Rain and Banana's

It’s raining this morning. I love the sound of rain. It can be very peaceful. As I stand at the sliding door looking out the rain is building up slowly, coming down faster. The gutters are backed up in several places so the water is flowing over, splattering on my feet and the floor where I’m standing. I used to play in the rain when I was young. Julie, Mary, and Danny would put on their rain coats and play in our front yard. But soon the rain coats would come off. They would twirl around and fall down and get muddy. Or walk around with umbrellas and coats in the street trying NOT to get wet. Either way it was fun to watch them.

The overflow spots are pouring water out now. I should have cleared them out yesterday. I just didn’t have the energy. It seems that my energy or the want / need to accomplish anything is just gone. I don’t care if I do anything or do nothing. I just don’t care. I wash clothes, do the dishes, cook dinner sometimes, make coffee, all the things I could do in my sleep. But to actually follow through on a task that is important, why? I do the things I need to do for Mary’s estate.

I have to have a EIN to create a checking account for her to pay the remaining bills. Once again she has become a thing, a number in the eyes of reality. How many other people who were once alive, vibrant, happy are now just a number, a case file at the DA’s office, a memory to loved ones.

The rain is not soothing today but it’s not letting up. I will have to use an umbrella to get to work or drown walking through the parking lot. I don’t do much at work, just a few hours each day. I hope they don’t fire me. Inch by inch the lives of Mary’s families and friends are being affected. Tony’s uncle, seeing the heartbreak we are suffering, decided to make that doctor’s appt he had been putting off. Now he’s in the ICU in Seattle trying to keep going. Tony’s mom is out there. Her employer might not be as understanding as mine. Other relationships are being strained, sometimes to the breaking point. People go to work and stare at the wall as I do. School suffers, it’s time for finals and you can’t make up the tests.

Will all this work out one day? Will it be too late? What is holding us all together? Would all these things still have happened if Mary was still here? Maybe so, but she would have helped us through all of this. She is the solid foundation, the rock, and the willow that bends when the need arises. Mary did have her moments of doubt. We would cry on each others shoulders and tell each other that everything would work out somehow. Then we would start making plans to change things if we could, fix things if we could, or just hold hands if we couldn’t.

Each of my family is a part of the puzzle of my life. How they fit together is what I am trying to figure out. But they do fit together and I need what each offers me or I would have stopped functioning long ago. Each of my friends is the outside of the puzzle holding together the inside. My puzzle is half finished and I planned a lot of the colors shapes inside it. Some I didn’t. Mary’s puzzle was just getting started. Now to remain unfinished but for the dreams we knew she had.

The rain has almost stopped. I finished cooking breakfast. Banana pancakes…a no salt creation Mary will like. She was always fixing no salt dishes for Danny. The sky is still dark but the wind is still. And the days go on. Let’s see what today brings.