Some time later

When I'm in the kitchen I remember late nights measuring out pills, and later, syringes of meds to keep on the four-hour cycles. Afraid of being alone with you. Afraid it would be beyond me to keep you safe. Every time you attempted to pull yourself out of bed when your legs could no longer bear you up. And later when you slept all the time, wishing I had real conversations with you and not just fighting with you to make you understand you could no longer walk. That you were already home. That you didn't need to take care of anything at 3 in the morning.

I remember how you wanted to wash dishes as a way to contribute when your world had shrunk. How I snuck into the kitchen and rewashed then because they were never quite clean.

On the Amtrak I saw your birds and thought to tell you they haven't flown north yet for the year. Remembered the fields where they were flocking, to tell you. On the day before your funeral driving up in between squalls I saw a rainbow, and then on the side of the highway the  end of the rainbow bent into someone's front yard.  So mundane, and somehow appropriate. How an eagle circled the funeral home before the service. How it snowed after. How the deer visited every night and stood out the window, and on a night before you passed on, when we looked back after you received last rites the does were standing there watching, feet away, as if they wanted to bear witness to your leaving, too.

I'm sitting on the couch where I kept myself awake half of every night, wondering how long we could go on like this and knowing there was no other choice. Finding it within ourselves to carry on, knowing that's how we love.

Thursday

Last night, walking home after seeing another show, the sky was clear, the stars were out, and so I am surprised (a little) by how thick the fog had returned by morning. It was the third-year graduate students in the Professional Actors Training Program's (PATP) production of Tom Stoppard's The Real Inspector Hound. It was another Art's Crush sponsored event (pay-what-you-will), although, the tickets aren't that much to begin with. By the time it actually started, the venue was full, which is good to see. I liked the set-up of a play within a play, and the switching of the audience becoming the players, and the acting was good, but not sure if I liked the play itself. Need time to think about it. And I was watching the style of acting, the very focused face and body, which I've seen a lot of lately, and thinking that I am no where near that point, but do I need to be? Again, can see it's usefulness in auditioning, so need to get there with monologues at least, it pulls your focus (as an audience member.) I've seen a lot of work this month (most of it was free, a couple were pay-what-you-can.)

I was gonna do some writing while I waited for the ticket office to open, and I came across a "good-bye" message for another person gone. I had been thinking about him lately, wondering why I hadn't seen him, thinking perhaps he had moved. Seeing his picture really upset me, perhaps more than was warranted for how little I knew him. We were denizens of the same neighborhood haunts for years (and years and years), someone I only knew enough to acknowledge in passing. Still, I sat back down at my table and wrote with tears dripping down my cheeks. My insecurities keeping me from ever venturing any further than "hello."

Too many people fall through the cracks. We think there is always tomorrow (and for a lot of things, there should be time to think them through, especially if they could/would have a negative impact if carried out), but we hold back when we should reach out, with encouragement, with kindness, with friendship, with forgiveness. And perhaps the truth is that there isn't time.  There won't be a tomorrow. We need to connect.  Fate may never wait for you.  It might never be the "perfect" moment you imagine.  Maybe we could meet it half-way, and give ourselves a fighting chance instead of waiting passively for "fate" to happen.  We miss out on each other.  Fate is only a nudge, we have to make the choice to act.