Profoundly Tired

I am so tired, Rex.
I wish you were here to make me laugh at myself. To give me a perspective, an outlook other than days and days of drudgery and dreariness.

Soon -- soon, it will be five years since you went so far away.

On my mind this year as these anniversaries approach is the memory of stopping at the gas station on the way home from making your arrangements, and picking up the phone to call you at home and see if you wanted me to bring you anything.

It makes me shake; this memory.
More than that doctor saying "this is end stage"
More than begging you to stay awake and aware and surviving at least until our girls, already on their way, got to you to say good-bye.
More than my anger at your other daughter who was detached from your dying process. Maybe I was doing some detachment of my own there, too. But I admit, it still makes me shaking angry the way that all worked out. (And the way our daughters were treated at her funeral too few months later, but that's another story.)

Yes, I see myself reaching for my phone, sitting there at the gas pumps, telling whoever was with me that I needed to call -- and then I dropped the phone.

There was no one at home to call.
To bring food or drink to.
To just say "hey, I'm on my way."

At the time I laughed at myself, and got my gas and went home, but inside I was shaken.
And shaking.

And now, I'm still shaking, but I'm not laughing.

I'm crying.

I'm tired of shaking, and crying, and laughing instead of crying because it's all ridiculous.
I'm tired of no one and everyone.
I'm tired of doing and not getting done.
I'm tired of waking and afraid of sleep.

I'm tired of responsibilty and duty and sometimres I'm tired of loving people. Loving people is so binding and I want to be unbound.

But not alone.
Not completely alone.
I've had a teeny bit too much of that. (I still require/adore great big splats of intense privacy.)

I need you.
But there is no you.
Here.

Here is where I am.