supplicium post mortem

Those of you who follow me on Twitter will be sick to the back teeth by now of hearing about the great bookcase cleaning-and-reorganization of 2009. I was so physically exhausted yesterday that my legs and arms were trembling. Some of this was the exertion of assembling, moving, and improvisationally securing to wall of the newest overflow bookcase. But otherwise it was a day filled with lifting, reaching, humping, etc. The rule for the day was to finish everything I started, on the spot. I have a deep-seated habit of leaving things almost-done. I’m trying to retrain myself.

I never listen to the radio except in the car, but yesterday I put on WCBS FM and was treated to great music from “the sixties, seventies, and eighties.” The music plus the work took me back to all the move-packing I did in high-school and college, as well as memories of moving into my current home at age 24. I made myself throw away M’s scratched plastic sunglasses (which resided on the bookcase), and this only enhanced the sensation of living some past identity. I really do not want to go back to my 20′s, to that person whose “family” was my mom, brother & sister, dad & stepmother. You could not pay me enough money to relive ages 15-25. Yet here I am, as aimless as I was then, but with more responsibilities. Actually, I had more aim then. I was going to be a famous theater director. Then I was going to be a famous writer. The fact that these are no longer my aims does not translate to failure in my mind, but success – in escaping the grip of my childhood worship of Accomplishment. Today what I want is the Real Deal in my personal life, a family of my own, a vibrant spiritual life, and the space and permission to write all the books that are in me. To be honest, I wouldn’t mind being a famous writer, but the best kind of famous for me would be 1) making sufficient money from it; 2) being known and respected enough to be asked to read and speak places; 3) being known and respected enough not to have to shop my  projects around. I would not want to be famous like, say, Neil Gaimon and have a frantic, celebrity life that required an assistant. I would never want to be famous enough to have the media pry into my personal life.

The bookcase reorg. project had begun months ago, but yesterday I woke up to find that TL had written on the board, “Wednesday is Procrastination Busting Day.” Oh, brother. To hear her tell it, if you quit procrastinating, things take a lot less time than you feared. In reality, the bookcases took a lot longer than I feared, which – Newsflash TL! – is why I procrastinate in the first place. But here’s the kicker: I’m in the shower at 9.30 pm after 13 hours of work, hardly able to stand up (pity party!), and there’s this voice saying, Ok but you still haven’t made any progress with the book project (a typesetting job that has nothing to do with the bookcase reorg). And as much as cdm would like to whine and say this voice belongs to TL, it really doesn’t. In reality TL was saying: Well done, Casey. Things look great. You worked so hard today and I’m very impressed with your determination. Ice-cream tomorrow! Casey did not hear this, however. Casey only heard: You’re still not doing enough. It was this same, sinister voice, I suspect, that panicked us as we tried to fall asleep with worries about what on earth we will do when one day we have to pack up this whole house and move somewhere else.

RP and M were onto this demon, and managed Casey with it in mind. Hence rules #2 and #3. Casey’s four rules, by the way:

1. Be honest about feelings and needs.
2. Be kind to yourself.
3. Do what you want, not what you should.
4. Ask other people what they feel, don’t decide things for them.

Yesterday, I was capable of identifying that demon, intellectually rejecting the way it wanted to poison a day’s hard work, but I wasn’t able to dispute with it vigorously, as RP could. I had no sword, no chariot, no bow. I had no one valiant on my side.

I did come across some very old dockets. I think these were something M produced before we got the docket book. They date from the first autumn of his residence here in Gotham, my first as a full-time teacher. What they were doing tucked away in the memoir of a neurosurgeon, I have no idea. Seeing his handwriting, even only his initials, is worse even than seeing his photograph. Why should his writing persist when he can’t? Clearly, I am nowhere near being ready to tackle the Basement Reorg. or the Man-closet Cleanout.

