I get on her orange bike. The cruser with the old school breaks. I pedal slowly down the lane. I’m scared. Scared to face it. I go around the corner, already the Coppertone mixing with tears. I pass the corner mart where kid allowances bought sweet tarts and gum. I follow behind my dad.
We enter. Pass a grandmother, a father, a soldier. Old flowers, laminated rain proof cards, and worn stuffed animals make up tiny shrines. The sun hits so perfectly. A plane passes. We get off the bikes, and look right.
It’s the first time I’ve been back since it happened. And seeing her name brings it all back. It’s like your hymen of grief gets ripped open and it hurts all over again.
You look over at your Dad. Noting the empty spot where his name will go someday. Neither can speak. All you can do is touch it. Run your finger over the name, the date, the raised words and hope that you can feel something human. Anything. But you can’t. Tiny words escape your chocking breath like ‘why,’ ‘how,’ ‘fuck.’ Words your heart thinks you’re saying for the first time, but ones your brain knows are answerless. So you just shut up and sob.
She’s everywhere. Not just in pictures lining the hurricane strong walls or the silly old timey pictures you took as a family, but in the air the minute my plane landed, in the drive past the beach where she caught us girls sneaking out with boys, in my father’s distant eyes. My brain fucks with me, thinking she’s just at the grocery store picking up garlic for her famous fish marinade. Or in the back bedroom throwing on her shoes so we can head to the gym. At night I lay in my twin bed, like I did as a kid, thinking I hear her laughing with my Dad through the wood walls. But it’s not. It’s nothing. Just a dull void where her voice used to be. I swear late late late last night I heard something. A rustle around of something. A woosh through a hallway. I don’t know. Is it something or does my brain just want it to be something?
Key West is still my true paradise. Where this Midwestern kid got lost in coral reef explorations, baby oil, and shell jewelry. Where wine cooler sips and body glove bikinis made memories to last for memories. I was a lucky kid with a family that played hard. Ya know, I still am a lucky kid. And cancer can’t take any of it.
So I sit here now. This time without any buffers. Alone. Feeling every bit of pain deep in my bones. All the times you wished you called more, or went to visit, or weren’t a moody fuck, just circles around your head like cartoon stars and zigzags. The anger, the rage, the injustice of losing people too soon is a sickening pit that nighttime makes worse. I think back for a second to an old friendship I had with someone where recently I heard she talked shit about me. It's so funny how mad you can get about all that stuff. How it feels so real. How much time spent rolling in the details of it all.
But right now, as I type and tear, I realize THESE moments, THESE raw fucking sad moments, are what builds true grit. It makes you stand straight in auditions when a producer won’t look your way or when some ‘somebody’ makes you feel like a no ‘nobody.’ When someone passes on your script or someone else doesn't like your eye color, you can shrug it off and walk out head high. This grief, this REAL shit, is like a trump card that you throw down in the chaos of everyday life and say ‘Ha ha. See life? I know the secret. And none of this shit matters.’ Because what really matters, at least today, late at night, tucked away in the Southern most part of The United States, with her expired face cream on, a Harry Potter notebook and a crumbled yoga schedule from the local place on my bedside, and some beat up flip flops tossed about---for ME---is human relationships. Building and cherishing the ones I do have and not chasing the ones I don’t.
Call your parents. Ask them how they are. Tell them you like them a lot.
They really aren’t here forever.
Elbow and Send.
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