blankI am in the throes of my somewhat yearly break-into-tears-at-the-most-inopportune-m
You would think that after all this time I would feel much differently, but I really don't. Some things inside me went with her and I'm expected to just get them back with the passage of time and life experience, but the truth is that just hasn't happened. She was the first person I ever really opened up to with anything real, and the floodgates just flew open when she was around. She told me all of her secrets too, except for the one thing she knew I wouldn't stand for because if I had known, I would have intervened and she would still be here. I have no pictures of her either, which also bothers me immensely. I can still see her in my mind though, vividly. Her favorite picture was the one from our 8th grade year, when she was wearing this really bright pink blouse and her hair was just so, and she had on that necklace with the carved animal pendants that she loved so much. That picture is a part of her gravemarker, under a little door that you can lift up. I also wished I knew what happened to the cassette tapes I had of our conversations I recorded, because I made her laugh so many times and used to play them when one of us was grounded and couldn't talk to the other. For some reason there are things I cannot stop seeing in my mind. I remember how beautiful she looked in her coffin, and I remember I put my gold bracelet on her wrist to be buried with her. I remember watching my tears fall onto the sleeve of her blouse and making dark spots on it. I remember the teachers I hated coming up to me at the funeral and hugging me and telling me "It's going to be okay, baby - you can call me at home if you need to..." and the way everyone we knew stared at me the whole time. I remember the month after she died going to the cemetery for the first time, on my way out of town with my parents. We stopped on the way to the beach house so I could spend the rest of the summer away from everyone constantly asking me if I was okay. I remember kneeling over her grave and picking weeds away with the tears flowing and my father insisting I "stop crying and pull yourself together, that's enough..." and my mother crying along with me in her arms waving him away like a bothersome fly. I remember at first thinking "You unimaginable bastard, how could you claim to have a heart and say such things to me?" and then I imagined her looking up at us from her coffin, her eyes wild and glaring at him while sneering "Uh... mah... Gah... WHAT an ASSHOLE..."
Then on Monday Shane will have been dead for three years. That is whole different entry altogether. Maggie will be here with me and the kids that day as Friday is her last day of work with TT&W. I hope we get out of the house for most of that day and do something like go swimming or whatever. The distraction will be much needed.
Speaking of distractions, we're going to see Finding Nemo again tonight, which will have me laughing and put me in a better mood. If you haven't seen it yet, you really should come.
For all of my friends, I need you to do me a big favor. Please don't ask me for the time being how I'm doing. All I need right now is a lot of people with the best of intentions asking me "Are you okay? Is everything alright? Is there anything I can do?" questions. All that will do is make me feel worse and probably cry - which is not somethng I do easily in front of other people, so do me the courtesy of not inducing it. I know who loves me and who cares, and you prove it through examples and being there. Just act as if everything is normal for me, and with enough time I will start remembering that it is.
