I lost a friend not long ago. I wasn't home when the news came; I got it 12 hours late. Not that it was news I wanted, but I feel I should somehow have known, and checked sooner. Maybe I did, and it was just that all the other mundane things got in the way of the signal. Maybe I thought the reason I woke up early was because I knew I had to be up at 8 AM, not because that was when the first call came, to the home I was not in. Maybe that's why I woke in the middle of the night; not because the dogs where I was staying jumped in bed with me, but because that was when she left, trying to say goodbye one last time.
I'm filled with a variety of emotions, swirling like a tornado, boiling like lava. They scald and whip me, or leave me in a deceptive calm, the eye of a raging storm. Pain, guilt, anger, and love; all twisting about each other, each one striving for precedence. The pain of losing one you love, one you care for, one you trust is obvious. Its natural, and part of the price you pay for loving and caring. It's the dark flip-side of the bright shiny coin of love; and that bright side is worth the risk of exposure to the dark, ten times over if not more.
The guilt is there too; no logic anchors it, no common sense sways it. Would she be alive today if I had been awake, 3000 miles distant? What if I had called again the day before, since I was doing nothing else at the time? Or if I had gone to visit on her birthday? Maybe told her I was planning on a surprise visit? Perhaps if I hadn't flipped off that driver who didn't signal? Which butterfly in China needed to live, or to die, so that the flapping of wings created a breeze of energy that swept across the globe and held her here? The heart does not know logic. It knows only the now; and right now, all it knows is loss. Like a selfish child it wants, and needs, and no pale thing like practicality will bend it from it's path. When the mind gets dragged in, guilt is the savage goad that lurks around every corner.
Anger is there too; it is never the first emotion felt. Pain is the first, but anger often follows it. In this case too, there is no logic. I am angry at the doctors who didn't do enough or did too much; at the insurance companies who were slow or stupid; at the nurses or even the kitchen staff who made small mistakes. I am angry at petty gods, stupid fates wielding shears, malicious deities and stupid karmic wheels. I am angry at myself for not being there; for not saving her; for not bringing her back; and angry at myself for being angry. And yes, I am angry with her as well. Angry with her for not staying longer, angry with her for not being continually amazing, angry with her for being human; angry with her for hurting me and leaving me.
The occasional calm, deceptive as it is, has one bonus. In that stillness I can hear her voice again. Like that one faint wisp of Hope, still there in Pandora's box, I hear it whisper to me. In those moments I can hear the love, remember the laughter, the moments holding her when that was what she needed; I can feel her hand in mine, or her fingers running through my hair or across my face. Her other friends, her husband and her son, they are there too, sharing the hurt, and the love, and we lean against each other there in the all too short lull; Patrick, Michael, Christina, Randy, Mykael, Stephanie and the rest, like fragile reeds on the verge of a monsoon.
The pain is gone for that brief moment, and I know that eventually, I will turn my inner eye and the storm will have passed; only the peace and love will remain. But in the meantime the tears fall, and strike like steel rain.
Elayne Rachel Fong Chi Sai Yac Lan 3/20/1962 4/11/2010
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