Mourning

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Charlie at the GSR Gate, 2008.

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Me: Emotional. G: He’s at work sending email reminding me not to take anything seriously. Work: Waiting for a call.

Despite my own mourning, I am caught up reading Joan Didion’s The Year Of Magical Thinking. Her visions of the first year without her husband, her temporal displacements, just reinforce mine. Her life worked; “it had all worked.” My life works too, but I find myself limp, subsumed in hers.

Didion quotes the W. H. Auden lines from The Ascent of F6, and I am swept away stopping… “all the clocks, cut off the telephone, Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone…” That was me today. I shrinking into myself; mourning in silence. Forcing the silence so I could quiet my now.

Dear friends from work filled my inbox with the suggestion that I sue if they do not call me. I don’t want that. They do need to be made to adhere to the law. I want to push a button or two before I say no thank you. For what I think they will do is offer me the job down Kay’s tunnel, and that will leave Kay put out for the wolves. No poetry there. I don’t want that…..passionately I do not want to see her unemployed. It’s the worst possible solution as far as I can see.

I do not have to work. That’s the other door I opened weeks ago when talking with my money man. Perhaps some subconscious bit of the grey matter knew I was worn out and it was time to rest before getting back to walking, to stretching, walking, swimming, being me again.

So yesterday I mourned. Friends. Four footed, in uniform and out of uniform. Pete especially, and I need to send him a note today. The electricians and custodians, guards and carpenters, painters and fire inspectors, paramedics and police, Blue and Reds too, I will miss them all. Neighbors like Maya and Bailey’s family. Sophie and her family. Oh, the Ace man I’ve shared stories with for years at baseball and football. All part time family in a way. Each year for a bit of time, this neighborhood becomes a bit of me. There stories become a bit of mine too.

Just a week ago I mourned as one Chris and his two Bishons left to live in Texas. Yesterday I mourned letting it all go, today I woke comfortable in my decision not to sue, not to work there any longer, not to be miserable about it any longer.

Today I woke to a new road with a smile on my face.


The boys of summer meet here every game day, 2008.