Streams of Consciousness

While cleaning the bottomless pit which is my room, I found a poem that I don't remember writing, but I know I felt this stuff, so it's just a matter of not remembering WHEN I wrote it. It seems to be sometime in late 2007 from the wording, because it's about Annie, but before I really started delving into what was really in my mind about losing her.


Annie

After all these years
I find that you stayed
in my heart,
So much so that losing you
brought pain I thought
wouldn't be possible,
We had been in contact
so rarely that I thought
the connection was gone,
But I was wrong,
Obviously,
Because my heart
said otherwise,
It knew you were gone,
And that I had lost
something irreplaceable.

-----------------

It still speaks to me, which is why I'm posting it. There are poems I come across that I hadn't put into my collection but had written on the fly that don't stand up to the test of time. This one still works, so I'll add it to my collection. I have enough for a book, I just wish getting poetry published paid!

My writer's block is so bad right now that I couldn't even write a post on Annie's birthday. I started to, but it was weak and wasn't going anywhere, so I didn't finish it. I wanted to write one, I did the Chinese food and a drink to toast her with, and I wanted to write something for her, but it wasn't happening. There's no poetry at this point, after almost two and a half years I still miss her, but I have no concrete thoughts about it, just general loss that's in the background a lot. October almost mangled me completely and I thought it was never going to stop. I think part of the cluster headaches/serious sinus blockage I was getting were psychological. I've written before about how much I hate October. I love Halloween, but that's the last day of the month, the day I get to chase away the hate and the wrongness that has become October for me. Annie's birthday is a week later, and the day after that, everything was good again. No more pain. That's what makes me think that it was at least partly psychological. The timing was just too perfect. I have to get it right in my head before October comes next year, because I can't handle another one like that. I'd never experienced pain like that before. I thought my left cheekbone was going to explode, and I don't get headaches. I have to find a way to get rid of the hate I feel. G would tell me I'm crazy for hating a month, that it doesn't make sense. Of course it doesn't. Emotions don't make sense, they're emotions. There's no logic involved. Every day at stores, on tv, on the radio, always a reminder of what took Annie away from me. All that goddamn pink all over the place, you can't get away from it. Ribbons all over the place, on everything. All month I get reminded that she's gone and why. It's too much. I thought I'd managed to handle it after last year, but obviously it's still a problem. How do you get over hate for something like that? A month, a color, a cause. A worthy cause, but one that creates pain in my heart because it took Annie away. I should fight for the cause, but I couldn't handle being around it like that, talking about it or whatever way I decided to do it. Ignoring it is impossible, as I've found out, and as much as outwardly I had a grip on it, subconsciously my mind turned on me in a big way. Part of me obviously still hurts so much over losing Annie that it caused me to be in severe pain for weeks. Maybe if I could write, get some poetry working again, it would get it out of my head finally. Emotions this deep can only be gotten rid of by writing. Hopefully the block can be broken soon.

Two years ago today Annie died.  I think I've handled this better than I've handled any of the other deaths I've had to deal with.  Normally when the anniversary of Papa's death came around in the old days, I'd be depressed all day.  Today I had to work, so there was no time to be depressed in the first place (and Annie would've had a FIT if I'd stayed home or had been too depressed to work because of her), but I saw it as a day to think about her and who she was somehow.  I couldn't think of anything at first, as a way to mark the day, but partway through the day it came to me.  I started thinking about what we used to do together outside of school, like going out to eat, and then I remembered that we got Chinese one time, probably around 25 years ago.  We had been running her errands after school, and she asked me if I wanted to go out to dinner.  I jumped at the chance of course.  She was big on Chinese food, so that's what we got.  Hell, when I was in high school she had Chinese decor in her house. 

When I remembered how much she was into Chinese food, I decided that for dinner I would get Chinese, and a bottle of wine to go with it.  Nothing fancy, I can't afford that and she wasn't into the high end stuff anyway.  I think she even drank beer, but I can't stand the stuff, and I KNOW she drank wine.  Celebrating our friendship seemed like the best thing I could do today, instead of pitching into the pit of despair.  I came home, and just before I ate, I saluted her picture.  I hadn't done it in a long time, and it seemed like good time to do it.  I still think she would've had a fit way back when if she'd known I did that at school, standing out in the hallway when nobody else was around, in a spot where I could see her but she couldn't see me, saluting her.  It was the only way I knew back then to show respect, because I wasn't used to doing things to outwardly show somebody respect.  

