Monday, September 04, 2006
there are better days.
the monkey is in atlanta, where his dad is in the hospital. there's some stuff going on.
and it's really not good stuff, you guys. it's the bad kind, and i want to form a shell outside him that will just keep the bad out indefinitely, and not only can i not do it i'm not even in atlanta.
he was so freaked out on friday night when we heard. i've never seen him like that. he wanted to go to this party we were going to go to anyway, even though i told him it was fine if we didn't go, and when we got there he turned his social up to eleven and became this manic manic guy. and when we got home i asked him if he would take a big deep breath, and he just flew into a million pieces.
the monkey is doing pretty magnificently considering, especially considering we don't really know what's wrong yet. no one seems to be asking a lot of questions of the doctors, which would be driving me batshit, but they want his dad to recover from surgery, i guess, before they have a big conversation about the outlook.
i was thinking about whatever do you do to help someone with the unhelpable task, and i had this frozen ice pick feeling that i get whenever mortality creeps into the same paragraph as him. on some level, losing someone you love in the very center region, one of the people at the heart of you, is the same whether they're old and sick or struck down in their youth. if anything happened to the monkey i don't know what i'd do. i know this is the wrong thing to say, but i am worried that my life would be over. i don't know that i could go back to the life he's not in. i think that is probably bad to say, but it's really true. if he were gone, i think i might want to be gone, too.
which is all just to say that a cloud is passing over and we'll figure it out and if there's more sadness to come, we'll deal with that, too. but when death enters the conversation i feel so paralyzed that it's like my understudy takes over while i sink into my ankles. they way you can love those people is what makes life a good thing, and i suppose it wouldn't be the same life if we all knew we were here forever, but this is the nightmare side of loving someone: they can be gone.
and it's really not good stuff, you guys. it's the bad kind, and i want to form a shell outside him that will just keep the bad out indefinitely, and not only can i not do it i'm not even in atlanta.
he was so freaked out on friday night when we heard. i've never seen him like that. he wanted to go to this party we were going to go to anyway, even though i told him it was fine if we didn't go, and when we got there he turned his social up to eleven and became this manic manic guy. and when we got home i asked him if he would take a big deep breath, and he just flew into a million pieces.
the monkey is doing pretty magnificently considering, especially considering we don't really know what's wrong yet. no one seems to be asking a lot of questions of the doctors, which would be driving me batshit, but they want his dad to recover from surgery, i guess, before they have a big conversation about the outlook.
i was thinking about whatever do you do to help someone with the unhelpable task, and i had this frozen ice pick feeling that i get whenever mortality creeps into the same paragraph as him. on some level, losing someone you love in the very center region, one of the people at the heart of you, is the same whether they're old and sick or struck down in their youth. if anything happened to the monkey i don't know what i'd do. i know this is the wrong thing to say, but i am worried that my life would be over. i don't know that i could go back to the life he's not in. i think that is probably bad to say, but it's really true. if he were gone, i think i might want to be gone, too.
which is all just to say that a cloud is passing over and we'll figure it out and if there's more sadness to come, we'll deal with that, too. but when death enters the conversation i feel so paralyzed that it's like my understudy takes over while i sink into my ankles. they way you can love those people is what makes life a good thing, and i suppose it wouldn't be the same life if we all knew we were here forever, but this is the nightmare side of loving someone: they can be gone.
