Keep on walking

I seem to be going backwards some what.  Crying to and from work again, replaying the crash in my head, seeing Mary’s face with the headlights in her eyes.  Maybe she didn’t even realize what was happening… I wish….but there were tire tracks from brakes and they weren’t from his truck.  If she could only just tell me to quit worrying about her.  I don’t dream about her at all. 

Every day life keeps getting in the way of memories of Mary.  I don’t like the word memories anymore.  It emphasizes the past and I don’t want her in the past.  I want her in front of me walking with me hand in hand. 

I smile, I laugh, I keep moving along but once your eyes are turned away the smile fades, shoulders sag, eyes start to burn, and loneliness sets in.  I go to work and have goals to accomplish which I do most days. But how do you respond to people when they say “Hey! How’s it going?” or some other average, casual, blithe, cursory, nonchalant, effortless, perfunctory, indifferent, frivolous greeting, that for other people, is perfectly appropriate?  As anyone knows, people don’t really want a detailed in depth response anyway.  They are just showing good etiquette or proper protocol for two people greeting each other.  The hard part for me is .....I WANT to talk about Mary.  I want to tell the world what they are missing, how it happened, the injustice, etc.  Every person who has lost someone extremely close to them is consumed by the urge to live in the past with that person so that person will be alive again.  I can see it in the eyes of parents whose child has been gone for years and years.  The urge, the all consuming coat of memories, is worn at all times no matter what the mental weather is.

This need to talk is probably irksome to others.  I am put in the group of “oh, don’t get her started” people.  I can’t blame them.  I’m in the minority, thank god.  I don’t want them to understand the reality.  I’m not sure what I want from them.  Maybe to not assume that everything is “OK” even though that’s my “proper” answer to the cursory question.  (Here goes the windmill in my mind.)  Why do I care what they think?  I don’t want someone to look at me and “feel sorry” for me, treat me like a pariah.  On the other hand, I am not the same happy go lucky person I was (if, indeed I was ever that). 

I can truthfully say I was much more optimistic about life before Mary was taken.  I loved the song “Bring on the Rain” because it talks about loosing a battle but not the war, so “bring on the rain – I can handle it”.  Well, I can’t handle it anymore and I don’t want to.  I am very cynical about people now.  People’s personalities don’t change during traumatic events.  I used to think life changing events did just that.  But they don’t.  (I’m not talking about exceptions.)  Assholes will always be assholes, angels will always be angels.  I think the personality intensifies.  Or maybe, it changes for awhile but not forever. 

There’s no such thing as luck, prayer only helps the one praying, there is no one “watching over you from above”.  I now believe life is random.  God may have created life but he’s just letting it take its course.  And I believe we have more effect on other peoples’ lives than we do on our own.  Then again, ask me next week what I believe and you may get a totally different prospective.  In general, life sucks.