Today I remember Annie, but not in a way that makes me upset.  I remember her in a way that makes me think about the good times we had, the times when we were friends who did things together, and it didn't matter that I was more than 30 years younger than she was.  After high school we weren't teacher and student anymore, we were equal friends.  She knew I'd still fill in the gaps if she needed something done, just like I had when I was her assistant, and I did, especially when she was running around like a crazy person looking for something or couldn't handle putting one more grade in the grade book at the end of the year.  I'd read off the grades so she'd only have to do the writing.  In the last couple years before she retired I could tell she was a little on the frazzled side, and I thought she'd be done with it all when she finally did retire, but she couldn't stop teaching.  She subbed for years afterwards, until they spent half the year in Arizona and half the year up north.  

I hadn't planned on going off into reminiscing, but that's the way it works.  I start thinking about her, one memory leads to another and I'm off and running.  There's a lot of good to remember.  I've smiled more than a few times today. 



    

After being out of therapy for over a year and a half, I was noticing that in the past few weeks I was reacting to things the way I used to before therapy.  Getting frustrated easily, getting overemotional, things I recognized from the old days before the therapy started working.  As I've said before, October tends to get on my nerves, but until this year it didn't seem to affect me this much.  I still miss Annie more than I probably should after over a year, but it's also getting close to her birthday, so that might be coloring the situation.  Now that I've figured out the problem I have to get a handle on it so that I don't completely revert back to my old ways.  I wondered how I was going to do that until last night.  I went through a couple tubs that I have forgotten even existed, and the stuff in those tubs is OLD.  20+ years old.  In one of the tubs I found two things.  One I had completely forgotten about, and one that I had been thinking a little about, but knew that there were two different ones floating around somewhere.  The first one is a picture of Annie from back in the 80's when she was going strong.  It's a Polaroid from an instant camera, and for some reason part of the film would sometimes not come out as part of the picture.  I never understood what the problem was, but this is one of those pictures.  I kept it because most of her is in the shot, so it was worth keeping.  It was before she stopped coloring her hair, so it's still dark, which is a big difference from the recent picture I have of her.  



The other thing thing is this autograph book I had put together out of notebook paper for the end of my junior year.  There are only two pages filled, and five out of the six people who signed it were teachers (surprise surprise LOL).  Annie's is in the middle of the first page, and what she wrote proves again how she felt about me.  I was still her assistant, still a student, and we hadn't transferred to the point where I called her by her first name.  That's part of what makes what she wrote so extraordinary for a teacher to a student.  I'm thinking of scanning it just so that I can keep it longer than the paper might last, because it means so much.  Here's what it says:

"Jenny, I miss you each day this summer.  Have a good summer.  Give me a call sometime.  Truly - Mrs. Wolff"



She's the only person to ever call me Jenny, even now.  She didn't use it all the time, mostly just when she wrote my name in a note. like that one. (If you're wondering, I'm very good at reading handwriting other people have trouble with)  I don't know if she meant to say I miss or I'll miss, but the way it's written it seemed to cover the summer when I read it during the two months away from school, like she wrote it to be in the moment whenever I would read it back then.  Whatever she meant back then, what it tells me now was that she missed me as much as I missed her during those evil summers when I was stuck in the hell that was my life at home.  

I've put the picture up on the shelf that's below my tv, with the autograph book right behind it.  As much as I watch tv, I'm able to see the picture all the time.  It seems to help, to keep me on an even keel for the rest of this month, and to keep me on target after that.  Hopefully it'll work.  Annie was always able to keep me in the here and now, firmly in reality, so I'm thinking that seeing her all the time, back in her prime, will get me back to where I should be.

I've been in a funk for the past month or so, and if I want to get past it and get on with my life, I need to write about it.  I'm still angry, and I still miss Annie.  The most annoying month for me is about to start, and if I'm going to get through it without being totally ticked off for the whole month, I need to get it out of my head.  Sometime back in the 90's, at least that's when I started noticing it, the powers that be decided that October should be Breast Cancer Awareness month.  I've tended to ignore it every year up till now just because it always brought it all back up every year, all the stuff about Annie back when I was a teenager and easily freaked about that stuff.  This year it's just so aggravating because she's gone now and that's what took her.  Yes, it was in her liver in the last few years, but she told me that it was secondary.  Yesterday at the store I found myself getting into a mood, because every aisle, every display, every EVERYTHING, was filled with that damned pink ribbon crap for October.  It's just a reminder for me, everywhere I turn, that Annie's not here and I can't have her back, and it's so WRONG.  It shouldn't be like this, but it is, and I wish I didn't have to be confronted by it constantly.  

