I've been floating in a cloud of memories and denial all day. And every hour or so I stop, lose focus in my gaze, and I just say her name. I catch myself shaking my head without any real understanding of what set me in motion, other than a deep need in my soul to say No. The world is wrong, and I am impotent, unable to change it back.
I went back in my messages, to read our last conversation beyond little comments and fantasy football. She had written me in June, asking whether I was planning on going to the Marillion superfan convention in Montreal next year. It is sold out, and neither of us had ever gone to one of these three day weekend events, much as we wanted to. She and I agreed that we would make it to the next one on this continent, which we assumed would be in 2017. We were determined to make it happen, even if our significant others weren't as enamored of the band as we faithful. (My man does like them, for certain, but he's not quite as devoted as my friend and I.) The last message I sent said, "Between now and 2017, we'll make concrete plans." It is very rare that I am able to put voice to long-term plans that span years. I've had to move too many times, I've left or lost too many jobs, I've seen too many friendships crumble. But there I was, confident that we would both still be here and still be friends three years from now, excited about meeting in Montreal for a long weekend.
I have looked up to my friend professionally for more than a decade, and she inspires much of my writing. She has had success as a playwright, having many of her plays performed throughout the Midwest, winning several awards for her writing. But oddly, it was an old short story written in the "before time" that I loved the most. It was called "Don't Cheat the Tooth Fairy," and it was a dark tale about a divorced couple in an ugly custody dispute, and the child in the middle. I hope you read it some day, so I won't give it away, but imagine a tooth fairy not resembling Tinkerbell, but more Scrooge's final ghost, with a cloak made of millions of collected teeth. It's a fabulous story of justice served to the petty ones in the most satisfying way.
A final thought about deep vein thrombosis. People, take this seriously. I mean it. All day I have had conversations with loved ones about what happened, and this makes the fourth person I am close to who has faced it, and the survival rate among the four is only fifty percent. That is unacceptable! My mother and one of her best friends have both suffered them, and of the two, only my mother is here today. This evening, another good friend of mine with an Oklahoma connection reminded me that she had a DVT early last year, and exactly like my mother did, she had to fight to be treated in a hospital, demanding second opinions, and refusing to be sent home. My friend who has been taken from me yesterday was told that despite finding clots in her lungs, they were planning to send her home today! What is wrong with the medical profession?
God dammit. I can feel myself sliding through the stages of grief. Hello, anger. I'm going to stop writing and put up a picture of a cicada that was making silly poses on my door. I need another drink.
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