The light from the reading lamps sweeps perfectly up the wall behind my computer, bathing me in a soft glow. I’m winding down for the night, caught between the ideas of writing to you and going down for a soak in the hot tub. Because I’m a gardener and not an architect, I don’t know how long this entry will be yet- perhaps there will be time for both. Or perhaps I will make time. Grief is heavy and my body feels like it is using muscles it hasn’t in a very long time. I could use jets of hot water streaming at my back and you know what? I’m going to go get in the hot tub now. See you on the flip side.
My muscles feel relaxed, and I just took some sleeping pills to ensure that I rest well. I’m just so sad, surrounded by all of Angela’s things that bring her back in my mind. There’s the photo of the emu I’ve always called “The Disapproving Grandmother.” She was a bird photographer. There are raptors and eagles around me…. but no orioles. Angela never made it to DC or Baltimore when I was there.
There’s also a tiny urn that’s usually here that says “Ashes of Problem Patients,” but my dad relocated it to the living room.
If I’m going to have so much of my stepmom around me, it’s really her office that matters the most because I worked for her for a number of years. I will see patients I haven’t seen since the 1990s, and definitely my coworkers from the time period. Believe me when I tell you that it is like the sun dropped out of its orbit. Everyone in my family has done something to support the practice and most of us worked there as a first job.
So this desk feels familiar. This tape dispenser. This reading lamp.
Familiar.
Familial.
I have joked for many years that I went to medical school in the back of a Lexus.
It’s not really a joke.
My favorite thing about my stepmother as a doctor is that she could laugh at herself. If you meet me on the ground, make sure you ask me to tell you the stories about “foreign body sensation” and “chapstick.”
Both of these stories make me laugh until I cry, but they lose something when you try to write them down.
Angela wrote all these stories down in her Palm Pilot, then her phone, calling it her “comedy routine.” I’m sure that I could remember a lot of it, but I hope my dad has access to her phone so that document isn’t lost.
“I know dis shit like the back of my head.”
But I probably don’t know it as well as I think I do. The brain takes memories and squishes them together, melting days and stretching minutes. I really hope that document is intact.
Angela, to me….
“You think it’s embarrassing telling people you’re gay…. wait til you have to tell them you went to University of Houston.”
Fragments are coming now, little pieces of conversation over the years.
She was the first person to really teach me how to cook, because my mother was more dedicated to convenience. Dana, as a chef, furthered my technique and got it up to snuff. Angela taught me that there was a world outside the microwave long before that.
The sleeping pills are starting to kick in. Welcome to the party………………..
I’ve started car shopping and I’ve found several that I like. What I’m mostly feeling is relief that I don’t have to go home on Tuesday. I have reached a different point in my life and would like to reconnect with everyone, even if it’s just for a few extra days. I need to be in this office, soaking up all the inspiration that’s here.
Then, I will pack up my car and drive home.
What kind of car remains to be seen, because I need to buy one. That’s been my project for today, sitting in Angela’s office and surfing Facebook Marketplace just to see what’s out there. I don’t really have a “dream car,” but I do know that I want an older car so that I can afford it to be loaded out. I can’t wait to use the seat warmers when it’s 20 degrees outside. I’m fairly certain I want a wagon or an SUV, but if the engine on the sedan is the better value, that’s fine, too. I’m also not opposed to a pickup truck. I just bought cowboy boots a few weeks ago, so I’ve already got the accessories.
In this office, it’s quiet enough that Aada visits me. There’s a feeling I get “when she’s here,” that closeness seeming to reach out to her even though the other end of the string is not responding and probably won’t change her mind on that one. I call it “smoking with the ghost in the back of my head” after the Lisa Loeb lyrics. Mostly, I’m just wondering what it is she’d like to know. Thinking about that question at least gives me a seed that grows into a makeshift framework.
I’m trying to go back to the place of being happy without her, because I was once and I cannot find it again. That’s because I hurt her when I was angry she lied about something. I can’t find the happy part knowing I caused pain to someone else.
Sitting in this office allows me to sit in peace and quiet, reorganizing my priorities.
I said that I thought and felt that Aada isolated me from my friends and family, so now I’m trying to create a better relationship with my dad and sisters. I wasn’t doing that before because I wasn’t always aware of it. I was so shut down and standoffish by the time I left for DC, and that’s just not me. I have a lot of reparative work to do, and I am doing it.
I don’t know yet whether that includes moving into this office full time.
Stories That Are All True 