I know intellectually that Annie would have a fit if she knew I was reacting like this, but I haven't been able to control how I deal with it.  I made a decision that at the beginning of the month, which is in two days, I'm going to get a grip and get my act together again, but I knew I couldn't do that until I wrote at least SOMETHING about it.  I just couldn't figure out what to write until yesterday when I realized that my reaction was a little too intense for the circumstances, then I knew what the problem was.  I'm angry and it's going to take some time, but I'm going to have to deal with it.  I should be used to unfairness by now, I've had enough of it over the years. 

Even since I found out that Virginia died, I've thought about it once in a while to see if I was just fooling myself and it really does bother me.  Every time I think about it, it doesn't bother me, so I'm not fooling myself.  It's not a matter of being numb and not being able to feel anything about it, I just don't care enough to be upset about it.  What knowing has done though, is make me miss Annie that much more.  I know in my heart that she was the one who accepted me, even though there wasn't one time when she ever told me that, or told me she loved me.  I don't know why Virginia made it a point to say it so often, if maybe she thought it was what I wanted to hear or if she needed to convince herself, I'm not sure.  I have no idea.  All I know is that she didn't love ME, or accept ME, she loved and accepted who she thought I was, and who she WANTED me to be.  Truth be told, she seemed to back off some when she found out that my then-husband left me.  I think because she had felt like such a failure when her own marriage failed, that she saw it as a failure on my part too, so I felt something of a pullback from her, even if it wasn't intentional.  It could've been an unconscious reaction, things like that happen all the time. especially from people who don't understand themselves.   Even when I completely screwed up with Annie, when I didn't understand what what going on in my own mind, she didn't back off, she didn't abandon me, she talked to me about what was going on, what I needed to do to make sure that things didn't get worse.  What she said brought me back to reality, after I'd been so far gone that nothing mattered to me but her.  Like I've said before, she'd been caught in the crossfirre of my crazy mind, after Papa died and sent me over the edge mentally.  In my heartbroken state I though Annie was the only thing I had left to hang on to, and I almost destroyed that.  Not quite ten years later I was able to apologize for what I'd done, which she appreciated. but even after I'd done all that stupid crap, she was still my friend.
 


As strong as Annie was, as much as she was able to handle every physical setback and keep going, there was one thing that if she had to think about it for any length of time, would've stopped her in her tracks.  I knew about it early on because she told me, and I knew it was something not to bring up because she couldn't think about it.  Her son was married, though I'm not sure when or for how long.  I don't know the timeline on it.  All I knew was that Annie had a granddaughter who meant everything to her.  She showed me a picture of her at one point, but it was so long ago that I'm not sure anymore when all of this happened.  I think she showed me the picture when I was still in school, and then later on after Jason was born, she told me what had happened.  Her son's marriage hadn't lasted, and his ex-wife had left, taking their daughter with her.  She didn't want them to have any contact with her, and it broke Annie's heart.  She couldn't think about it, couldn't talk about it, and kept it in the dark recesses of her mind to keep herself sane.  I understood why, it's understandable that if you wanted to keep going, you couldn't focus on the one thing that ripped your heart out any time you thought about it.  It was her one weakness, the thing that would've made her vulnerable if she'd let it, but she didn't.  I don't think more than three people knew about it.  If you have a chink in the armor, you don't go broadcasting it.  Not wanting to hurt her, I knew not to bring it up after she told me, and after a while, at least once Jason was older and not living with us anymore, I thought that it was better not to bring him up all that much unless she asked, because it would've just reminded her of what she had lost.  My main focus was to protect her from the minute she went back to work after the first mastectomy.  I saw it as my job.  I set myself up as her morale officer, leaving her notes on days when things were psychotic, telling her not to let the natives make her crazy.  I did anything and everything she needed, without question.  G would never believe that, because my attitude doesn't work that way anymore, but I was a very shy, very quiet kid, willing to do anything for somebody who validated my existence.  That could've been dangerous if I hadn't been afraid of men, but when it came to Annie, I was safe in giving her my complete loyalty.  Since then I've been proven wrong more than once in doing that with other people, but not with Annie.  Annie earned all the respect, admiration, loyalty and friendship I had to give.  I can't even say she wasn't perfect, but she was as close as I've ever seen.  Yes, she smoked, even though she was able to quit eventually, and she drank more than a little, but when your heart's broken and you don't know any other way, you do what you need to do.  I can't blame her for that at all.  She wasn't one for therapy, she handled her own business, and did very well if you ask me. 

