Rain Bath Aftermath

And so life returns to normal - such as it is.

Yesterday, Tony took Anna and me to the turtle pond at UT. Oddly, I don't remember ever noticing it before, although I must have walked past it nearly every day when I was at school; it presumably existed before I was born, having been dedicated in memory of the 1966 shootings.

Sometimes when you are very sad and missing someone, almost everything reminds you of them. But the fact that the 1966 shootings fall so squarely into that category really ought to give me pause.

Walking back to the car after our excursion, Tony and I passed a guy heading the other way down the sidewalk. He was holding a plastic container slightly above him, at arm's length. "Would you like some Chex Mix?" he inquired as our paths crossed.

I'm not sure what you're supposed to say to this, unless you're unusually hungry. Tony and I politely declined and waited until we were out of earshot to begin snickering in bewildered amusement. Chex Mix: it's not just for people you know!

Back at work today, I sent an email Tony told me not to. It's unlikely ever to get read anyway. Maybe it's the darkness and the rain that make my heart so heavy.

There is bad news about Debby - not that it can really get worse than it already is. Her pain has increased enough that she's now drugged pretty much out of her head. This is probably kinder, as the inside of her head can't be a very fun place anymore, and I guess I'm glad I got to visit and say goodbye while she was still completely lucid. Her little girl has finally been told, which is - well, not good exactly. What could be good? Life is so short, and so often filled with unnecessary hurt, isn't it? Where there's life, there should be hope. But some things are hopeless.

At work, staff photographer Kevin gave me a sneak preview of all the pictures from conference, though I can only look at them, can't have 'em, until he does some editing. And he told me a story. Our CVB contact at conference came up to him Thursday, in his slouchy driver's hat (remember those? In the early 80's, when I was a mere slip of a girl, my more stylish classmates wore those in smart red satin that matched their lip gloss) and said to him, brusquely - she's cute, competent, and lots of fun, this girl, but her manner is very abrupt - "I like your hat. I knew a guy who used to wear a hat like that. But he died." Then she walked away.

Kevin was speechless. If only someone had approached him immediately afterward to offer him some Chex Mix.

I still wish... But what can you wish for? Life is normal, which is to say, as good as you make it. I would kind of like some Chex Mix, though.

Indignity

You think you're over certain things, and can often be surprised by the intensity of long-forgotten feelings when some event takes place to bring them out again: they were only sleeping, they were never really gone.

My ex-father-in-law's memorial service was this past weekend. Talking about it to friends, I compared it to "a high school reunion on acid." I'm truly sorry that he's gone. We weren't at all close, but it's always profoundly shocking when someone who you remember as living and breathing and being - well, whatever you thought he was - suddenly isn't.

And the memorial service itself: heavy with sorrow and disappointed hopes, soaked with hard booze (and it was barely lunchtime!), and filled with people I had kind of forgotten ever actually existed. Perfectly nice people, by and large: high school friends of my ex-husband and his brother's, people we used to hang out with years and years and years ago. Ex-girlfriends of my ex-husband's, from around the time he and I were married.

And during. Long-forgotten indignities surface here. Bitterness about this, at this point, would be beyond pointless: any issues I had with that were issues I had with him, not at all with them; besides, why be possessive of something you don't want? Which I didn't. Did I? Otherwise, why would I have been so anxious to throw it away?

I guess the main thing that hurt then, and that rears its ugly head now, is the sense of being rejected and abandoned as not good enough by someone who (you might or might not agree) was not even good enough for me in the first place. What an agonizing, maddening, throw-yourself-onto-your-stomach-and-kick-the-floor kind of feeling.

It passes, it goes away; it always has, and everything will be forgotten again. And all I have to do is sit tight until it's gone so I don't do anything stupid and make more of an idiot of myself than I already am.

You'd think I was a grown-up now. You wouldn't think this would still be so hard.