death

I promised to bring a song and a flower to our prayer meeting.  Then it got dark. 

I was by our front door with a pair of scissors and my cellphone flashlight trying to pick a marigold, leaning over to reach where the marigolds are growing from seeds Ming planted a couple years ago. 

I think she liked it.  I sang pretty good too, my favorite Durga song.

This morning I went through a shoebox of mail from someone who was my best friend for a few years, best friend #2.  She’s an artist so the mail is amazing.  I saw some beautiful things, and it felt bittersweet, but I’m more happy it happened than sad it’s over.

Also strangely there was a thin wool shawl in there my friend V brought me from Nepal.  It’s tan with brown embroidery and very pretty.  But I’m not good at shawls.  What should I do with it?

I need to do my homework for theology, but I’m suffering, having been over-social yesterday.  Maybe I’ll go unprepared.

“If I hide under the bed, can they find me?” I asked Ming.  He said no.  But the dust bunnies would find me.

A victory: someone I helped screen is coming to visit our Catholic Worker, auditioning for community.  It would be nice if he found a home here.  He’s coming in two days.

I woke up yelling “No! no! no!” from a nightmare this morning, as Dad’s shoes were on a dish drainer and someone angry with me was chucking framed photos across the room into a box, breaking glass on the kitchen floor.  Ming comforted me.

“Laura-Marie,” he said.  “Laura-Marie,” as I whimpered.

Death is a problem.  It’s full of pain, or someone needed you not to go and you went.  It’s too soon, or too lonely if no one cared that you went.  It’s trauma–it’s scary.  “Things don’t end well for anyone,” I told Ming.

I was thinking: At the end of the game, the king and the pawn go back into the same box.

Well, a monk just stopped by for a key to the back house.  He thanked us for a card we sent when his dad died.  He’s off to church wearing his brown robe and rope belt.  His white beard is looking good.