This is what friends are for....

12:30am. I call one of my best friends.

I’m having a moment. Again.

Sneaked up on me. Again.

Everything going along just fine and then, Pow! Some image of my dad pops into my head and it feels sooooo real, and then I realize that that’s as real as it will ever be…..ever!  My insides want to cough themselves up and onto the floor, My eyeballs glaze over and spew tears down my cheeks.  Geez I hate those sneaky-ass moments.

Thank goodness she answers. Thank goodness she listens. I tell her how I miss Dad, how most of me feels dead inside, how I can’t find my spark, how I’ve lost any motivation to accomplish anything, do anything, write anything, and on, and on, and on. As I’m talking I’m thinking I must sound like a broken record to her because this is not the first time I’ve called her in the middle of the night when I was having “a moment.”

“I’m so frustrated,” I tell her.

“I want to feel like myself again,” I say to her.

“I want to get excited about something,” I complain. 

“I used to be excited about things. Why can’t I get excited about anything?” I ask rhetorically.

I finally stop talking, not because I have nothing more to say, but because I've worked myself into such a mad frenzy of emotion that my vocal cords can't keep up with my brain.

And she says calmly and oh so logically, ever so reasonably, “Yes honey, of course you feel those things. Your dad just died.”

To which I defensively respond by pointing out a significant detail that she has CLEARLY overlooked and/or forgotten, 

“BUT THAT WAS TWO WEEKS AGO!”

She laughs.

No, I mean..........She really laughs.

She explodes. Like the top of her head just pops off and spills out cascades of beautiful, unexpected, delicious laughter—into her phone, through cyberspace, to my phone, and into my ear.

I have to hold the phone away from my ear it's so deliciously loud.

It's impossible not to laugh with her. 

We both laugh for a good thirty seconds.

We compose ourselves.

I bring the phone back to my ear.
I speak, into my phone, through cyberspace, to her phone, and into her ear,
“Oh yeah…..Good point.” 

Away From The Place That Aches

Away From The Place That Aches

5 May 2012

Two weeks ago today.

Thrust into a place where the only air I breathed,

Was born from a loss I had never known before.

Where the ache was everywhere.

Every second.

Every day.

Fresh.

Raw.

Paralyzing.

Where leaving that place,

Seemed an impossible, unworthy, task.

The Place That Aches found distance.

Returning,

Leaving,

Unannounced.

Six,

Then four,

Then three times a day.

Now,

I choose when to breathe the air in that place.

I sit,

And think,

And remember,

Until the memories take me there again.

And I settle into it,

Let it wrap its tendrils around my grieving heart.

Then,

I unclasp the ache,

Look for fresher air to breathe,

And move away from The Place That Aches…