Geezus – that is hard. Maybe – probably – the hardest hurdle of all. I mean migod Bekah I HAD you so you would always be a presence in my life. And that plan was working our just fine. You were wonderful sweetheart. You were a gift and a blessing and a delight.

Okay. Today’s thesis is recovery and as I was saying to achieve that I must find a way to reconcile my continuing to be alive while you are dead. That means getting comfortable with your absence (I keep tripping here, I’m crawling but still stumbling). I know of no other way to accomplish this but to cherish what is left. That means my memories. It means the many pictures, your voice, your writing, your friends, your grave, your spirit.

Your spirit. And my love for you. It cannot be ignored, denied, forgotten, or reduced. Every additional day that you keep on being dead my love for you waxes like a flame inside me. it tells me that it will stay so strong beyond my own last breath.

It is accompanied by this mortal, bereft longing. To hug you one more time, oh okay that wouldn’t cut it at all, to hug you a thousand times more and then some. To hear you laugh and talk. "Big Country by Big Country I love that song!" Your exuberant hyperbole. Your struggles to grow up, to which you submitted so much more gracefully than I ever did. Your affection, your enthusiasm. Your smile your tiny slenderness your piercings your interests so widespread.

Open up the world, Bekah has left it. Her mother wants to find a way to know this without pain. Build tunnels through anti-matter; my immortality’s proof has gone before me leaving choices that are solely mental, emotional…practically speaking I cannot make you be alive again. Practically speaking I cannot go stand in the road instead of you.

You cannot imagine how hateful those last two statements are. I mean they express such obvious realities. If you can understand a fraction of just how much I hate the truth of those statements you have a tiny clue to just how much I hate that you are dead. Pile on top of that how you died.

"But you never say no never say no never say never…."

I have some ways to go before I will be able to say, "Fine, thanks how are you?" to all who ask me constantly. I may just concede that for that question honesty is strictly speaking not required. In most cases it is not even desired. Just a courtesy the question most of the time. Since your murder people tend to ask as though they really want to know, and I have responded honestly.

I’m laughing just a little bit Bekah – sometimes I am just so slow. Probably whatever people I have discomfited with my honesty lately stopped wishing I would tell the truth way back in July. I’ve just been so involved with my grief that it escaped me. And now the issue of "Bekah’s murder" has been dwarfed to an extent by 911 and all the shit following it. So I am really not much fun for a lot of people these days I guess I should admit it. If they’re into talking murder at all it’s the 6,000 plus. Otherwise it’s war.

© Barbara Bales 2001-2009 all rights reserved

© Barbara Bales 2000-2009 all rights reserved

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