We Thought We Had Time

After I got home from work, I told my two youngest children and I spent most of the night hugging them because we were all crying over the death of our friend. We all sat in a huddle on the couch, with our arms around each other. We talked then, reminisced about all the experiences we had with her like the time she drove all the way out to our house just to look at my daughter’s legs and work on them because she was a massage therapist or the time she brought my kids to the casino so they could see what I actually did for a living, and then drove them up the only mountain around to sit and have a look at all the stars out that night. I guess now she’s one of them.

Everyone in this house just loved her. I couldn’t tell my oldest because he was already asleep. I didn’t want to wake him because he had to work early. His job requires a long freeway drive so I worry about him being alert and safe. I was going to tell him in the morning but I fell asleep and didn’t wake up until he was already on the road so I just called him when I could tell he was parking the car. He was the one who was closest friends with her son who is only 18 now. He tried to be like a big brother and they played basketball together.

When I saw the missed call from her son I think I already knew. I knew it was bad. I was alarmed when I saw he had called me at all. I called him back immediately even though my break was over and I only had a minute, but he didn’t answer the first time. On my second try he picked up and told me the news that she had actually passed in the late afternoon but like I said, on some level I was expecting it. It had been way too quiet. She wasn’t even seeing my texts much less responding to them, because she was already basically gone in the couple days before. Basically what happened is they put her to sleep and put her on a ventilator which is already a death sentence, pretty sure Covid taught us that. Even so I was still holding out hope of some miraculous recovery. I don’t know why but I was. I think maybe I believe in miracles sometimes that never fucking happen. My hope seems to run eternal in all sorts of ways around here but if her death has taught me anything it’s this. You have to move, you have to move your arms, your legs, and your whole fucking body. It is never enough just to move your mind or thoughts around. There is no fucking wishing for anything in this realm. In this realm it’s either you go or you don’t, but you don’t get to pretend you are going and have something else take you there.

When I talked to her son, and he told me the news, I told him we were also his family and should he need anything, shit even to move in, whatever it was, we’d be welcoming obviously. He said he knew that. I know she would have done the same for me. My son said he would call her son on his lunch break to check on him. This is a very shitty situation. Death pretty much sucks when it goes this way. Remember you must die comes up very fast and hard in times like these. If you allow it to be, it can be the force that propels your ass better than any motivational speech ever could. Maybe that was her last gift to me, something like don’t wait, stop waiting, time doesn’t last here, it never has and it never will.

I wrote this letter to her in the morning after talking to my son, halfway between dreams and sleep and whatever other reality stirs me at these times.

Dear XXXXXXX,

I’m not going to write this as if you’re gone because I know you’re not. I know you’ll never be gone, not just because you’ll live forever in the hearts of all who knew you but because you were and always will be the light that creates this world to begin with. Perhaps we don’t actually die but we’re reborn to shine even brighter somewhere else. Your light was special, maybe that’s how it was needed for something else, something bigger than all this. This place was too small for you. It could no longer contain all you are.

I liked you straight away the moment I met you. Then we became friends, I think you were the friend I always needed, but could never find, and then there you were like a warm sunny day. Whenever we were together, you were always a light unto all of us. I think my daughter summed it up best by saying, “There was never an awkward moment with her, like not even one”, which is not even something I can say about my own mother, but so very true. I think it was because you were the real deal, the kind of person this entire world might hope or strive to be like, always loving, always understanding, and always ever so honest and just down to earth.

Maybe we were friends because a light knows another light, we feel it in our bones when we encounter someone like us that lets us know we’re not alone in the world. Just to think of you during my day for any reason at all brought a comfort, a knowing that should I need to talk, there was you, someone who could actually hear me. I have no idea who might do that for me now, just no clue. I fear there’s a hole there now once again that may never be filled. No one will be able to fill it the way you did.

I think the worst part of losing you to the other realm, is thinking I might have spent more time with you while you were here. I think our busy days, probably our shared common struggle to financially survive, to do the best we could for our children, all our jobs and responsibilities kept us tired and stifled all the other things we might have done instead. I guess that’s how I needed you to stick around a lot longer. Even so I should have made more time, and I’ll have to live with this regret. They say the greatest mistake in life is thinking you have time when you don’t. How true it is when someone we loved leaves this plane of existence for higher pastures.

My whole family however did love you dearly. You were pure sunshine to be around and we treasured seeing you every time we did. We just wanted a little more time, time that was full of freedom, so we could go and ride that train in Europe we talked about. Now we’ll have to do it with you in our hearts and minds instead and not sitting across from us. I can’t even begin to explain how sad and just wrong that feels right now. But you know, maybe from wherever you are right now, you’ll actually be there. You’ll know when we’re there and you’ll come too, and we’ll know you’re still with us even if we can’t grab a hug anymore.

