graceland's Diaryland Diary ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Relearning the lesson that life is fragile Vacation couldn't have come at a better time for me. The aftermath of the London attacks beat at me like a hard rain each of the few times I picked up a newspaper or saw the news or read a newsweekly. I found myself cracking like frozen glass each time I read a story; each time I looked at a photo of those people searching for the missing. I know too well what that is like. I know every fucking stage of it and it is devastating. There is almost nothing worse than that search. Hoping, praying, holding out that false hope that comes every hour. They have confirmed there are unidentified injured in hospitals... They think there may be more alive in the tunnels... The only thing worse than that search is the process that goes along with it. Losing hope as time passes. The dawning of understanding that the person or people you love probably didn't make it. Accepting with no evidence that they died. The scenarios of their last moments that play through your mind, over and over again. The death scenarios must take 100 times longer to play out than their actual death and suffering but you don't see that. In your mind they are still suffering. They are still dying. Everytime you see them in there, they are dying all over again. Grief is not a merciful master. And then you have to begin the process of letting them go - with nothing to bury. I cried everytime I read about it and I just kept reading. I kept reading like it would help them. Each paragraph was a checkpoint, Yep, remember when I did that. Remember feeling that. Everything was great until today. I was riding my bike early this afternoon when my friend called and asked if I was sitting down. Yep, on my bike, I replied cheerily. You'd better pull over, she said. "Seriously?" I asked. "Yes, seriously," she said. So I stopped my bike. It was humid as all hell anyway. And my friend proceeded to tell me that my other friend had died yesterday. I couldn't believe it. I just couldn't believe it. I can't believe it now. First of all, my friend who died is the one who always calls me to break the news when other people die. I attended our mutual friend's family members funerals *with* my now deceased friend and her husband. I kept wrestling this sentence in my head. I was sure I heard wrong - or that my friend who called had heard wrong...someone had heard wrong. The sentence "M. died" became some type of figurative crocodile in my head and my ego or my id wrestled it; trying to suppress it, push it down, separate the words to end the association like ripping the animal's mouth from its' tail so it would no longer be a predator. I remained calm for a bit. I sat down on the curb and I alerted a couple of other friends and I got back on my bike and decided to bike home. As I biked, my mind started racing and I saw my friend as I envisioned it happening. Her husband trying to revive her as she gasped for breath during an asthma attack. Her passing out from lack of oxygen. Her turning blue. My friend, turning blue. Her lips blue like the time we tested this new blue lipstick and we ran around and freaked people out and left blue lip prints on their glass windows. I could see it and it was WRONG. It wasn't right, was it? It couldn't be, could it? 34-year-old women who work out 6-days a week and don't drink or do drugs or smoke, they don't just drop dead. But as I pedaled, no one called me to tell that it was a joke. I started to cry and I just couldn't stop. I got home and I barely choked out words to my Dad as I passed him in the driveway. I got upstairs and I was bent over the washing machine trying to pull myself together before I called the rest of our friends to alert them, when my mom came in the room. All I could say was, "My friend...my friend...oh God...my...my...my..." and my Mom tried to finish the sentence for me. "There's been an accident?" she asked. "No." I'm pacing now, with my hands on my head, looking up at the ceiling almost if I'm still in there hoping to beat this beast of a sentence, my hands keeping everything contained in my head, when it overtakes me and has its way. "...is dead," I screach out. "Oh God," I think I said again. I quickly dialed the phone. I wasn't going to do this twice. I'd tell my friend and my mom at the same time because I wasn't going to be able to say it twice. "Jen. I have sad news. M... M. is dead. She died yesterday. She had asthma. No one really knew, it must have been a recent condition. She was away, she must have been without her inhaler. She was having trouble breathing in the hotel room. She passed out. S. was there. She was dead by the time the ambulance got there. I have to go. I'll call you back." I hung up the phone and I was shaking. My entire body was convulsing. My mom was in the other room giving me some space. I got it out, a good cry, and then I pulled myself back together. I thought about this scene I had seen watching "Into the West" last week. So weird, what makes an inpression on your subconscience and how it comes back to you with other experiences. Anyway, there was a scene where the Indians were teaching their children and they ask them to name the 4 great virtues or characteristics - something like that. They were courage, strength, wisdom and something else. The teacher said that each of us are born with one of these and it's up to each of us in our lifetime to find the other three within us. At this moment, feeling like I had been sucker punched again by life, I remembered that quote and thinking that I had been born with strength and that I needed to remember that I provide strength to a lot people and I was going to need to do that again now so I'd better pull myself together and start helping. And here I am. Tomorrow is going to be brutal. And that funeral, devasting. I'm going to need every ounce of inner strength I have. Tonight I just have to focus on suppressing my impulse to dial her cell phone number that's almost taunting me in my cell address book. 9:51 p.m. - 2005-07-17 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
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