The last docket appears to have been issued by a choleric and muddled member of staff at St. Mary’s. Click to see the back. I don’t remember the story behind this one, but I think RP ended the escalating drama by informing Casey he’d called Miss K, sorted her out, and would now be sorting Casey out, ha ha. I like his little “as discussed” on the back.  November 6, 1996 looks to have been a train-wreck of a day. Eventually, RP stopped biting at things like a pile of dockets and just did what was required to stop the downward spiral. Sigh.

Miss Lincoln is in one of her moods. I call it The Procrastination Buster. Hold on tight, kids, this is going to hurt.

One thing you should know about Miss Lincoln if you don’t already is that she loves to see people busy. Marky used to make jokes about running and hiding when she got out her clipboard and colored pencils, but IT’S NO JOKE! You can prolly guess that she hasn’t been happy with my “progress” this summer, meaning, I guess, stuff I’ve got done. The thing she’s really mad about is how I’m making practically no progress on my summer book project. But, this is because 1) life’s too sad! and 2) I’ve got too much else to do!!

She’s been grumbling for a while now about “dealing with” my “procrastination.” OK, first, like I keep telling her, I’m not avoiding stuff, I just haven’t got to it yet. Second, she never deals with anything the way she and RP used to deal with things. She Moans at you, and Looks at you, and Talks to you, and then she gets all energetic and Makes You Do Stuff, lots of stuff, all at once.

Take today. We had to Get Up At A Reasonable Hour (read “before 6:30″) so there was time to do writing before taking the dogs to the park and being ready for the cable man to come at 8. Then, when he was here, in addition to me helping him and keeping the dog from attacking him and putting the air-conditioner back together after him, TL decides this is the day to bottle and re-brew the kombucha. She says I have to because it’s my project and my idea. This also entails making another fruit-fly trap. Later on there’s a transatlantic call booked, and then there’s three hours of lessons. Then it’s walk the dogs again.

before

But this is still not enough, oh no, because it’s only 6.00 and there’s hours of productivity left in the day. So TL decides it’s also the day to make the sourdough bread, which she also makes me do because I’m the one who’s in charge of the sourdough starter. And then, at 7.00, she makes me go out in the yard like some kind of orphan girl and start weeding the jungle that used to be the garden, and she doesn’t let me come in until it’s dark, and even then she tells me I have to finish it in the morning.

after

No sooner do I step in the door than she makes me strip and get in the shower and wash and scrub with a brush and all that. I asked her what the point was since I’d just get dirty again in the morning. She said I should watch my tone if I wanted internet time tonight. So I shut up.

around the tomatoes

So now it’s 8.30 and me & the dogs are just getting dinner and to top it all off she remarks, in an oh-yeah kind of way, that she sees I still haven’t made any more progress on the book project. And don’t get me started on her theory about why the garden turned into a jungle in the first place. Hint: not because of all the rain! You can never please GUs!!

I miss Marky. It’s not fair having to do chores by yourself. I don’t want my procrastination busted by TL. I hate her. I hate her even more because she’s not mean like she used to be, but she’s mean in a whole new, modern, long-suffering stupid way. Boo, double boo, ten thousand boo. And poor me while we’re at it.

p.s. I’m making chocolate chip cookies and I don’t care what she sez!!
p.p.s. When I showed her where my hands got all cut up in the garden, she sez: “I told you to wear gloves.” And NOW she’s making me take out the trash. BOO!!!

The Rector had dug up a friend of Uncle Maurice, but after ten minutes with Mr. “Call-Me-Frank” Carson, Casey knew that her godfather could never have liked the man. Call-Me-Frank worked in “the arts”, wore a turquoise necktie, and certainly played for Uncle Maurice’s team. He was probably one of those tragic, bearded hangers-on Uncle Maurice always described so witheringly.