Last night I cried for the first time in the year since she's been gone, though it didn't last long, it was taken away in the memories that came to me, all the things I have in my mind about her, which means there will always be part of her that remains.  I remembered a dream I had a month or so ago, where Virginia came to me, very upset about something that was happening to her physically, and in the old days it would've upset me, but in the dream, I didn't say anything to her, I called out to Annie, maybe apologizing for all the stupid things I'd done.  I say called out, because I didn't just talk, I yelled out, as if I was trying to cover a great distance.  I said, "I'm so sorry Annie", and maybe at the time I meant for all the things she'd had to endure, all the physical pain, all the hell she'd known and felt.  Already, even before I knew that Virginia was dead, she had ceased to matter, even when confronted in the dream with what had been my worst fears for her way back when.  It was Annie my mind went to, it was Annie I cried out to, whether to apologize or to show my understanding for her pain while she had lived, I don't know.  It doesn't matter, either or both work.  She'll know which I meant, and which one matters.  Even when she didn't know how to help, she still managed to do what needed to be done and give me the exact thing I needed.  It isn't part of me that will miss her forever, it's all of me that will miss her forever.    

Earlier today I looked at Annie's picture, and I saluted.  I hadn't done that in over twenty years.  I had forgotten all about it, but I guess knowing that Virginia's dead and that Annie is the one who meant the most to me made the memory come back.  Back when I was her assistant, and then after I graduated, I used to do that when I would look into her classroom and see her, when she wasn't looking.  I don't know what her reaction would've been if I had done it to her directly.  She seemed like the type who wouldn't think she deserved it or that it was over the top, but that was how I felt about her.  I didn't understand respect back then, because I had no real experience with it.  At that point I hadn't realized yet that I had respected Papa, although he was probably one of the first people I had had any respect for.  It just wasn't something that entered my mind, that I respected anybody.  I sure as hell never respected the psycho, even though he thought he deserved it.  I had contempt for him, never respect.  I respected Annie though, and saluting her, without her knowing, was how I expressed what I couldn't verbalize.  I didn't do it every day, or even on a regular basis, but there were those times, maybe when I knew she was going through a particularly rough time physically and still doing what needed to be done, that I would feel the inclination to do it.  I can see myself going up north, knowing that's where she is, and saluting as I look out at the lake.  I don't know when I could get there, unless one of the jobs I gave G a line on works out.  With him here full time I bet we could go up there at some point when the weather's good.  From what Annie told me the last time we talked a couple years ago, the place has changed a lot, so I don't know if it will get to me to be up there knowing I can't see her, but knowing she's "there" all the same.  I know I'd feel that urge to salute, the whole place will just have the vibe that will tell me she's around.  I haven't been up there since the last time I saw her, which was so long ago that I was still married.  A whole lifetime ago at this point.  The point of this is starting to drift, I should know not to write when I'm tired, but I wanted to write about it before I forgot again.  It's important to show respect when somebody has earned it, and so few earn it.  Annie earned it big time. 

 

        

A few days ago Mom brought up Virginia.  We couldn't remember how old she would be, so I knew I would have to look up Aunt Rita to know, because they were born the same year.  So I got on the Social Security Death Index (and it irritates me that Ancestry.com has control over it), and found out that I was right about the year, 1921.  On a fluke I decided to look up Virginia, because I hadn't talked to her in years, and I knew nobody would tell me if anything happened.  I was a little surprised to see her name actually come up.  Turns out that she's been dead for just about three years (as of next month).  It didn't upset me.  I'd gotten over Virginia mostly a few years ago, but then for sure last year after Annie died.  This is actually a repeat pattern for me.  Papa died in '86, and I was heartbroken.  The psycho died in '88, and all I felt was relief.  When I found out that Annie had died, I had an automatic reaction, I started crying right away, and I was very upset about it for days.  I know she loved me, she proved it so many times, by not rejecting me even when she thought I had major problems that she didn't know how to help me with.  Virginia realized I wasn't the person she wanted me to be, and she turned her back on me, even after she was the one who said she loved me first, which was a lie.  She loved who she thought I was, not who I really am.  Knowing she's dead doesn't bother me.  It allows me to completely stop thinking about her, and wondering if she was still around.  Of course I had to have SOME reaction, but it's not what you'd expect.  I looked up her obituary and it said she died at home, not that she was sick or anything, which means she got to die at 83 years old, peacefully at home.  She was a bitter, judgmental, bigoted woman, and she got to go out the easy way.  Annie was an amazing, strong, loving woman, and she had to suffer more physical pain than one person should ever have to suffer, over decades, and she had to die in the hospital.  So I have a little anger again about how the good ones suffer and the evil ones just kind of fade away.  The psycho just faded out, having drunk himself into oblivion, but Papa had either a heart attack or a stroke or both at the same time, so massive that he couldn't survive long enough for anybody to be able to help.  The only thing I can hope with Papa is that the pain only lasted a minute or two at the most.  For somebody to have found him still sitting in a chair meant that it couldn't have lasted long, which is the only saving grace on that one.  But like I said, the good ones suffer and the evil ones just fade out.  Aunt Rita was in that hospice for a month and a half, and they had to crank her morphine way up in the last week to keep her from suffering too much.  Another good person who died totally unfairly.   

