| Friday, September 25, 2009 |
| Love & Loss |
I met him this summer.
I fell in love with him this summer.
I am in love with him.
I knew that I was in love with Sean 4 weeks ago today, when my best friend's sister called me to say that Rory had been in an accident, and had hours left to live, and could I get to the hospital in time to say goodbye.
I was numb. I didn't believe it. Sean drove me to the hospital because I couldn't even get my fingers to hold a key. I really believed that it might be a prank. Even when the nurse confirmed that she was in the ICU, I didn't feel it in my bones.
I would have walked right by her bed had I not recognized the blubbering mass outside her room as her family. Her sister sat pale and still on one side of the bed, holding a hand that couldn't squeeze back.
The mess in the bed was not my best friend. It wasn't the girl who danced against me at the club, who clinked my glass before dinner, rubbed my back when I was sad, left dirty texts on my cell phone, borrowed my shoes, craved my mixed CDs. It wasn't just that she was unrecognizable, though she was. Completely. What was left of her face was swollen, purple, gaping, raw. The rest of her was simply mangled. Mostly, though, it was the emptiness of her. My Rory was gone, and I knew it even as I stroked her bloodied hair and held her limp, unfeeling hand.
Bleeding internally, her organs had already started to shut down. A pump emptied black blood from her stomach. Tubes forced her to breathe, because she would not have on her own. Her parents and grand parents had gathered to make their peace, and they made room for me, gave me the honoured seat by her side, and told me the stories that Rory had told them. They told me how much she had loved me. In their own grief, they consoled me. It took hours for her heart to stop, the longest hours that I've ever lived, and the last that she ever would.
He stayed.
He wouldn't go home, he wouldn't leave me. When I walked out of her room that first time, as the shock had begun to set in and the waves of grief and loss and anger and confusion had start to hit, he was exactly as I had left him, and he took me in his arms and held me until I soaked his shirt right through.
I felt like I had been fighting it for a while. I was resistant. I wasn't even sure if love would ever find me again. I'd had it once, and it expired, and maybe that was it for me. I wasn't looking for it, and didn't expect to find it. But I'd been feeling familiar twinges and wasn't entirely sure how I felt about it - whether I was ready, whether I could admit it, whether it was real.
But that night, that awful, awful night, I knew.
And it's hard to say that.
It should be impossible to feel your heart expanding even as it's contracting.
Shouldn't it?
Today I was in a store where I'd brought Rory just a few months ago, after she broke up with her fiance. I'd treated us both to pink sundresses that we wore to drink matching drinks on sunny days. That dress made her feel beautiful.
Mine is in my closet; hers is under ground.
I'm glad I didn't know then what I know now.
The past 4 weeks have been hell. Sometimes I go a couple of days between cries, and sometimes I'm lucky if it's a couple of hours. She would have turned 30 last week, but she didn't.
The past 4 weeks have also been beautiful. Sean is thoughtful and tender and he's good at knowing when I need quiet and when I need to be lectured on the brilliance of Randy Moss (actually, on second thought, note to Sean: never). He makes me laugh, often without trying, and he does this adorable squiggly thing with his eyebrows that he's not even aware of but that can make me melt. He sings wretchedly, and often, especially bad 80s tunes and country songs that he makes up.
And though he never met her (which kills me with regret, every fucking day), he tells me that he knows her, through me. Through the stories that he lets me tell and the photos and the memories and the tears.
A friend of the family had a baby recently, and 2 days later her father dropped dead of a heart attack. I don't like this cliche about life giving and life taking away. I don't think Sean is a replacement for Rory. A good thing happened, and a bad thing happened. They exist simultaneously, even if it seems incongruous. I walked out of that hospital room, shattered but alive. My life goes on, love & happiness, loss & grief, all of it together in a jumble that's hard to decipher sometimes. I'm still trying to figure it out. And I'm lucky. Not just because I have Sean, but because for a time, I had Rory.Labels: falling in love, losing a friend |
posted by Jay @ 5:21 AM
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| Thursday, August 06, 2009 |
| Anatomy of a Birthday Gift |
Jay: What are we getting Luc for his birthday?
Matt: I don't know, what do you get for the guy who buys himself everything he wants?
Jay: Um...something he doesn't want?
Matt: That works. At least then we won't have to worry about getting him the same thing as someone else did.
Jay: Exxxxxactly. |
| posted by Jay @ 8:04 PM
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| Saturday, July 25, 2009 |
| When everything seemed like the movies. |
I am unsuspecting in my car when the radio serves me up a little piece of nostalgia: Iris, by the Goo Goo Dolls.
I had just turned 17 the summer it first played on the air. More than a decade later I can still taste 1998 like it was yesterday (a mixture of skittles and peppermint schnapps and my mother's linguine salad).
I was in the middle of my first love. He brought me camping. He made me mudslides. He played me the Armageddon song on his guitar and I hoped that the starlight and the flames from our fire were not enough for him to see me blush. I still remember the thrill of another camper referring to me as his wife. It was glorious and it was heady and it felt so fucking important, like this was it, and I'd damn well better be paying attention.
I was.
I remember cherry lip gloss and wearing doc martens with shorts and sitting upside down on a bean bag chair to talk on the phone for hours. I remember sleeping until 1pm and stalking MTV to catch my favourite videos and The Smashing Pumpkins poster on my wall. I remember my short spiky hair and how cool it was and how much gel it took to accomplish and how it melted in the rain at the big outdoor festival we went to and got sunburned at.
I remember half-seeing movies at the drive-in theatre and skinny dipping in the river and a pair of oversized Rice Krispie boxer shorts I inherited from the dead client of a family friend.
I remember dancing to that song so many times. I remember the ill-advised long red floral skirt that I would wear and the way we would sway and how it felt when the lights got turned down low and how my heart almost permanently beat quickly because everything was so exciting all of the time.
I remember the terribleness at the dinner table when my parents told us they were splitting up. I remember leaving our home and moving to my grandparents' basement and the dread of changing schools, leaving my friends, missing out. The pity in well-meaning faces. My sisters, inconsolable. My mother, terrified and exhilarated, pretending to be neither.
I remember the stolen kisses and the not knowing and the secrets, some shared, others kept.
I remember tears and fears and learning what it means to be strong.
And I remember always, always turning the volume up when our song came on the radio, and for once really understanding what they were singing about.
And all I can taste is this moment
And all I can breathe is your life
Cause sooner or later it's over
I just don't want to miss you tonight
And I don't want the world to see me
Cause I don't think that they'd understand
When everything's made to be broken
I just want you to know who I am
And you can't fight the tears that ain't coming
Or the moment of truth in your lies
When everything seems like the movies
Yeah you bleed just to know you're alive |
| posted by Jay @ 5:53 AM
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| Friday, July 17, 2009 |
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Tonight, I cried myself through a movie, and my dog curled up on my chest to console me.
He's losing his baby teeth. I'm rubbing his gums and letting him use my fingers as chew toys.
I gave him a paw-dicure.
I'm teaching him how to high-5.
I'm thinking it's a good thing I don't have cats.Labels: dogs are better than cats, I'm not pathetic |
| posted by Jay @ 1:11 AM
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| Thursday, June 11, 2009 |
| Excuse me, Miss... |
A man walks up to me at the grocery store and says "I'd like to pop one of your tits out of your dress and gnaw on it like a gummie bear."
A total stranger.
True story.Labels: boobs, gummie bears, perverts |
| posted by Jay @ 7:45 PM
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Name: Jay
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About Me: I have a clear conscience because I have a bad memory. The martinis help.
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