After a headache-inducing lunch and three improving hours in the museum, Casey thought she’d faint from the strain of politeness. Every ironic remark eluded Call-Me-Frank. Her attempt at wandering off only elicited suffocating concern and his sweaty palms cupping her cheeks. At least they’d hitched onto a tour led by a fanciable young man, the kind Maurice would have had eating out of his hand in five minutes. Call-Me-Frank was standing embarrassingly close to the guide and showing off with words like “hagiography,”  “polemics,” and “problematize.”

She wanted to rip the ugly paintings off the wall and kick them in. She wanted to show off her age-inappropriate vocabulary and embarrass Call-Me-Frank into the ground. She wanted to punch people.

Uncle Maurice would have let her walk a knife-edge of cheek all day, then afterwards put her across his knee, firmly but genially. There would be ice-cream. Her father always criticized Uncle Maurice for “swanning off” to his next destination. She thought she’d suffer a month of Call-Me-Franks if it would make Uncle Maurice swan back.

She hated people. All people. They didn’t swan. They didn’t do anything at all.

Read other folks writing this week:

• Travis King
• Rafi
• rayne
• PapaTomLA
• and vanimp

I knew it was a bad idea and that I shouldn’t do it. But I did it anyway. I opened up the drawer in my study labeled “others”. Inside this drawer are a few things – things that were once in use. A few (not all) of Casey’s exercise books; her pencil box; the docket book; in the back you can see a packet of cigarettes. (Click on these thumbnails, btw, for the full images.)

The pencil box was used mostly for formal school occasions, and it looks like it hasn’t been properly used since we went to Mr. Penn’s the second time. You can see the fake cockroach (realistic when you come across it!) and the caps & snapper for the exploding book trick, among other items. The Wall Drug badge was from our cross-country road/camping trip the summer he moved here. We tied the wolfhound up to the hitching posts outside, ha ha. If you’ve never been to Wall Drug, you’re missing something.

Here’s a sample page from the carbon docket book. Actually, the dockets were mainly written by people from St. Mary’s or St. Boniface’s (where Casey and Mark went when first at Home School). RP or TL would deal with them. This one was written by Casey’s form teacher, Mrs. Denner, who was no-nonsense but had a sense of humor. There are at least two other nail varnish offenses in the book. Dockets fell out of use after a while, but in the early years of being together, they were a handy way to ask for a scene. It also helped me transfer and deal with some of the frustrations of my RW day as a teacher, most especially how very boring and hard it was to have to be a grown-up all day long.

Elsewhere there are folders with notes and stuff to/from Marky, Casey, TL, RP etc. None were ever thrown away. I am nowhere near ready even to think about finding them. Unfortunately for me, there was a card in this drawer from Mr. Prior to Casey. Unfortunately for me, I opened it. There was his own handwriting (so how can he really not be anywhere??). It appears to be in response to a letter from Casey herself, I’m guessing one of the times she decided she seriously wanted to leave Home School, that Mr. Prior was super nice but had loads more important kids to look after, and in this case that she really didn’t deserve the tickets to The Sound of Music RP had given her for her birthday so he should really take Ruth instead. [one of the Others, kid at Home School] This kind of sentiment appeared periodically and can best be understood as extreme attachment made anxious either by his need to travel or by Casey’s jealousy towards RPK. (Ironic because they later became very close, a story for another post.) Here it the card:

And here is what it says:

October 11, 1998

My Dear Casey:

I’ve been saving up this card to send to someone in a farawy place, and this seemed the perfect opportunity to use it.

Thank you for your note. The night is always darkest as the dawn begins to break. You may of course leave Home School but you’re right – it will take a long while to arrange. In the meantime you should, I think, carry on trying to do your book, and you should certainly not surrender your ‘Sound of Music’ tickets. They’re yours, you deserve them, you jolly well take Ruth!

Often in our lives, things seem hopeless and despairing. Ask for help – from other people, from within yourself, from God. But don’t stop the search. You will find the courage, and the answer. I know that, and believe it as strongly as I love you.