I don’t really think you were supposed to leave when you did. Maybe I’m just not that spiritual, or maybe I’m too spiritual, in my mind we were going to be some fun very old ladies always doing things and going places. That was my plan anyway and I’m kind of angry now as well. I feel like this world really failed us, and not that your body failed it. I think if this world was half of what it might be, filled with people of your caliber, you’d still be with us. So now I’m mad at the world for being how it is, a most rude and awful place sometimes instead of a place that holds the light at a level where sickness doesn’t enter. It seems highly unfair and unjust to me that the most precious among us are the most vulnerable, probably because they don’t possess that hard outer crust of a shell. The hardened people seem to thrive here while the tender hearted just have to wonder why that is. Maybe when we leave here, we get to create the kind of world we wanted and we don’t have to settle for this crappy place of troubles and more troubles anymore.

And I will meet you there one day.

You are being sorely missed right now. Just knowing you’re not in this world with us anymore, leaves me with a sad heart. You were one of a kind, the best kind. I already miss you. I think I always will.

Love you forever and ever,

A light that was you is still shining,

because the true lights of this world,

never go out.

Your friend, always,

from here, into eternity,

with love,

Sandra Anne

So yeah, I just sent that to her phone. Maybe someone will read it on that end, I don’t really know who is in possession of the electronic history she left behind. And you know it doesn’t matter, it’s the outward push that wants to happen, where it goes is never our concern. That part is always out of control anyway.

A curious coincidence or not, was after I got the news, since I was at work, and I was set to go out and deal two more tables something strange happened. At the first table, I announced to them, “I’ve just been the recipient of some very bad news so this will be whatever it is. I’m not in a good mood right now.” No one said a fucking word, no one asked, I got nothing from that stone cold crowd of gamblers, just hit me and sometimes, “Fuck why did I lose again.” I didn’t care though, I had stopped this caring nonsense all together. My only thought was something closer to you, “Why should I care and well, you know what? Fuck you and the selfish ass you rode in on. You’re on your own in this world and the sooner you figure that out the better off you’ll be.”. It actually looked like they already knew that, on this high limit table where the only salvation at hand was a blackjack, there was very little life left but the next table was much more interesting.

I didn’t say anything when I got there. I guess I had calmed down a bit by then. Shortly after I arrived so did another player. His demeanor was playful, and I at once recognized his likeness might have been that of a sibling to my friend. Their looks were very similar, both with a hint of the hispanic but very American in accent and speech. He gave me something like $350 in chips and asked me to break them all down into fives. It’s actually very unusual to give anyone more than a hundred in five dollar chips, two hundred is already sort of an unusual request but we’ll do it without much fuss if there are a lot of chips in the rack, but more than three hundred? I didn’t seem to care, I had the chips and proceeded to honor his request though I called it out so if anyone wanted to stop me than that was up to the supervisors but no one seemed to mind so why should I? I was kind of liking the guy right away anyway. He was just very amiable but in a strangely personal almost too human kind of way. He was actually playfully making fun of some of the other players but instead of animosity, the players laughed along as if they were enjoying his attention. Anyway, so he kind of took over the whole dynamic of the table when he arrived but the thing that really stood out, is he kept telling me, “You know I love you” in the most natural way, not because he wanted anything from me when he’d lose a hand he’d just laugh. Interestingly enough, every time he told me he loved me, I’d say “I love you too”and it felt so natural as if I was saying it to someone I’d known for a long time and not just seen for the first time. The whole time I was there, he kept telling me he loved me, and I kept telling him I loved him. Kind of weird right? But the real kicker was that I had the thought that my friend was somehow transporting herself into this image of a guy telling me he loved me for my benefit. It was the fact that this occurred to me that made it interesting, because on any other day I might have just viewed him how I view most people I encounter in that place, as just wandering lunatics.

I think on some level, no matter the human concept we have about reality, it’s totally wrong, it’s only something we haven’t investigated fully or haven’t seen through yet. This might encompass our entire life, because how many fucking ideas do we actually have? How much do we accept without even noticing that we’ve accepted it? With awakening, we think we’re looking for “big” truths when the small everyday ones are maybe the ones we should be questioning such as “Do I really have a big toe?” or do I just accept the fact that I have one because hopefully we all have one? Is it only a projection? Is my body really here or has this gone unquestioned? What about money? Is that real? Do I really have bills or does my mind just tell me I do? Why do I think I’m out of coffee? Does coffee really taste good or do I only imagine that? And what the fuck is normal? Why do we first of all think that’s a thing, and then try to stay within its lines to some extent? Maybe none of this is real, we are just so totally trained to live as if it is, how would we ever know the difference? And yet, I think we can say, we wake up each morning, each day, living out some script that we learned. But you know, maybe one day, we’ll flip that script in our own favor and start writing out our own plays and dramas with zero regard for anything we’ve learned thus far. Maybe we can actually make it all up on the fly, or in advance or even after the fact, we have the capacity to think and imagine, but we might think and imagine anything at all. Perhaps we’re not beholden to a single thing that we feel happened yesterday so if the doctor I encountered last week said, “Yep, this is cancer”, today if I so declared it, he’d have to say, “You’re healthy as a horse if I ever saw a healthy horse.” But maybe it’s not him saying that, maybe it’s all just our own movie we’re living out.

