Feeling: in motion
Listening to: Natalie Merchant - Where I Go
Reading/Watching: Lord Vishnu's Love Handles, by Will Clarke

These past couple days have been about *Lynne, and I avoided writing anything because I didn't know how to form the words.

There was once a man called Pat, and he met a woman with her own little boy, and married her. He loved the boy like his son, and eventually he was, through more than birth. They had a daughter as well, and together they lived a good life.

Twenty-five years of marriage later, he was diagnosed in lung cancer, and no, this story does not have a triumphant ending. After several operations and cripping hospital bills, the doctors looked inside him and said, "We're sorry, but there's nothing more we can do. If we continue, you won't have any organs left."

And a month went by. His last week, he was delirious with pain and painkillers. He came in and out of consciousness. And Wednesday, July 27, he left. His body was put through so much violence, a sinkhole of so much money and pain, that he asked to be cremated and buried near the river.

Saturday I dug out somber clothing, and didn't want to go, and didn't want to be there, and didn't want to watch Lynne cry, because it makes me come apart at the seams, but we do things we hate because we love the people we're doing it for.

I barely knew her father, other than as the man that sometimes picked her up after school, or the man sitting in the armchair in the living room when I came over to her house in highschool. The only conversation I ever remember having with him was a few weeks ago, after the operations and the giving up, when I came to see Lynne, and he was there, and for the first time in my life he was interested in talking to me. I asked how he was doing, he smiled and said "just fine," and asked about me.

The detail that swam through my mind during the funeral was the fact that when I bubbled over with excitement about my engagement, when I told him about saving up to buy mon coeur an engagement ring (because it's not really fair that men spend all the money and women have all the fun), he grinned and showed me his engagement ring, an irregular oval of turquoise set in silver that his wife gave him a quarter of a century ago, and there was pride in his voice when he talked about how it was her idea, how everyone thought it was so odd, but he loved it.

And I watched the preacher praying over his silver urn, and wondered if the turquoise ring was inside. And then I cried until some strange woman next to me handed me a tissue.

On the way home, I called my parents, the ones that will be there to walk me down the aisle, and not buried by the river. I told them all the things I could think to say.

I arrived home, and tucked my head on mon coeur's chest, and told him he was not allowed to get cancer: not allowed to wear my ring for only twenty-five years and leave me. We'd agreed on sixty, and sixty it would be.

But today, when I went back to see Lynne and get her out of her house full of funeral flowers and funeral food, she guiltily said she was relieved. Relieved it was over. Relieved that she could breathe again, instead of always waiting. And we were grateful that he's not hurting anymore. Wherever he is, whether it fits mankind's descriptions, we know he's not a broken shell. And she's relieved. Because now life goes on.

Her mother was quiet, but smiling. She hugged me, even though we don't often hug, and as Lynne and I headed out to see a movie, she said she was glad to have some time alone. The swarm of family has cleared away, and it's time to go on.

That's the feeling around the entire house. Death has been coming for so long, that it's time to go on. It's a kind of gray, determined motion that will someday wake up and have color again, but must always be going, going.

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