Wrestling with Angels

Posted on August 9, 2006 in Grief Journals & Notebooks

From my diary:

The main thing that I am dealing with is Kathy’s death. That sudden suck that pulled her out of the tableau and left a cleft that someone will fill. You never know the nature of a person’s glue until they vanish and you know they are not returning.

I’m wrestling with angels. Do I pray for her soul, agnostic that I am? It seems wrong even though I am not an atheist. I spend my life praising the oaks, the greasewood, the buckwheat and the rabbits, the squirrels, the badgers, the bobcats who live within it. I don’t care much for the asphalt, the concrete or the cinder block — they are a necessary evil, but I celebrate the people wearing their outlandish shorts, coats, ties, skirts, shirts, blouses, undershorts, and bras. These I will dance for but what does one do when one of these goes missing, disintegrate, becomes one with the dust blowing by?…

It makes me realize that I will be missed. There’s a temptation to run away, incinerate my bridges so that others won’t miss me but that is plain foolish. We live to love one another or, at worst, we come to love one another by proximity. I cannot yet reinforce my bones and organs so that I can be sitting on this bed in 2099, confident that as long as I avoid murder, accident and catastrophe that I can breathe, eat, and whistle at pretty girls for a century or more to come. My death is certain and why not endure the while in the company of others?…The aim is consciousness. Not on a hard disk but inside this brain, chemicals throwing transmissions of electricity across the rifts.