On some level, I really wish I would have spent more time with my friend. I knew she was searching for answers and we talked a lot about what we thought reality was. She liked the Bible, she was always praying and sending blessings. She’d text us things like “Have a blessed day” all the time. I guess I should have recognized more often that when she did, we were on her mind, she was thinking about us but I didn’t. I’d just text back some happy emoji or some such right back at you shit. Maybe it’s just normal to think I should have done more to help. When she had her first breast surgery I wasn’t around. I didn’t even know it was happening until after the fact, when she showed us the results. She apparently had other friends who were able to be there for that. Surgeries made me queasy, like I just didn’t have the stomach for them. I think I didn’t want to interfere because I probably would have said, “Don’t do it, you’re just imagining all this shit and your doctor is on board with this hallucination. He stands to make $50,000 by mutilating your body.” Instead, later on I paid for us all to sit in this Fibonacci type room where the energy sources were spaced to create some circle of divinity or perfection. Before that we tried some hookah thing that had absolutely no effect on me. She showed up to that with some boyfriend and both of them were totally stoned on pot. I paid for him to do it too, and neither of them could stop giggling. My daughter was with me so I was a little annoyed. I think you know I didn’t actually appreciate why she had to get so stoned, and how scared she probably actually was because she always seemed so sure of herself, like whatever was going on, she’d handle it. She would always say she was managing just fine, life was good regardless, and all the rest of the shit we say to people when we want to look better than we actually are. Whenever we actually saw her she was always happy and if she wasn’t she covered it up like a true pro. She’d be interested in whatever activities we had going on and just be this wonderful friend who didn’t seem to judge us for the strange way we were maybe living which was something like, “Yeah, we’re just here living, however it comes up to do that.” Could I have done more? To be honest, I didn’t want the responsibility of shattering anyone else’s sense of reality. I figured that was not my job, that whatever truth you come to, you have to get there on your own. So I sat back and watched. I was here whenever she wanted me to be here, my home was always wide open to both her and her son, but really even if it is, most people won’t cross any lines there even if you wish they would, maybe you like having them around. There’s a social construct that’s deemed normal and everyone sticks to it if they have any sense of what they’ve learned is a mutually respecting relationship with its boundaries and such. You come to visit for only a set amount of time and then you leave before you wear out your welcome sort of thing. And to be honest, the whole cancer dream really freaked me out. I think I wondered if I could catch it if I spent too much time around it. When she’d come over she’d sometimes want to hit my vape, and I’d let her but then I’d change the tip when she left just in case it was catching. Then on another level, I was always thinking, where do I end and where do you start? If this was all a reflection in my mind, why the fuck was cancer showing up in it? I didn’t like that. My own body had felt a lot of stresses over the years as if all this awakening shit had really wreaked a havoc. There was an intensity in me it seemed that just never went away. Maybe that is the aliveness, I don’t really know, but where others seem totally unaware of anything unusual going on, my mind registers something else that isn’t so benign. I’m forever watchful on some level that’s almost maddening but not quite. Instead it lays back, and usually marvels at the weirdness of not just this place but all of it. The summary of which might be contained in these three words I most often exclaim, “What the fuck?”

So yeah, I felt a loss like what might have been now never could. Sights could now never be seen together, travels together would never come. It was over. A dream, an idea had ended but that wasn’t even the worst part. The worst part was had I treasured what I did get to the fullest of my capacity? I didn’t think I had. I think I could have had so much more so maybe I wasted it. Fuck, how much actual life are we wasting, every fucking moment of every day? That was my real thought, just how much? And then something else came down, and it went, “How precious is this life, how precious is every single encounter you ever have no matter what they look or feel like? How much of this life do we just dismiss on a daily, on a minute by minute basis? And why the fuck do we wait for special shit at all? What the fuck are we waiting for? Why does everything we really treasure or value have to look like something off the ordinary scale of human life as we’re all living it? So yeah, my friend’s death changed me. I am not the same person I was before it. I think if death enters your life and has done it’s job, you will be different. If death has a purpose, it’s to remind us that the greatest mistake we’ll ever make is thinking we have time when we don’t. We’ll never know when our time is up and the whole “seize the day” takes on a whole new meaning.

On that note, I guess, get out there. Seize the day. Seize whatever fucking moments come to you because maybe you’ve got time, and maybe you don’t. I think if we wait, we are sure to regret it. Below is one of the last songs I texted to her. I have no idea whether she ever heard it or not. Maybe out beyond this time and space, one day, I'll know.