WHERE WE ARE

Last week, there was an incident with Mom at the assisted living center. She’s fine. Everyone is fine. It was just one of those stupid scary moments that had us all going “What the actual Fuck, Mom!” I had already planned to drive down to see her that Friday and of all the things she chatted about, the incident was not on topic. She did say that she was on a ‘bad’ list and can’t go on the outside activities, but she doesn’t know why she’s on the ‘bad’ list. This time, I took Josephine with me and we sat outside for a bit with some of the other people who live there with Mom. Josephine was very popular and drew a bit of crowd. I sat with Mom while she held my hand and we listened to the elder man across from us tell us about his chow dogs. Which he repeated on a loop. I finally declared it to be too hot for Josephine and took us all inside.

I did a lot of head nodding and responding to things with “huh”, “Oh my “, “Is that so?” and “that’s very interesting.” I don’t do the talking on these visits. I let Mom talk about whatever she wants to talk about. My mother thinks she just moved in a couple of weeks ago. She said that she just walked in and people had already moved all of her things in. She said “I’ve been told that this is my home now.” She also told me that my sister starts working there on Monday (she does not). When others ask me about how my mother is, I have to say that she is physically well. This is true. It is her brain that is unwell. There has been some discussions on moving her to a memory care center, but after sitting with her and her cronies, I don’t think she’s any different from them. They’re all on about the same level of dementia.

My mother is just a little more ornery than the others.

We left Mom’s to spend a day or two with my friends Robin and Summer. I hadn’t seen them in a year and we were due for some actual face time. Most of that was spent in the pool and Michael and I came home with sunburns, mine in weird patterns from poorly applied sunscreen. The sky was a blinding blue all weekend with a constant wind that blew away pool floaties and knocked over potted plants. That wind stayed with us as I drove us home through the Flint Hills, struggling to keep the car steady in the lane. I cried while Michael slept in the passenger seat, Josephine sacked out at his feet. Why was I crying? I do this every time I leave that state.

For so many reasons.

My heart and soul are split up into before and afters. Oh, the years I spent plotting and planning my escape from there. I never wanted to stay and yet there is a part of me that never can leave even while everything is so different. Old haunts are now unrecognizable, major streets have even been shifted over in some form or fashion. I built a life there with someone who was truly my best friend and we created our own chosen family there. Nothing came of that plotting and planning for so long. We just settled in and figured that maybe we didn’t truly want to leave. And then we left. We left and it killed part us. Okay, so it wasn’t the move or the transplanting us six hours away from that life we had settled into that killed him. But sometimes it feels like that is the truth.

The wind whispers “if you had stayed, he’d still be alive.”

The hot Oklahoma wind is the devil and it lies.

So I cry as I drive away because I am reluctantly happy in this life and where my planning and plotting has taken me. I cry because of my good fortune. Then the tears fall for the what ifs. What if we had stayed and I no longer had to drive six hours to be with my chosen family? What if staying meant Chris living? If we had stayed, I’d hate my job and be tolerating my daily life, but Chris would still be here. Now, I like my job and I am more than tolerating my daily life, but I’m sharing that life with someone else. When these thoughts come into play, I cry over how stupid I am for thinking such things and for dwelling on the past. I cry for not being strong enough without Chris to hold together the family we created. So I look out the window and cry even more over the stark beauty of the seemingly endless rolling plains. Then just before leaving the Flint Hills, my tears dry up like the sudden downpours that roll through the prairies.

I forgive myself for thinking such ridiculous thoughts. I hold gratitude for the time spent with the chosen family I have managed to hold onto. I let go of my guilt over not spending enough time with every person I could have spent time with, including my mother. I shove away possible regrets and turn my thoughts and focus to the now and my reluctantly happy life.

THE THINGS WE DO NOT KNOW

I spent the weekend in Oklahoma not seeing everyone I wanted to see, but spending quality time with those I needed to see. I was able to see for myself that Talaura’s Sarge was alive and well. I was able to squeeze Talaura and hopefully give her a tiny break and an empathetic ear. Most of the rest of my time was spent with Robin, Traci and Chris. I dragged them all to the First Americans Museum, a museum Chris and I watched being built but never got to see its completion. The front of the building looks like the sun and for years, we watched as this sun rose because we passed the construction site on our daily commute to work. It was lovely to finally step inside this sun and see the tragic beauty of our first Americans.

Then Traci, Robin and I spent the rest of the day floating in Traci’s pool. As we floated about, rotating with the shade, we talked about all things and no things. This was the first time Traci and Robin had really gotten a chance to talk to each other and I watched a friendship begin as they learned the stories of each other. At one point, when our fingers were pruney from our time in the water, I told Traci about the hand written note I had found in Chris’s office while cleaning it out. The note contained half a date, a date I couldn’t account for and the thought of it has haunted me all this time. I asked Traci “Is it possible he knew he was sick before we moved?” and without blinking an eye she said “I would not be surprised.” She told me that he would have done anything for my happiness.

This is when I learned something about Chris that I didn’t know.

Traci told me that Chris had not always been the kind, empathetically generous person that most of us knew. She told me about him telling her he had met a girl and all his fears that this girl wouldn’t love him. She told me how I had changed him. I rolled my eyes at this thinking that it couldn’t possibly be true. All the years. All the time. My core belief is, has been, that Chris was the one who made me a better person. Definitely not the other way around. He’s the one who built a place for me to write, to put the camera in my hand, to put my career first. This is how I learned that support is not words but actions and I have spent lifetimes worried that I didn’t act enough in return. Turns out that was not necessarily true.

We made each other better.