Cooler than You: Stupid Things I Say and Do

An Emporia, VA sunset.   In the run of things, 2024 was one of the hardest years of my life.  It began with a friend dying unexpectedly, and it ended with a new heart wound that I'm still processing.  It's been dark around here these days.  It's been dark for ages, actually.     My Dad's cancer was confirmed before Thanksgiving, the Wednesday the week before, to be precise.  In a phone call, as he was driving home (and stopping to see my Mom), I called him, and he told me.  He'd barely found out himself.  Then . . . Then, I made a phone call to an old friend of mine.  Little did I know that act would undo me.  Back in 2020, shortly after my sister passed, I was told that when it came to the heartbreaking, bad news, we called each other . . . no more texting things like "my sister has cancer" and "my sister died." It made sense; she insisted that we call from now on.  In all these years of being separated by ocean and ...

In late December, I tried to write again to fall short to the binds of writer's block and life. Yet, now, a month and a half later, here I am.   *** It's been three weeks now since the surgery narrative changed. The message on my phone saying she passed is still clear as day in my mind's eye. Two days ago, I let my iTunes play a random list of songs. That was my bad, knowing good and well that that's rarely a good idea.  Joanne came on, and it hit me as I climbed five floors, gasping for air--not from the steep ascension this time--as I struggled, shaking to put the key in my door. It's always something like that, a song out of the blue, to knock the wind and fragile peace right out of you.   That damned Lady Gaga song connected to us and me, and now it haunts me like a memory you can never fully pack away. I've lived longer with lupus and RA than I did without; that song was written about the loss of someone from lupus, yet in its release, it's more along ...

While in Greece, I have clambered down a gorge, floated in Poseidon's waters, probably tempted the wrath of Zeus (this is me after all), wandered aimlessly, made a friend or two (I think), and nearly forgotten what the word trouble means.  Then again, I did say nearly . . . yet, along the way, the biggest thing that has awakened me is the shelling out of a disproportionate amount of my budget on new clothes.  As in, I went to a few big box stores and bought summer attire.  I shelled out some dough at local, Greek shops too.  I mean, I have certainly given more than my fair share to the Greek economy this summer.  I'm here for a few more weeks, and I'm certain local coffee shops (like the one near my flat), some restaurants, and maybe another bar or two will see my cash.  Tis the nature of life.  Yet . . .  I won't say I'm a skinny mini.  Hell, I've never been that.  In high school, my junior year, there's a pic of my Dad and me at the JR...

In the end, it is always about those left behind.  This we always know, but as the throws of life prove to us (every time) we never remember it until an end has arisen.  Every. time. In 2013 I met a woman named Barb, and when I met her she was recovering from just having discovered a cancer the size of a football in her leg.  A football.  A fucking football.  Barb with her three kids, a widower herself, a new husband with two nearly grown teenagers, and a suburban house.   When we met, she was just starting her home daycare up again . . . her Dad got certified so he could help her, and her family moved the daycare chaos up to the main floor since the surgery and cancer made walking up and down the stairs to the basement difficult on a good day and near impossible on most. I hadn't been married a year, when Barb and I met.  After that January meeting we saw each other again in the spring, after I helped moved a friend up there.  There was a par...