151

It is sunday. Duh.

Have spent all day reading Grieving: A Love Story.

It was good. Too good. What is different now, at the end of week 151, is I have time to check the driveway to see if my neighbor is home before I go to the bedroom to scream.

I was at the library yesterday. Crouched in front of the stacks of books on grief, looking for a new-to-me book, the title I found somewhere I don't remember now. Crouched there, I remembered I had been there before. I know I have been there before. I know I have read lots of these books. But I don't remember. Where is the one I read, just weeks After, sitting in the walled garden by the library, tears everywhere, not giving a damn about the people there trying to enjoy their lunch. What book was that? When was that? And how could I forget? How is it that I could forget?

How is it that all of that intensity - could fade. That I can not remember anymore. That I am surprised by the memory of certain days, of places I have been and places I have cried. That they stun me, when they creep up on me, when I remember. That I look at me as though I am someone else. As though this happened to someone else. I am in someone elses' memories, although I live in this reality all the time. I am never apart from it, and still it comes as a surprise.

---

And now, I listen to voicemail and find my parents are coming through town and want to go to lunch. Want to stop by, with 30 minutes notice, and take me out into this world to eat, to make small talk, to pretend that I am fine. I am dressed in stay-home bag lady clothes. I have been reading grief all day. I am in no state to pretend that I do, in fact, have someone elses' life.


.