20 Stories

I'm saying goodbye to a friend no one imagined would leave here so soon.  I never expected to see him again, this life being so far from where it used to be, but I loved knowing he was here, writing poems, living and loving, exchanging the occasional facebook hug or song.  He was a sweet, sweet friend.  Such a gentleman.  And he always spoke kindly to me with a heart so large I felt just fine anytime I was around him.  When I was pregnant, he asked how it felt.  I told him it was like you'd swallowed a live trout and you could feel it in your stomach.  I remember his expression, horror and delight.

This world changes when someone leaves it.  The feeling of it is physical, like your heart has just been dropped 20 stories.

And I am trying to prepare myself for my Grandma Smith going on.  We found out last week that she has breast cancer, and there is not much that can be done at her age.  I keep thinking of going back and deleting this though I know she could use your prayers.  She is much better at this than I am.  When I talked to her on the phone, she was calm, ready.  I'm not so much yet.

Sometimes it hits you:  how there is no walking away from this life.  This is it.  The pain of it, the joy of it, when it's hard and when it overwhelms you with the fragile beauty of it all, the kind I saw waiting as the train passed and the sun set and I had to lower my eyes because the heart I saw there was the gentlest, most powerful I'd ever seen, and it made me shy to be so loved.