this morning

It’s a while before I read my own posts, and I forget them after I write them. I am half ashamed now for any wallowing or worrying. If Woolf had had a blog and friends and friends with blogs she would have never filled her pockets with pebbles. You all don’t just say, “My, how artistic is his sorrow!” You say, “Let’s snap him the fuck out of it!” God, I appreciate that!

The first week of true spring. The world’s coming to life again. So am I. I don’t know that I was so much sad as worried and afraid. But that all needed to be passed through, and I’ve passed through it and I’m still here. We’re all still here.

Walking the earth today, with a little bit of rain on the air and the wind up I felt… I don’t think grateful is the word, but convinced. Convinced that the world is a good and holy place. Convinced of the rightness of the earth under our feet. Convinced that things are going to be quite alright.

This morning Mom knocks on the door. I have woken up late, but these days I figure my body knows what I need better than me, and I needed nothing so much as to rest and repair from the mental struggle of the last week.

“Linda is dead,” she says. And I hold back all the stupid questions and affectionate but annoying touches I know my father will give her. He’s always, “Are you alright?” Are you all right?” And Mother’s like me, or I’m like her. An irascible cat whose fur goes up and being stroked and whined over. I say, “When did it happen. I’m sorry,” and kiss her on the cheek. Her skin is so dry. She feels quite frail.

For Evening Prayer I sing her requiem. There is something about Linda’s name mixed in with the English of the Old King James’ Bible, and incense and Anglican hymns. Ceremony helps to put into some order those things the modern world cannot make sense of… like thirty years olds with lives full of trouble…. Whose lives get harder and harder until they just can’t go on.

Oh, yes, I know I am not alone. And I take all of you up on what you said and trust in your friendship: Jenny, Helen, London. There is a peculiar prayer I ran across in the BCP for lonely people, and I see them everyday. So I think I will say that prayer this evening.