Your wishes will be honored, and I won’t try to talk you out of this. But I don’t agree with it and I certainly don’t regard it as a done deal. I would like to talk to you. You know where I am, and you know, in your heart, how deeply and powerfully I feel for you. You have the light and the voice of God within you. Look, and listen. Create space and time for yourself, and only do when you are sure that what you have seen and heard is Right.

I love you, my little one. I know you’ll be true to yourself.

RP

I wish, I wish it were that simple now.

The wind blew from the golf course across her pink bedroom as Bad Timmy faced a disgruntled Father in the piano room.

“Casey?”

She jumped and, heart pounding, peeked around her dollhouse to see a man, wearing a tweed jacket. His furrowed brow softened.

“You look like your picture,” he said, his voice a tenderness she had never known.

“Who are you?”

“You can call me Mr. Prior. We haven’t much time.” He beckoned to her. She dropped Bad Timmy and emerged from behind the dollhouse, smoothing her grey linen Little House on the Prairie dress.

“A fondness for costumes already, I see. What were you doing back there?”

She blushed, thinking of Timmy’s impending spanking. “Nothing.”

Suddenly, he stood before her, cupping her face in his hands. “Naughty,” he admonished.

“I’m not! I’m good!” Her heart thudded with a sudden air of emergency.

“Nice, Casey, isn’t the same as good.”

“I’m not bad!”

“You just fibbed to me, didn’t you?”

Fear hovered. She didn’t even know this man, yet she dreaded him thinking her bad.

“And did you have permission to take that Twinkie from the bread box…? I thought not.” He put his arm around her and hugged her hard. His jacket blew backwards as if tugged by strings. “I’ll be back,” he said. “You won’t always be alone.”

She grasped him without knowing why. He was fading – melting? – now almost gone, his English voice a whisper in her ears: “Tell the truth, little Casey…always love…”

Apologies to Audrey Niffenegger for this one. I was in mind of her Time Traveler’s Wife. The picture Mr. Prior refers to is currently my Twitter icon.

Check out other stories from this week:

• vanimp
  
• Thursday’s Child
  
• PapaTomLA
• swimnaked

- You won’t ever call me Sunshine, or anything barfy like that, will you?

- Never.

- What will you call me?

- It rather depends, doesn’t it?

- What if I’m wearing this?

- Then, young lady, you can go straight across my knee.

- And what about this?

- I’d have to call you Miss then, wouldn’t I?

- It would be wise. And this?

- Ooh, mean babysitter – Miss?

- I think that would be Sir.

- In that skirt?

- She watches Battlestar Gallactica.

- Geek, then.

- Not to her face, unless you want some of this.

- Ah! Sir. Sir! Yes, sir!

- Better. What about when I’m wearing this?

- Only Aunt Amelia would wear that, and it’s always best to agree with her. Now this quite interests me, especially with these underneath.

- What would you call me then?

- Put it on and we’ll see.

- Well?

- Oh…you, boy, are the most impertinent fourth former it has ever been my misfortune to know. You can touch your toes for the cane right now.

- Right now?

- Right now.

- Ah!

- Hold still…right, now get those off. I’m going to have to fuck you.

- Isn’t buggery wicked?

- Very wicked. But you can’t expect me to resist, with a bottom like that, and such straight marks.

- Not that you’re modest.

- Quiet, boy.

- Come here, you. Here.

- Mmm…

- Slower…Here…What will you call me now?

- Darling.

- Don’t go away again. Promise. Promise.

- Oh, sweetheart, as long as I live. As long as I live.

The Rectory garden conveyed English lushness. Wild plants dominated, things that liked the setting and could thrive without tending: a large willow, birches, mint, chives, wild roses, and swathes of flowers Casey couldn’t name. It was her kind of garden, much more than the so-called backyard where Mark had written in wet cement MH4CDM. At the Rectory she was left largely to her own devices; she should rejoice in that, after years of complaining about over-supervision. One babysitter, in particular, delighted in whacking Marky, half-challenge, half-blackmail: “Twelve with this,” she’d say, brandishing something unexpected, “or I’ll tell Miss Lincoln what you did, and I’ll tell everyone else you were scared.” Marky never shirked a dare. Casey always liked that babysitter.

