But Really

I think that what's going on is not really bitterness or anger or even fascination with another woman's life.
It's the fact that I'm really, really sad.
Even though Lynn's and my brother-in-law's deaths were blessed releases from what had to be living hells, they are gone. They are totally gone and I will not see them again.
My friend Lynn will never show up here on Thanksgiving morning and make me drink a shot of rum and dance with her in the hallway and then take a plate of whatever foods I've finished making with her to eat later in the day, taking also a lot of the sun and joy from the house with her when she goes. She's never going to go to LeMoyne with me and the other gals and stand in the gazebo and talk about her year. She's never going to pole dance again. She's never going to stand on the deck of a sailboat and laugh at the sheer joy of being alive and on the water with the wind blowing on her face. She's never going to walk around Lake Ella with me and raise her arms up to catch the breeze, her face turned up towards the new-blooming dogwoods. She's never going to listen to my woes and tell me she loves me. I'm never going to hear her laugh again or walk on the beach with her again or swoon at the sight of Johnny Depp on the big screen with her again.
I'm never going to hear her tell the story of walking around a puddle with my son, Hank when he was a just a tiny thing again.
And that just makes me so sad.
And I'm never going to sit and laugh with Ron again, either, or enjoy his sweet and gentle presence. And I don't know what to say to his wife, my husband's sister because I have no idea how anyone can take in what they took in when the doctors told them that Ron had ALS and would, in fact, be dying soon. I don't know how she managed that year of his illness, the constant trying to keep up with the different failures of his body and going to work and staying sane. I don't know how she manages to wake up every day, her husband of thirty years not there in the bed right beside her, and somehow get up out of that bed and go to work as if the world hadn't ended.
I am so sad for her.
And I'm so sad for all of us somehow. The whole human race because we all die and we all go through that dying and the ones that are left behind have to miss us and we all have the consciousness to realize that very true fact.
And what do you do with this sadness?
I guess you just go on and do whatever it is you have to do. You read the blogs of strangers, you make dinner, you do the laundry, you go to yoga and you do the neck rolls.
Grief will take you down some strange paths and will make you feel some uncomfortable things and I guess and I hope that it all ends up in stretching our hearts out a little bit more, making them capable of letting in more.
Bless our hearts. Bless our sad little human hearts.