Having somewhere to go... is home.

Three years ago tonight, a woman went to bed. She went to bed and never woke up. I will never hear her voice or see her face again in this life. What more do you really need to know about the end of someones life. Over the past few years I've searched my soul for the answers. Still don't have them and am finally coming to the conclusion I will never have them. People give up or others give up on them, or sometimes it's a little of both.
A convicted felon may have gotten away with murder or a beautiful broken heart may have given herself bittersweet relief, or a series of unfortunate events could have done something neither of them had even expected. What I know is either scenario leaves far too many questions for any of us that loved her to ever answer. The simplest easiest to digest way to say it is she went to bed and never woke up but the fact is like every rock star she went to bed, likely choked on her own fluids, drowned after coughing and choking for at least a couple minutes and then she was gone. I'm no doctor, I have never seen someone overdose but I'm guessing it was something more like that and less like some peaceful elderly woman passing in her sleep. The story is only magnified by the neighbors tales that the man in the very next room with the dogs barking and the possible motive sat in the living room watching his football telling the dogs to shut up and turning the TV up. This is the shit sadness is made of, I can't prove she killed herself and I can't prove he killed her. I can prove he was a bastard, I have my own proof of that, but I can't prove he killed her. She was sad and she had pain like only a Brickhouse would know, but I can't bring myself to believe a woman who always had a plan would have planned death.

I was 27 years old, had just started a new job and couldn't take a day to process the shittiest wake up call ever. I had no time. My brother called and I remember going through the motions, I remember going over what I knew then of the situation and thinking, it doesn't add up. I remember sleeping with a picture for awhile and being sad and silent. The silence death leaves inside of you is a cruel sound that's the only way I can explain it and each time, with each loss that silence gets louder. Some days I choose to hear it telling me to live, other days, I have to fight it just to do shit I want to do, to get out of bed and have even what I know is going to be a good day. This year there's been a shift in the power of that silence, a stifling of the fighting spirit of death and an overwhelming change in the tone of that loud crowd in the distance chanting, "Do something, Live, be a better you.". The silence doesn't taunt me lately so much as teach me and while I may, continue to at times daydream of my Aunt being off on a tropical island with a new name and identity, laughing at how well she planned her escape. I know my Nancy is not in witness protection anymore than Mike Crouse is going to walk through my door and tell me a racist joke, or my Black G-mo is sharing beauty tips with Richie Cunningham AND is going to be canonized, but each of these thoughts make me smile and sometimes even laugh out loud for seemingly no apparent reason at times. Especially that last one, that one is sure to crack a smile on even the worst of days.

The thing is, people die, they leave us with memories and love and a shitload of laughter, they give us all the chances they can to love them and be loved by them and then they're gone. Will the way my Aunt, my person, my Nancy died, forever haunt me? Forever. Do I have to spend tomorrow as angry as I want to be, angry at the whole world for shit that can't be changed? I submit that I can simply spend tomorrow living, that I can change the tone of the entire day if I just take a day, a personal day, a very, personal day and do something to remember the shit that makes life live-able. I mean being honest I may wake up tomorrow only to go back to bed, I may wake up and make art or read a book or clean my house like a madwoman. I know for the first time in 3 years I have time at that job I had to go to and smile while my soul cried and so I'm gonna take my time and I'm gonna use it effectively, and do my absolute best to remember shit other than how sad and painful and alone it must have been to go to bed and never wake up. At some point I will probably go to the sea wall and miss my Aunt, I'll replay my last conversation with her in my head and try to remember her voice and all the things she ever tried to teach me. The only difference between tomorrow and every other day for me is that tomorrow I spend the whole day wondering and angry that the whole entire world isn't stopping to miss her too.