So I can't grieve for Virginia, I've been over her for long enough for her death not to mean anything to me.  Part of me will miss Annie for the rest of my life.  At least now I don't have to wonder if Virginia's out there somewhere still, making me resent her because she was still alive and Annie wasn't. 

Today is the one year anniversary of when Annie died.  She's been in my thoughts of course, but it hasn't been so painful that I can't handle it.  for the one year post I knew I'd be writing today, I thought I'd continue what I started last year, with the early days of our friendship. 

When I transferred from Novellas to being her assistant, I took it upon myself to become her protector and morale officer.  I'd leave a note on her desk on days when things were going haywire, telling her not to let the natives drive her crazy, and I'd try to run interference between her and people I thought would be a drain on her.  Little did I know that she didn't NEED me to do that.  She could handle anything.  But I didn't know that at the time, because I'd seen her vulnerability, the chink in the armor that nobody else had seen.  The day she had laughed too hard at her own jokes, I saw the fear in her, and I took it to mean that she needed protecting.  She was always pushing the limits, making me panic that something would happen to her.  She thought nothing of standing on a chair and getting something off a high shelf in her classroom, or in the ditto machine room.  It took a long time, years, to stop asking her what she was doing when she'd pull a stunt like that.  And it wasn't because I had stopped worrying about her.  It was because I gave up because I knew she'd do it anyway.  She was going to do what she wanted, and nothing, including my fear of her falling off the chair, was going to stop her.  It turned out in the long run that I couldn't protect her anyway.  It wasn't outside forces she would have to contend with, it was what her body was doing to her, and I was completely helpless against that.  ( The rest of the story........... )  

Okay, so it's not like anybody on here would've known, because I only tend to post once a month, but I had no access for almost two whole days.  The weather turned ugly on Sunday afternoon, and then the lights went out.  They didn't come back on until noon today.  It kept raining, which slowed down the work crews.  More than the lack of computer, I had more of a problem with the lack of lights once it got dark out.  I really missed being able to just hit the light switch and see everything. 

If nothing else, because of the lack of tv and computer, yesterday I did get a little writing in.  Next month is the one year anniversary of when Annie died, and it's been on my mind more lately.  I realized I hadn't written a poem that told some of what I've felt about her over the years.  I did the post on here, but the last time it took a year to write a poem about something like that was when I first started writing a year after Papa died.  That was 21 years ago, so I had expected it to happen before now.  Maybe I had to figure things out first to be able to write the true poem. 


Annie

I know now
why I adored you,
Why I stared at you
for hours
without letting you know,
You were who I wanted to be,
Your strength,
Your confidence,
Your ability to face
anybody or anything,
All the things I lacked
but longed for,
You were the embodiment,
My hope for my future,
And the light to guide my way.

It took so long
to realize,
That you had
given me so much,
That I had stored
your abilities inside myself
for some later date,
When the gift
could be appreciated,
When I would know
that everything I had
admired in you,
Was now a part of me,
Now I know,
And it's greatly appreciated.

Today I was thinking, and I realized something.   Until I got my act together and could do it on my own, G kept me grounded in reality.  When I would start getting a little crazy about something, making a mountain out of a mole hill, he'd bring me back to reality, making me see where I was going wrong and how to get myself back to normal.  He was my source of stability until I could internalize it.  I think he's happy that I finally have.  It made me realize though, that long before G, way back in the dark days before I saw the light at the end of the tunnel, Annie did the same thing.  She was my stability, the one thing that kept me anchored to reality, when it would've been so easy to go into my own mind and never come back out.  She never let me get away with anything.  If I complained about something stupid, which I did sometimes after I graduated and started working AND going to school, she would tell me that she did even more when she was my age and that I needed to get over it.  That "quit your bitching" attitude of hers always kept me from being too ridiculous. 

I suddenly find myself with that  "QYB" attitude now.  I didn't realize that I had it, but it came up recently when a friend was complaining about something that she shouldn't have had a problem with, and I told her so.  I recognized Annie's bluntness in what I wrote, pulling no punches.  I was proud that I'd been able to internalize Annie's spirit.  Part of her lives on, a little piece of what made her so amazing, remains with me.  That's so cool.

Today would have been Annie's 78th birthday.  I've known it was coming up, because every year I'm used to calling and either leaving a message on her machine wishing her a happy birthday or actually talking to her.  This year I knew that wasn't going to happen, so starting yesterday it was bothering me.  I was able to write a poem for the first time since I found out she died, though I'd tried before.  This time there was something in my heart that had to get out. 