There was nothing unhappy in the Rector’s garden. It was almost summer. Life continued. The dogs lay at her feet, content after ball and breakfast.

That morning she had opened the cupboard where Mr. Prior’s tweed jacket hung. Inside one pocket, a note in her own hand from the old days. He’d made her write how she was feeling. She’d talked about wanting desperately to see him, but being afraid to get too close, in case he went away again.

All that as distant and imaginary now as a hippogriff, yet as soft and as mighty, too. The garden lived, rampant, but she could only think of the clothes in the closet – Marky’s, RP’s – as if they could be made, with touch, to come to life again.

Check out other stories from this week:

• Thursday’s Child
  
• Rafi’s World
• PapaTomLA

Was I ever married, or was it all a brief, tender, perfect dream that I woke up from a year ago, this hour?

He woke up as usual that morning. He hadn’t been feeling well for a few days – chest pains. We’d been to the ER four days previous, and they had cleared him on every count. He worked out 7 days a week. He looked fine, they said. It was probably costochondritis, a painful but harmless inflammation of chest cartilage that would go away on its own. He was frustrated at being restricted from full workouts by the pain. He was frustrated that it interfered with wanking while sitting up. He was cranky. That morning, I got up after he did and approached him in the kitchen, me groggy, he dressed for work. “Don’t be anxious,” he told me, putting his arms around me and embracing me. I felt his green scratchy sweater and smelled his aftershave. He was having lunch out, he told me, so he might not want much dinner. It was an annual lunch he had with two colleagues at which they celebrated their AA birthdays, the anniversaries of their sobriety. He was sixteen.

“All this,” he told me, meaning, I supposed, his general mood, “is just getting used to what can’t be changed.” I can’t remember his exact words, but that was approximately it. We kissed each other goodbye, and off he went to work.

I talked on the phone to my mother that morning, complaining about what a terrible patient he was, how you couldn’t tell him anything, how annoyed he got when you fussed over him. I was trying to detach.

I was expecting a student at noon. At 11:25 the phone rang. It was his gym. He’s passed out while exercising, they said. He was in an ambulance headed to the hospital. I hung up, called my student’s mother to cancel, said I thought it probably wasn’t serious. He had costochondritis, I told her. He’d over-done it exercising. I wasn’t having it any more.

The subway to the hospital took a long time. I got there around 12:30. There was a lot of confusion at the desk. He wasn’t there. Hadn’t been there. I eventually got the ambulance on the phone. They’d taken him to another hospital. I got in a cab and in a few minutes, was there.

Inside, they let me go right back, as if they knew who I was. A guy shook my hand and introduced himself, a social worker. He took me into a tiny room with two chairs and a side table. He told me to wait. My heart started to beat hard, deep, fast. Why would I be greeted by a social worker? That was bad, right? But it couldn’t be that bad.

The social worker came back, but he wouldn’t tell me what was going on. I asked if M was dead, and he didn’t give me a yes or no answer. Shortly, the surgeon came out, and after some verbiage describing what they’d tried, said, “I’m very sorry your husband has passed away.”

I wasn’t the kind of person whose husband passed away. I used, often, to fear he’d die, usually in a plane crash. Sometimes I’d dream he had died, but when I woke up, he was there, most merciful reprieve. Whenever I went out – to a friend’s play, to a party, to a family gathering – I always felt such relief that we had our life to come home to. This was the real reality – him and me and our dogs and our apartment and Casey and Mark and RP and TL and the others. The world was just so much noise, not a real thing. My family I loved, but this was the new family. We were making the new family. We were trying to have children, too. The old, sad, long life was over; the new life was underway. At our wedding, and in a print over our bed:

Rise up, my love, my fair one
And come away!
For lo, the winter is past, the rain is over and done
The voice of the turtle is heard in the land

I had never dated. I would never have to date – thank God, I thought. I never wanted to date. He was flawed, terribly flawed, and so was I, but I didn’t want anyone else. When I would dream of the end of the world – a nuclear bomb, say – I would, in that dream, only want to get home to him, to be with him to the end.

