Monday Mourning...
A strange weekend. I learned on Saturday that a friend and mentor of mine died from cancer. She was 52. Only 2 years ago she was in remission, then it came back and hit hard. I'm still making sense of this.
Saturday felt as if I was in a story with an unreliable narrator. The news wasn't making sense and I couldn't connect my life with the details of her death, it just seemed to be a mistake. By late Sunday, it had sunk in, she was gone.
What made this person so special to me is that when I met her at age 25 or 26 with a dream of leaving the city and my 60 hr. a week corporate $$ job to live in the country and write poetry, while the rest of my social group thought I had lost my mind, she was one of the few who told me to follow that instinct.
And it's a reminder to me how this life is such a random path of events. I would not have guessed that in 1995 when we met, she would only have 13 years left on this earth as she was the one who did everything right--she didn't smoke, ate organic, did yoga, gardened, had a passion for poetry, for words, for people.
This is the part of life that I'm uncomfortable with, the part that steals the best people and leaves the Rush Limbaughs and Dick Cheneys alone. The life that takes the Princess Dianas, the JFK Jrs, the mentors, and we are left with the lawyers who advertise on tv, with the Jerry Springer show, with the Billy Joel song playing in my head--only the good die young--and I know I'm simplifying things, that good people live long--think Mother Teresa, think Stanley Kunitz--but the chaos of the universe, it's supposed to spin in a pattern, or does it?
I'm still in the grieving period, with accepting, with remembering and moving forward. And with allergy season, a cold that has held on a little too long, and crying on and off, my eyes are swollen and I have the lovely look of pig-being-born face, and I'm tired. So tired.
And I hate to end on that, but I'm off to walk my dog and find my place on the planet, spend a little time on the sunshine that is trying to say that summer may actually come this year, that after the cold there will be warmth.
Saturday felt as if I was in a story with an unreliable narrator. The news wasn't making sense and I couldn't connect my life with the details of her death, it just seemed to be a mistake. By late Sunday, it had sunk in, she was gone.
What made this person so special to me is that when I met her at age 25 or 26 with a dream of leaving the city and my 60 hr. a week corporate $$ job to live in the country and write poetry, while the rest of my social group thought I had lost my mind, she was one of the few who told me to follow that instinct.
And it's a reminder to me how this life is such a random path of events. I would not have guessed that in 1995 when we met, she would only have 13 years left on this earth as she was the one who did everything right--she didn't smoke, ate organic, did yoga, gardened, had a passion for poetry, for words, for people.
This is the part of life that I'm uncomfortable with, the part that steals the best people and leaves the Rush Limbaughs and Dick Cheneys alone. The life that takes the Princess Dianas, the JFK Jrs, the mentors, and we are left with the lawyers who advertise on tv, with the Jerry Springer show, with the Billy Joel song playing in my head--only the good die young--and I know I'm simplifying things, that good people live long--think Mother Teresa, think Stanley Kunitz--but the chaos of the universe, it's supposed to spin in a pattern, or does it?
I'm still in the grieving period, with accepting, with remembering and moving forward. And with allergy season, a cold that has held on a little too long, and crying on and off, my eyes are swollen and I have the lovely look of pig-being-born face, and I'm tired. So tired.
And I hate to end on that, but I'm off to walk my dog and find my place on the planet, spend a little time on the sunshine that is trying to say that summer may actually come this year, that after the cold there will be warmth.
I'm sorry to hear about your mentor. Hope you were able to enjoy Mother's Day and spend some quality time with your family.
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