Entry Fifty-Seven BUS STORIES ENTRY

This is my attempt at getting at the middle stuff that I decided to skip in that last entry.


STARTING JUST BEFORE I TYPED "LATER" ON THE LAST BLOG ENTRY.

Then it had all been noise and pain..and death.

Yet I was still here. Left to remember the happiness I had and would never have again. Part of me wanted to blame God and THAT part of me did. The other part, the one that tried to force me into reality, that corner reigning half of me blamed myself. It had been my fault.

Soon the spot of tears on my pillow swelled to something unmanageable. Time to get up. I wiped my eyes with the back of my pajama sleeve. Snotty nose. Never a pleasant thing. Sitting up, I looked at the alarm clock. It read 6:42. I had to be to work at 9:00. That gave me plenty of time for a nice hot shower. Something to scald away the dream that still had a strangling hold on my thoughts.

Why go to work?

There was that voice again. The one that blamed God. The one that thought life was pointless. I must admit that I gave into that part of me often enough. She led me to poor decisions and unhappy days. The fitter side of me tried hard to fight back. But she often lost. I was determined to listen to the half of me that believed life still had meaning today.

I grabbed my cell phone. I had two messages. I had slept right through the vibrations. Hold down 1 and listen.

"You have two unheard messages. First unheard message:"

"Hey Becca, it's Susan. Look, I know that today is going to be really rough for you...so, um...lets not have a repeat of last year...okay? I love you. Give me a call when you get this and we'll talk...okay, hope to hear from you! Bye!"

My sister Susan. Always looking out for me. Looking out for everyone. The oldest, you know. What was she talking about, last year? Hard for me?

"End of message. To delete this message, press 7, to save it in the archives, press 9..."

I pressed 9. Something about deleting messages immediately bothered me. Like I would forget what they were about and never get back to the person if I deleted it.

"Message will be save for 14 days. Next message."

"Becca, hey. It's Josh. Look, it being October 24th and all, I, uh, thought you could use a pick me up...So um....I know it's early and you have to work today, but me and Susan are gonna come over and bring you some breakfast, okay? We'll be there at around...uh, probably around 7:30ish, or something like that. Just, uh, give me a call if you would rather not...so uh, I'll see you then! Okay, bye."

"End of message. To delete this message press 7, to...."

All the other automated words were drowned out by a rushing in my ears. October 24th. Was that today? How could I not remember? Why? No. I felt a rush of something much more than grief. It was despair.

"...Are you still there? To delete this message, press 7..."

I pressed 7.


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I know that this was short, but I am doing so many other things right now. Maybe it's good to get it out in short little spurts.