Marking the Day

It's late, and I need some sleep fairly desperately, so this has to be quick.

But someone died today, and it was someone I loved.  She was important for lots of reasons, but she was also kind and funny - not slip-on-banana-peels or make-crazy-faces funny, more the kind of sharp dry wit that slices through you so cleanly you don't know you were cut until the blood starts to pool.  She was tiny and sometimes critical and painted beautiful watercolors, and had the graciousness to accept me into her family.

I married her son, and she never once begrudged me for it.  He was very special to her, and I loved her for that, too.  She held him in a very specific kind of esteem that almost no one else did, as one artist to another, and her pride in him was not just that of a parent for a child but the pride of an equal and a kindred spirit for one they recognize.  Yet as special as he was to her, she didn't love any of her other children any less.  Just differently, just as themselves, because they are each so different.

She was in poor health, and she died unconscious and at peace, and after having said all her goodbyes. I don't know what I think about an afterlife, but I like the thought that perhaps she is finally with her husband again, the man who loved her absolutely, with a fervor and a devotion and a completeness one doesn't often see.

I rode home on my bike from the theatre tonight, with the moon hanging in the sky like a cosmic doorknob.  It hasn't sunk in yet.  When it sinks in, it is going to hurt.  A lot.  But tonight, as I watch the blood start to gather here where the axe fell, before the synapses have had time to process the pain and transmit the news of such a severing to the brain, I rode home feeling more alive than I have in weeks.  And grateful to still be here.

I sit watching the cut, knowing what's coming.

Goodnight, Ardyce.  I liked you so much that I loved you.  Thanks for your son, he turned out great.  Say a good word about me to Dick - I'm not sure he would have liked me, so see what you can do about talking him around, ok?  Don't worry.  We've got your pictures hung all over our house, they are beautiful.