 

This year is different,
I can't send a card
or leave a message,
Wishing you Happy Birthday,
And it hasn't been long enough
for me to be used to the idea,
That your birthday has to
go unmarked in the usual ways,
Because after almost three decades
it's difficult to break a habit.

I knew that it would bother me,
That this day would blare at me
like a neon light in the darkness,
And I knew there would be
an emptiness this time,
With nothing I could do
to reach out and let you know that
I'm thinking of you,
Because you're gone now,
And this year is different.

-----------------------

What was worse, was the reminder feature on my cell phone went off this morning.  I had forgotten that I had set it a year ago, to remind me, on the off chance that I forgot, to call Annie on her birthday.  It was those words, Annie's birthday, that really got to me.  I know I should get rid of the reminder for next year, but I don't want to yet, and I know I'll forget before next November.  Maybe it's okay, as a reminder to acknowledge her birthday in SOME way.  I'll have to see how I feel about it next year. 

Ever since I found out that Annie died, I've thought a lot about inner strength.  I wonder now if I internalized the strength that I found in her, or if I already had it.  There's the chance that it was hiding in me all those years, buried under all the anxiety and fear that drove me until the past few years.  Back when I met Annie I was an extremely shy, scared kid.  I felt powerless and invisible, and I don't think anybody can feel strong at that point.  I had dreams as a kid that I was running and/or hiding from a monster, and it took years to understand that it was just an extension of my waking life.  You can't feel strong if you're always hiding from something.  But then I met Annie and saw how she handled such huge obstacles.  So many health problems would defeat a lot of people, rendering them incapable of getting on with things, but with Annie you'd never guess she was battling so much and so often because she didn't let it show.  I knew early on that was how I wanted to live.  To be able to overcome and continue on, keeping a happy outlook as much as I could.  That seemed impossible for so long, but then a few years ago, during a major crisis, I was the one who stepped up and made things happen while everybody else collapsed into an emotional mess.  It was my first inkling that I had gained the  emotional strength that eluded me up to that point. 

I'm not talking about physical strength, but internal strength, the kind that allows you to overcome. That's what Annie had. The only positive I can come up with in this whole thing is that I didn't see her in the past six months. She had emailed me back in May to tell me that the reason I hadn't heard from her since last year was because she had spent two months in the hospital in dire shape from a radiation burn in her colon. She was never one to spare me the details. I know that she had to have lost a lot of weight during that time, and that may be why she didn't have the physical strength to fight longer than she did. I don't think I could have handled seeing her in such a fragile state. She was anything but fragile, even as many times as she got sick over the years. I did seem to tower over her the last time or two I saw her, but that was just because she was always shorter than I was, and I gained weight after high school. It made her seem much smaller than she had before I'd graduated.

I get to remember her the way she was when she was at the top of her game, when she was able to overcome anything. I don't have her last days or even months in my head, haunting me with that physical change that always comes with terminal illness. It's like when my cousin was sick. He was 17 when he got sick, and by the time they found out, he was already Stage 4 Hodgkin's. He spent most of the next two months in the hospital, except for two weeks that he spent with us. I had just turned 16, and it was just about the time that Annie had come back to work after her mastectomy, so I was already in a heightened state of awareness about what this thing could do. He turned 18 a few weeks after the diagnosis, and he was in the fight for his life already. In the middle of June things got really bad, and everybody went to the hospital. Everybody but me. Somehow I knew not to go, though I didn't know why until afterwards. They came back with details about how bad he looked, how they could tell it was close to the end. In a day or two he was gone, and they have those images of him in their heads. I don't, I get to remember him looking like himself, not some shell of his former self. It was bad enough that he died at such a young age, but to have to remember him the way he looked in those last days has to be bad.

Okay, so when am I not thinking, I can tell that's what's going through your mind. It's just that I've honed in on one specific thought for the moment, and if I don't get it out of my head, it's going to torment me until I do.

