Revisiting The Ghost of Christmas Past; A Work In Progress

Sad. Crumbling, literally falling, when the news came on Christmas Eve day. Falling asleep hard, fast, deep. Waking up feeling drugged. On a rickety cot in my grandma’s cold, white utility room. The clip clop of her slide-on shoes on the linoleum wakes me up too early.

Can’t reach the surface, but not for lack of trying. Face hot and swollen from too much crying. Acid-hot tears welling up. Again. Not now. Not in the security line at the airport. Not in my office at my new and hated job. Not when I try to walk through my life keeping my edges from spilling over. The freeway, can’t see the road, finally letting sobs rips me apart. Everything looks far away. Brain takes a left turn every time it runs up against the new truth.

Cold, cold frozen ground in a big-sky empty state. Wrong shoes. Wrong clothes. Here to say good bye. Wind whips through the spaces between mountains singing my sad song for me. Sleeping on a stranger’s couch. Riding in the cab of a borrowed pick-up truck with a brother who is apologizing for long-past, long-forgotten insults. Why now, I don’t know. Pre-fab house and the smell of wood in a wood-burning stove. A little, little-known sister. A glimpse into a life I didn’t know he had. Unfinished business. Unresolved anger buried deep. Everything in fragments.

I kept an ugly overscented candle and a cheap synthetic scarf – his last gifts, probably picked out by someone else.

Slipping deeper into dark places. Scared of everything, but most of all the phone. Twin towers, dead grandparents, dead father, what next? Bed seemed a good place to be, to stay. Lost my job. Far from home. Lost my way.