I wrote this poem below, "The Coach," in response to a friend of mine who, out of the blue, lost their dear friend in the middle of one starry night. This death, although personally removed from me left me shocked and reminded of how fragile we are....
In four nights time, Tuesday night, I wake up to use the bathroom because I drink too much water Monday night with dinner. That night we have tender pieces of filet steak that I decide to pick up on the way home from work. I call my husband (he has been the love of my life for years) from the car and tell him that I feel like meat (He always loves that idea). I love how he cooks meat- no one cooks meat like him. It's always just how I like it- a little red-ish inside. I only buy organic meat. When we were young and poor, still building our lives in the early years, we decided to rarely eat meat so we could afford the good stuff when we did eat it. So that's how we kept it. Organic, grass fed meat - delicious. Over dinner that Monday night we will sit and talk about our day, the kids, the song he started to write, and the book I started to read, A Severe Mercy. The book is a memoir written by a friend of C.S. Lewis', Sheldon Vanauken. It is the love story between him and his wife, Davy, and includes eighteen letters from Lewis to his friend. Tomorrow my best friend gives it to me and I start it on Sunday, two days from now, and by Monday night I am already heavily immersed. It's a slow read, but I'm thinking I'll probably have it done in two or three weeks. That will be just in time to start the book club my best friend and I have been talking about. Over dinner we decide to have a glass of red wine (We love red wine). Maybe that's why I end up waking up in the night to pee? Well, it's actually going to be the water I gulp right before dinner with my pro-biotic pills I have started to take. Pro-biotics are very good for you. They put billions of good bacteria back into your body. We will go to bed around 10:30ish, have some pillow talk, kisses, and "I love you." A few hours later (3:37 a.m.) I wake up to go to the bathroom. Sometimes I wake up my lover next to me and sometimes I don't. That night I will wake him slightly. I walk into the bathroom and then I get a sharp pain in my chest. Then, apparently, I fall over in the bathroom, and I'm gone. Just like that. He runs into the bathroom after I don't respond to him calling my name, but I can't even describe the look on his face. It's horrifying. In that instant he just lost everything. I actually don't see his face from here. It's probably better that way.
This afternoon I am standing here drinking a cup of Twinnings English Breakfast tea at our kitchen island. I have my black tea with a little milk and no sugar. There is no expiry date on the carton and I think that's strange. I am figuring out if we should do Thai or Italian for dinner tonight, and next Friday night people are standing over me weeping. Their tears are very fresh - they fall more from shock more than deep grief. The feelings will come in a month or so from now.
You never know when she will take you home. Live well. Love well. Eat well.
