Hello again

It's been a while. It goes like this.

I move 3,000 miles. I get the flu. My best friend dies. I can't get to her before she does.

My new “office” is the unheated upstairs of a gutted Hollywood relic. I commute 45 miles a day. Up hill. Both ways. My support structure is made of words.

But I'm OK.

I find a home. I set up shop, sit on the floor, sleep on an inflatable mattress and eat instant soup until I can get a refrigerator.

I do the job of two people. I don't have time to scratch. I'm lonely. I go online to meet people.

I turn 47 the day one of my contractors drops the ball and I spend my birthday fixing his fubar instead of walking on the beach where George Clooney is sure to discover me.

I am otherwise discovered online by someone who seems very nice. He's handsome and lonely, too. He drops me off one day in Nebraska so I can see my folks. It will be the last time my father articulates his thoughts to me, face to face. I don't know it yet.

I go back to work. A lot of people don't.

I buy a real bed with a real mattress and real pillows.

And I'm OK.

I live and love and learn. I try to be alone. I am implored to do otherwise. Then blood bombs go off in Papa's brain. Words elude him.

I go to him.

He sits in his chair beneath a blanket. Skin and bones. He weeps without a sound. I know but can't say. Mama's not ready. There is 65 years between them.

Again I return to work. Again the blood bombs. Again I go to him.

He is ready. There is no rest for the pain, yet he continues to refuse the morphine. Then there is the torturous final trip to the bathroom, and after that, the morphine.

She sleeps on the couch. I keep vigil. Morphine every hour. I set alarms on my cell phone. Finish a Paulo Coelho novel, my hand on his forehead.

Everything made of tears and hurt and misunderstanding that transpired between us has dissolved forever. All that we are to each other fits into those hours he spends between this world and the next. I am there for his body, so accustomed to this world, while the old ones wait to receive its life force. They fill the room, darkened save for one tiny lamp. The room where he was born. The room where he dies the next morning.

We cry. We plan. We take phone calls. We bury. We clean house. He has brought us back together.

We're all OK.

I go back to work. More people don't.

I encounter violence. It compels my solitude for the sake of safety. I am in shock.

One day, I am not a daughter to a father. The next, I am not a lover. I am saddened. I grieve. I choke on my sobs. It changes me. Things that were necessary now are not. I don't need.

I love. I accept. I am.

Work changes. An untenable alternative in a turbulent time.

I think of how blessed I am. No children, no mortgage, no attachments. Healthy, strong, intuitive, creative.

I can choose. Not everyone can choose.

I choose the unknown.

I choose the uncertain.

I'd rather create than cling.

The worst that can happen is perfectly acceptable and not all that bad.

My cells sing with possibility, trepidation and wonder. Even my fear makes me happy.

So I'm OK.

Sunday, December 14, 2008

Copyright 2010 by Deborah McAdams. All Rights Reserved. For Reprint Rights, click here.