The Gut Punch

Los  Angeles,  California

I am sitting in a parking lot near a bank, a CVS, and a See's Candies store, thinking about a friend who is dying, and trying to summon up the energy to go into CVS to buy lights for my small Christmas tree; having apparently thrown away perfectly fine lights in a recent flurry of cleaning unwanted items out of my guesthouse. And that sentence clocks in as the longest I have written. Possibly ever.

It is the end of November, summer just a heartbeat ago but now it is chilly by LA standards. I have my seat-warmer full on and am loathe to leave my car in light of this.

I want to write about my friend. But I can't. Not yet. Grief doesn't hit me like a pain in my heart anymore, the way it did in the past, back when I was losing people two at a time or three in a year. Now it arrives in my stomach, a gut-punch that settles in and feels like I must carry it around. A fullness of grief.

My friend is still alive and yet I carry the grief already. Are there those people who, at a time like this, can appreciate all that their friend has brought to their life? Who can replace some measure of the grief with the joy of having known their soon-to-be-departed friend? I am not that. I cannot feel that. I always feel miserable sadness that cuts me off at the knees and arrives with a persistent pissiness of why. Why? Why does life need to be like this? Selfishly, I feel singled out in this grief. I feel like that A Far Side comic bear with the target on its front. Bummer of a birthmark, Hal (the caption read).

I will write about him later. About his goodness and kindness. About his unmatchable ability to tell a self-deprecating story, often leaving me in helpless laughter. About his expensive university education that still left him unable to spell and the fun of teasing him about this. About all of the memories we shared over twenty-five years of friendship. And about how much he helped me during the worst time of my life.

But not now. Not when I am carrying this grief in advance of his passing and railing at the unfairness of it all. Life, love and death. Why does my full heart inevitably end up in this place with this dreaded weight? And please don't tell me that the loved one I am about to lose will be in a better place. Unless you mean that he is headed to Judgement City and will end up on the bus with Meryl Streep. It's not that I believe there is nothing. It's just that belief is not knowing. And in truth, we don't know, so let me leave it at that. What I do know is that the world will be a lesser place when Curt leaves it. Of that belief, of that fact, I am certain. So someone please tell me, where is the fairness in that?