Leaving Marseilles

Your 50th wedding anniversary was two days ago. I took you and mama to dinner and tried to explain just how it came to be I misplaced my mind just so quite dangerously, this time. It was a very different break than with Fang.  

Maybe I backed over it in the drive, more focused on that getting that perfect Alanis Morrisette, circa 1996.  Maybe I dropped it like a ball of yarn I was extreme crocheting on the District Line just before I found out I was pregnant with Fang in 2009, when Swine Flu quarantine was a thing. Maybe it's in that day planner I lost in Prague near IP Pavlova during the IMF riots. It could loose change between the car seats and consoles of the cars I've loved and left. 

I am fairly confident mama kicked you under the table; it can be hard to tell at ghost meals...she'll have kicked you because she remembers how it feels - even if you refused to feel - the wrenching of a biological parent crossing over to soon. And hers didn't involve a gut shot and a cold case. It's not a competition, Daddy, who suffers more. And I KNOW how you suffered.  

If I had a nickle for everytime someone has told we're not ever given more than we can carry, I could build a commune And I can tell you with absolute certainty, faux edict is absolute horsesh*t, pigsh*t, (and if snakes sh*t, throw some of theirs in as well). The chicken sh*t, we'll keep for BBQs and 

We had plans, you and I: hiking in Colombia, koalas in Australia, Camus in Algeria. We were going to Vietnam, Palmer Station and the rest. . You always said we would do a tour your favourite destination when you were on the USS Mt Whitney. You promised and I know you tried, for a little while. 

In the end, most of our journeys together were on highways and autobahns, usually in the wake of unexpected comic-tragedy: after a truck accident left Jay in a coma for hours and a day; driving back to Ohio after the last the fire in Peggy's body was put out. Occasionally, we would intersect at a Huddle House in Oxford, MS, after you dropped off a load in Batesville, sometimes caskets, sometimes coils. When I was very little it would me waking as your truck turned into the drive., maybe coming back early/late AirCo in New Orleans East or Houston, and you couldn't sleep, sneaking out to Waffle House, just you and me.  

Somewhere between that November before  your death and April 2024,  I forgot just how much joy and laughter we had together - just the us two - and with mama and Jay. And later with my two littles who are no longer that little, though the youngest remembers you with terror and that cuts deep. 

At some point -I began to think somehow that your decision to waste away and turn mean was my fault. I simply let my own hurt and broken heart become the beacon from the lighthouse. I couldn't even have told you or anyone around me coherently, if I was still on. I forgot who I am and I do believe it almost destroyed me. Now I have to confront the aching beauties of resurrections (like guests, fish, and JC, give 'em three days) and of having people still believe in me, love me despite/because and above reason. 

I miss you so much. I had this moment of realisation making my way to the airport today of how much time you spent in motion - ships, long-haul driving, helicopters, tanks...Ports are about junctures and crossroads, about choosing a path and recognising if you need to turn around. So now I have to turn around. But I am still quite irritated with you. And stop calling me 'Rach.' It may have been said with love but seldom with a gentle kindness, more like with a deliberate glee that I had realised I couldn't fly...yet.