Life and death, truth and reality, running on air.
Friday, 17 July 2015 03:47 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
carose59"If You Call Her A Widow, That Proves That Even You Thought You Were Dead!"*
-:- -:- -:-
My uncle is in the hospital. He had a stroke yesterday.
My cousin told me last night. I went over to tell my mother this morning, but she was sleeping, so I came to work and called her later, when I knew she'd be awake. I never wake people up to give them bad news. Bad news seldom goes away, and there's seldom much you can do about it. Knowing sooner only makes you unhappy sooner.
I did the same thing when Pat died. The only people who knew right away knew for reasons other than me telling them. I waited two hours before I called my mother—who was asleep then, too. It was early in the morning.
In my head, the time you don't know someone is dead, they aren't. Not to you. Their death only imprints on you when you find out. Not telling feels like a blessing.
That might not be true, or exactly true, or something. In the last few years, I've found out about the deaths of two friends by searching for them online. One had been dead over a year, the other several months. In both cases, the discovery left me feeling like Wile E. Coyote running off the edge of a cliff. All that time I was running on nothing and I didn't have a clue. This is why the world seems so alien to me; I never know the things I think I should know. How can a dear friend die and I not feel the reverberations?
Another friend—a live one, at least the last time I checked—had her sister and brother-in-law murdered.
Wait. That sounds like she paid to have it done, which is not what I mean. What I mean is, they were murdered. I didn't know them, I just know her, so for me what happened, happened to her. I cannot think of a way to rephrase that. Anyway, the night it happened, she was at the movies with Pat and me, the second Lethal Weapon movie. When she got home, her brother was waiting for her.
Later, when the third movie came out, Pat and I talked about asking if she wanted to see it with us. We'd seen the first one together, so it was sort of a tradition. But with the associations, it seemed wrong. I don't think we ever saw it.
Much later, I told our friend about this discussion we'd had, and asked if we'd made the right choice. I don't remember what she said about that, maybe because something else she said has never left me. She told me she loves Lethal Weapon 2, because in her mind, that was the last time her sister and brother-in-law were still alive.
It's like time travel, the difference between reality and your own truth. There is a part of me that still believes Pat was alive when I got up that morning, when I went in the bathroom and closed the door so the light wouldn't wake her, when I talked to her, thinking she wasn't answering because she was still sleeping. She didn't become dead until the paramedic said the word to me and I was pulled out of my own reality and into everybody else's.
*Henry Lowndes
-:- -:- -:-
My uncle is in the hospital. He had a stroke yesterday.
My cousin told me last night. I went over to tell my mother this morning, but she was sleeping, so I came to work and called her later, when I knew she'd be awake. I never wake people up to give them bad news. Bad news seldom goes away, and there's seldom much you can do about it. Knowing sooner only makes you unhappy sooner.
I did the same thing when Pat died. The only people who knew right away knew for reasons other than me telling them. I waited two hours before I called my mother—who was asleep then, too. It was early in the morning.
In my head, the time you don't know someone is dead, they aren't. Not to you. Their death only imprints on you when you find out. Not telling feels like a blessing.
That might not be true, or exactly true, or something. In the last few years, I've found out about the deaths of two friends by searching for them online. One had been dead over a year, the other several months. In both cases, the discovery left me feeling like Wile E. Coyote running off the edge of a cliff. All that time I was running on nothing and I didn't have a clue. This is why the world seems so alien to me; I never know the things I think I should know. How can a dear friend die and I not feel the reverberations?
Another friend—a live one, at least the last time I checked—had her sister and brother-in-law murdered.
Wait. That sounds like she paid to have it done, which is not what I mean. What I mean is, they were murdered. I didn't know them, I just know her, so for me what happened, happened to her. I cannot think of a way to rephrase that. Anyway, the night it happened, she was at the movies with Pat and me, the second Lethal Weapon movie. When she got home, her brother was waiting for her.
Later, when the third movie came out, Pat and I talked about asking if she wanted to see it with us. We'd seen the first one together, so it was sort of a tradition. But with the associations, it seemed wrong. I don't think we ever saw it.
Much later, I told our friend about this discussion we'd had, and asked if we'd made the right choice. I don't remember what she said about that, maybe because something else she said has never left me. She told me she loves Lethal Weapon 2, because in her mind, that was the last time her sister and brother-in-law were still alive.
It's like time travel, the difference between reality and your own truth. There is a part of me that still believes Pat was alive when I got up that morning, when I went in the bathroom and closed the door so the light wouldn't wake her, when I talked to her, thinking she wasn't answering because she was still sleeping. She didn't become dead until the paramedic said the word to me and I was pulled out of my own reality and into everybody else's.
*Henry Lowndes
(no subject)
Date: Friday, 17 July 2015 09:44 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: Wednesday, 22 July 2015 08:11 pm (UTC)