I've been telling myself that I've known for at least a few years that Annie could die. I think I was wrong though. I think that even though this last time was so serious, I thought that it would be like all the other times and she'd bounce back. That was her strength, being able to come back strong from whatever life threw at her, and for the last 28 years that was mostly illness. That little tiny part of me knew it was possible, but most of me, as usual, lived on the hope that it wouldn't happen, which in turn had me convinced that it couldn't happen. That there would be more time, that we'd have years to go still. I think that's why this has been more difficult than it started out to be, because the part that hoped can't accept. You can't have hope and acceptance at the same time, it doesn't work that way. You can hope that something won't happen, or you can accept that it already has. The choice is yours, and sometimes the hope is too stubborn to leave, which leaves you in that limbo of knowing that the hope is gone but still unable to accept the reality. This leads to anger that you can't have what you want, and deep sadness that there's a part of you that's gone forever. 28 years is a long time when it's almost two thirds of your life, and when somebody who was part of your life for that long isn't there anymore, it hurts very deep down in your soul. It's a different hurt than when Papa died. That was agony that tore my heart into a million pieces. This one is an ache that goes to my core and won't go away. She was part of my heart, and now another piece of it is gone.

It was twenty eight years ago, three months after Papa had been laid off, and I was somewhat cast adrift. I had nobody to talk to again, and I wasn't actually looking for anybody, at least consciously. The way it worked at my high school back then, the teacher you had for ninth grade English decided what class you should be in when you went into tenth grade. It was the only year that happened, so I didn't understand the reasoning. All I know is that my ninth grade English teacher decided that I needed to be in the writing class in tenth grade. I had been in the top English class in ninth grade, so at first it seemed like a demotion, but the teacher explained that my only problem was that I didn't know how to write essays, and I'd learn how to in Writing 110. As much as she irritated me that year, she was right about that, so I guess I should be grateful.

At first the teacher for the writing class didn't show up on my radar. I had always gravitated towards strong women, because that's what I wanted to be eventually, a strong woman. But then it happened. A couple weeks or so into the semester, one of the guys in class was complaining about the homework, and the teacher said,"Quit your bitching." I was amazed, because I'd never heard a teacher talk like that. I was also hooked. Here was this woman who had the guts to tell off a kid who was being completely stupid. She became the coolest female teacher I'd ever known, and I'd known some good teachers.

She taught us the layout of how to write essays, and I got it down pretty fast. She also had us write short paragraphs in the creative vein. I owe her so much for teaching me how to put my thoughts down on paper. I'll admit that I have inherent talent, but if I had never learned how to put an idea together in a coherent way, that talent would have stayed dormant. It was partly because of her that I've been able to earn money with my writing, even though it hasn't been much. She gave me the tools I needed to give it a shot later on.

Sometime around the middle of December, on a Friday, she told us at the beginning of class that she was going into the hospital for a biopsy, and depending on the outcome, she would either be back the next week or wouldn't be back for a while. Even at fifteen I knew what a biopsy was, so I knew what she was up against. For the rest of the hour, while still teaching, she told really bad jokes and laughed too hard at them. I knew she was scared, but I was probably the only one. I've always been more in tune to that kind of thing, even when I was a kid. That whole weekend I hoped that she would be back the next week, and that she would be okay. We knew we were going to have a substitute for a day or two, but on Tuesday of the next week, the substitute said that she had a letter to read to us. It was from our teacher, and she had written it to us the day before, from her hospital room. She said that she'd had to have a mastectomy, and that she wouldn't be back for months. This was late 1979, and that operation was much more serious back then than it is now, because of the techniques they used. I heard the rest of the letter, but my mind was already spinning. When the substitute finished the letter, I asked to be excused and went down the hall to the bathroom. It was empty, so finding an empty stall wasn't a problem. I walked into one of them, shut the door, and shook for a good five minutes or so. I didn't cry. I remember going back to class and writing a short note that would be sent with everybody else's to the hospital.

I hadn't realized how attached I had become to her, all I knew was that with her in the hospital I was extremely depressed. I wanted to go visit her when she was able to see people, and amazingly I was taken there. I think Mom talked the biological father into taking me, which was no easy feat. I had bought a marble egg and a small bear, and when I went to see her, I gave them to her. We talked for a while, and she seemed happy to see me.

We had to endure the rest of our semester with the substitute. I wasn't happy about it, but we had no choice. She did visit one day, and I was so happy to see her, but that was one day, and it didn't last.

She couldn't come back to work until March. I tried taking Novellas, but I wasn't up to writing the kinds of papers needed for that class, so when she came back, I signed up to be her assistant. That was the start of a beautiful friendship, to quote the movie.

Earlier today I tried to write a tribute post about Annie, and I couldn't seem to make it come together. Twenty eight years of friendship is difficult to condense down to one post. Maybe it should be a series. All I know is that my mind is a jumble. So many memories, all coming to the fore at the same time, nothing orderly at all. I can't seem to make sense of it yet. How can the words "Annie died" hurt so much and at the same time have absolutely no meaning because they can't possibly be true? Part of me knows they're true, but making myself believe them completely is the hard part. I've known for the past five years that things were going downhill and that this outcome was possible, but reading the words brought instant grief. I rarely have that immediate a reaction. Most times there's that moment of shock that leaves me numb until the reality sinks in. I've been through anger, and not that she's gone, but that other people who turned against me are still here while she isn't.

