Thank You For Calling Me

It is late afternoon on the third anniversary of my mother’s death.

Remembering how I felt last year, I made what felt like a crazy request for some kind of reverse hotline or recovery phone tree and asked people to sign up to call me for the two-day period I was terrified I might fall as I have, over and over again, without notice, without force, back first, spread-eagled into darkness.

The first person to sign up doesn’t even live in my town. A few more people signed up. Look at this! Astoundingly, astonishingly, every single slot is filled.

Something happened to my fear. Did it lessen? I don’t know. But, as they say, a calm descended. Just knowing people were going to call me, were there for me, gave me a sense of hope and some kind of peaceful certainty.

I have relentlessly, ruthlessly attempted to become aware of my every feeling and thought, to isolate these causal variables as if I were my own scientific experiment, and to identify psychological reasons for them.

I was off an hour. I figured noon on the day before, but I cried while I was running on the elevated track at my gym at 11:00 AM.

I’ve cried so much at the gym – and gym culture is so funny; we notice each other’s vascularity, not our tears – I just went with it, running and sobbing to Smooth and trying to remember what thoughts preceded the crying.

Without notice, without force, I had thought of my fluffy step-cat that had to put down and I missed her and then I thought of my mother and I missed her and then I was a child without a cat or a mother and I was on the edge of the cliff.

So I thought about how it is normal when grieving normally for losses to bring up old losses. Thinking about my cat and my mother together made sense and were probably related to attachment issues.  And I thought of the Doodle and the people with their cell phones and made my mind, as if it had its own body, muscularly climb up hand over hand. I did not want to go over the cliff.

Today, people have called me and texted me and emailed me. When I could, I’ve picked up and have had lovely chats. When I haven’t been where I thought I’d be and have not picked up, I’ve saved lovely voice mails to listen to in perpetuity.

I haven’t cried today. I might. I’m okay with it either way. I’m not going to write any more or think any more. I’m just going to be. But I drew what it’s like to be me today.