My friend lost her mother last week. They were very close and Mrs. King generously extended her support and enthusiasm for the arts to Rosa’s many creative friends, including me. I watched the funeral in Texas on Facebook last Sunday, and then the next day lost a dear friend here in Chicagoland who was one of my “other mothers.” I visited Satia just a few days before her death; I arranged the flowers I’d brought in a vase by her bed, told her I loved her, promised to come back and visit soon. I arrived at the care home knowing something was wrong and wasn’t entirely surprised when she told me she had cancer. I just held her hand and listened as she talked about how awful the chemo made her feel. Sometimes I think we’re just meant to be a witness. Our instinct is to fix and fuss but sometimes there’s nothing you can do.
Grief is mixed up with so many other emotions. This month marks twenty years since my father died of cancer, and in 2018 it was my friend Mary stolen too soon by pancreatic cancer. I wrote a strange poem for Mary while visiting her for the last time in the UK, and I wrote an angry poem yesterday that I’ll probably never share. Then I attended a virtual ritual on intuition where my tarot reader asked us what weighty feelings did we need to release? He took us through visualizations about bubbles and lilacs and I thought that might open the floodgates, but it didn’t. I don’t even feel sad, really. Just sort of untethered. I don’t have many close friends in Chicago and losing Satia somehow makes the city feel less real, less necessary. Not that I have another destination in mind. I hope to get back to Ireland this fall but that feels like a long ways away.
I had two doctor’s appointments this week and my vitals were good. Whatever caused my blood pressure to spike seems to be resolved, though I’ll continue to use my at-home monitor. I measure a lot of things these days. Today I requested health records so I’ll be ready for my upcoming mammogram. Then it’s time for another colonoscopy. We do all the right things to protect ourselves and prolong our lives but nothing’s guaranteed. When I’m in this kind of mood, I usually write but I haven’t yet found my momentum in May. I spent the past week working with a new cover artist for the prequel and trying to figure out which trim size to use. Folks will complain if I diverge aesthetically from the other books in the dragon series but this story IS different so why should I try to make it “fit in?” If I choose a custom trim size to match the Random House paperback, the book won’t be available to booksellers. And if I publish through Ingram to make it accessible to them, I’ll have to raise the price by several dollars. I’m not going to please everyone so I might as well just please myself.
The Amish novel is waiting to be finished but I started it four years ago and now wonder how to write in the pandemic, whether it’s really a novel for teens when the four main characters aren’t teenagers anymore…the dramatic monologues are done and I like them a lot. The files are open on my computer; the outline has been sitting on my desk for weeks. I think I just needed some time this week to not hustle, not push. There are still two weeks left in May—plenty of time to sort myself out and work through my grief or whatever it is I’m feeling right now. Rosa texted me yesterday to send her condolences and she reminded me that the only way is through. But wading through water requires us to slow down, so that’s what I’m going to do.