I found out earlier in the day that she was cremated and that her ashes are going to be scattered up north in Lake Michigan. It's the perfect place, because she loved being up there. I know the area, because as a kid I spent most of my summers in the same area. If I can ever get up there again, I'll know that part of her is still up there, and it'll make me smile.

I hadn't written anything in two months, because there was nothing to write about. Now that there is, I don't have the words. I will, but it will take a few days to sort them out. I found out in an email from her husband, that Annie died. I'd always known it was a possibility, but the reality is a little devastating right now. I knew it was bad this time, because she always emailed or called when she was in town, but after two emails when she first came back, there was nothing.

More later, when I can think better and write the tribute she deserves.

Annie is back in the picture. She's the friend I wrote about almost a year ago, the one who surprised me because she had kept presents I had given her decades ago. I hadn't heard from her since last June, for good reason it turns out. She's been sick for a little more than a year, which I knew about, and she was in the hospital for over two months over the winter. She's back in town and she emailed me to let me know what had happened. I was in such a good mood to hear from her again that the news of her hospitalization was almost secondary. We've had a couple more emails since then, and my mind seems to always go back to her. Maybe because I had been afraid until last week of what might have happened to her over the winter, and that she's okay. Maybe it's because she's the one connection to my past that I have left, the one part that stayed true. I realized something today. Virginia, the person who decided that she couldn't be part of my life anymore because of her fear, had always wanted certain things for me, I know that. I think she wanted me to be confident and strong and have other traits that I didn't have when I was younger. She's not ever going to see that I've got those things now, but Annie, who accepted me even when she thought I had such serious problems that she couldn't help me, gets to see the new me. I told her how stable I am now, and she's very happy about my progress.

What I haven't understood, until now possibly, was with all the progress I've made, why after one email my mind so easily goes back to some of the crazy things I thought 21 years ago when I was essentially crazy. I spent years memorizing everything about her, her face, her hair, her mannerisms and her voice, and I never knew why. I may have figured it out though. As long as I've known her she's had one health battle after another, and as a teenager and a young adult I must have subconsciously been afraid she would be taken away from me, the way so many others had been (there was a part of me that thought it was because I was "bad"). She was caught in the crossfire of my freaked out brain twice, both times after losing Papa. I was in her class the fall after Papa was laid off, and there was a space in my life that needed to be filled. She was the coolest teacher I'd met in years. I gravitated towards her very easily, and after she got sick, it was even more intense, because I was in a panic that I would lose her too. I was that fifteen year old scared kid who had never really had many friends, so I held on to the ones I had, maybe a little too tightly. After Papa died, I was so traumatized that I thought she was all I had left, the only person who I could turn to. The problem was that I was out of my mind with grief, and not even my psychologist at the time knew enough to help me control my reactions to what was going on. Annie brought me back to reality after about a week and a half of my almost constant smothering attention, almost too late to save our friendship. That she still values me and our friendship after that is the amazing part. So it turns out that the image of her brown eyes is still in my head, even though it doesn't mean the same thing now. Like I said earlier, she's sick again, sicker than she's ever been before, but it doesn't fill me with panic the way it used to. She's a fighter, coming back like the Phoenix out of the ashes more than a few times, so she's not about to give up. It's one of the things I've always admired about her. I want to see her again, and I hope that she can see the difference in me. We haven't seen each other in twelve years, and I was still my old quiet repressed self back then. Twenty years ago I wrote a poem about a woman trapped in her own insecurities like a caterpillar waiting to escape from its cocoon, hoping to eventually be the social butterfly she wished she could be. Well, I'm that butterfly now, and I want Annie to see that. I hope she's up to seeing me at some point this summer. That would be so cool.

The friend I've reconnected with in the past six months or so called a little while ago, which was a surprise. She's back in town, and she found the first chapter of my book that I sent her, so she wanted to call. We were talking about that, and how things are going in general when she said that she remembered when I had visited her in the hospital when I was in her writing class 27 years ago. She said that she remembered the marble egg and the bear that I gave her, and that amazed me because I didn't even remember them. She said that she still has them, and she keeps them where she sees them every day. That absolutely floored me. I hadn't expected her to keep those things so close to her all these years later. It's funny, I was about to write that things can go back to the way things were way back when, but I realized they won't. They can't when I'm a different person now. I'm so much stronger now than I was back then that things will never go back to how they were 20 years ago. The friendship can only be better now. I don't know what that means at this point, but it'll be very cool to find out.