the little cellular device lying next to her on the gum-stained ground. Technology ruins the moment. And before you could even read what I have written, she brings the little devil device to her ear and hears those dreaded words. Those words that fall out of love from her father's lips, but hurt her so much more than the truth. Those words that fill her thin frame with anticipation, nervousness, and bad butterflies. No news is good news, I tell myself. We draw on the sidewalk with chalk I pull from my purse, to fill the silence, and I pray to whatever God is out there that things will be ok. I close my eyes and pray. Thirty minutes later and the van pulls up, she slides open the door and asks him, what is wrong? And again, the love is smothering her. Filling her up so she is a bloated body of worry and concern. Dread floods my heart. No news is good news. She glances back over her shoulder, black eyeliner smudged under her eyes, and dark lashes that hide the windows of her house. She steps into the van, and we go our separate ways. Drive back home in silence. Answer the phone as I drive down the highway. I'm sorry. I'm so sorry. I would hug you and hold you and tell you that it is going to be okay...but it isn't. The doctors shake their heads, and your family stares at the floor of the ICU. I can only pray to that great Unknown, and ask him if it will one day be ok, and hope that it is. Because that's all we are really, just recollections, waiting to happen. 070529 ... Papercut The funeral was on a Saturday, and the sky was blue and clear. That seemed wrong to me somehow. On TV, dunerals were always grey and rainy. Delmont's mom kept crying through the whole thing and even the minister got chocked up at one point, but for some reason I didn't cry. I didn't know why that was. All I knew was my best friend was gone and I didn't even cry. At home that night I sat and watched the sky until the stars came out and I thought about Delmont. I thought about his mom, thought about his books, and wanted to go and knock on his door. That's when it finally hit me that he was dead. He wasn't GONE, because gone means that you can come back... ..but DEAD and that means that you can't ever come back. Our time together would now be in the past. Like a book on a shelf. I could remember the scenes, but there would be no new pages, no new stories to add. Delmont was dead, and there was no new time to share with him. I started crying then, and the long streams of tears carried Delmont from my life, like the funeral had carried him from the earth. I stared up at the stars again and thought about that story by Mark Twain. I knew then that the stars were not MADE and that they didn't just HAPPEN. They just WERE. They were, they are, they always would be. They had no beginning, they had no end, they had no reason. 090123 ... unhinged it will be ten years this march 28th. an entire decade. just this christmas, i looked at old pictures of her and realized how much i miss her smile, her hugs, her perfume, her voice. the way it was raspy in the end because of all the capillaries in her throat; her body trying to grow alternate routes for the toxic blood to travel because her liver was so broken. how hard the last 13 months of her life were and how hard she tried to stay alive just long enough for us to get used to the idea of her dying. how she hated us coming to visit when she was sick, how i hated visiting when she was sick. she couldn't feed herself, go to the bathroom herself, bathe herself. and eventually the transfusions stopped working like the doctor said they would. the last time i played my violin for her, she couldn't hear me. all those damn years of misdiagnosis; her shitty hmo doctor claimed she had parkinson's because the toxins in her blood affected her brain much the same way; tremors and such. she kept telling the doctors something else was wrong but they didn't listen. until on one of their typical sunday drives, she started vomiting blood and my grandpa drove her to the emergency room. it took 13 months after that day. icu, semiprivate room, nursing home, home, hospice. the priest came to her house near the end when she couldn't make it to church anymore because he knew how important regular communion was to her. she died the morning i left on my trip. no one told me. i turned to my friend on the flight to prague and told him she wasn't going to be there when i got back. the day before, i got into a fight with my mother about going to visit 'i don't think she will be here when you get back' she scream cried at me. and my most devoted audience member couldn't hear me playing anymore. i knew she wouldn't be there when i got back. i missed the funeral. years later her sister mary died and i went to the wake. there were pictures of them together all over the place. they had an orthodox ceremony at the wake. i cried; i wasn't very close to aunt mary, but i had missed her funeral. i felt a big letting_go . but i couldn't get up to say goodbye at the casket. i stayed sitting when my parents got up. my dad looked at me sadly, probably patted me on the shoulder. i sat and cried while they went to say goodbye. there were pictures and memories of her everywhere. this march 28th it will be ten years. my stomach still twists into knots as the tears fall. and i still remember her voice, her perfume, the way she pulled me close to her chest to hug me and the warm softness and saftey i always felt in her arms. i have ached for those hugs. 090124 ... forlater i'm recalling a death. damn Mondays... 090125 what's it to you? who go blather from