Imagine a giant eraser wiping away the present and the future.

In the emergency room, he had a tube in his mouth, but he looked just like himself. He looked like he looked asleep beside me in bed. I’d never seen a dead body before. I touched him. He was still warm.

I wasn’t crying, not yet, but when I tried to dial the phone to call someone (the church, my mother, my sister), my fingers were trembling too much. This, I thought, was curious. Did I ask a nurse to dial for me? Or did I just redial until I managed it?

By 11pm that night, my whole family was in my apartment, some from as far away as California. My mother made toast and tried to get me to eat it. I took a bite, but it was like dust in my mouth. I sat on my dog’s bed with her and fed her the rest of the toast. My sister slept in my bed with me that night. I took one of M’s sleeping pills and crashed. In the morning, I got up before everyone else and walked the dogs, sobbing in the sunshine, praying with every breath for help. On the way home, part of the sidewalk had just been redone. Barely dry, some of it covered over, but right in the middle: Love from marky.

Back at home I got in the shower and suddenly fell on the floor, water pounding over me with the realization: RP is dead, too. What about Casey? Funny how you don’t realize everything at once.

It’s 365 days later. They say a year brings relief. It’s an ancient prayer practice, the Year’s Mind. They say it’s easier, having lived through every day of the year without them.

It isn’t easier.

Was I ever married, or was it all just a wonderful dream I woke up from a year ago this day?

His office door opened with a skeleton key. Inside, dark wood paneling, lead-paned windows, plenty of room to swing a cane. Corridor stone, cool, bringing music and the lingering remnants of incense.

His study at home opened to a knock, dark-wooden floorboards, maroon wallpaper, leather couch chosen for its arm, which could be bent over. Wood everywhere: desk, bookcase, file cabinet (one drawer holding a slipper), hat-stand with canes, prie-dieu, and cross.

He usually dealt with Casey across his knee on that couch. When he wanted to make a point, he’d unbutton his shirt-cuff and roll up his sleeve, to show he was ready for strenuous punishment. The last time he dealt with her, she was across his knee and the door opened, revealing the darkened guest-bedroom. He stood her up and strode to the door:

“Matthew, what is it?… Not now.”

Matthew was six, one of The Others, those people who lived with us, though not corporeally. They’d never opened doors before.

He walked the dogs every morning except Sundays. He took charge of the garden. He carried things up the rickety basement steps. He did the grilling. He signed Casey’s permission slips. He put her across his knee. He snored.

The last morning he hugged me and said, “Don’t be anxious.”

At the interment, his voice in my head, overpowering everything else, saying, “Take care of little Casey. Take care of little Casey.” Over and over, his voice so close, so tender, so alive.

Check out other FFF entries from this week:

• PapaTomLA

Warning: self-pity within…!

I had a dream in which I was being called on to tutor a girl who had huge learning disabilities. She was borderline retarded, I was told. I agreed to meet her and see if I could help; they were desperate, and rich.

The dad was intense, worried, a little over-controlling. The girl, over-fixated upon but interesting, was not as dull as I expected. In fact, there was intelligence there. She seemed able to learn, but she said her memory was the problem. She could remember practically nothing. I probed this. Did she mean like Alzheimer’s, short and long term memory loss, like she wouldn’t remember this conversation? Or was it like she didn’t have a place to put information and so she couldn’t access it? Our session was short but we connected and I think she felt some hope.

When I came for session #2, her father told me gravely that Wayne had been. I was given to understand that “Wayne” was a brutal internal critic which had emerged from her consciousness and emotionally battered her for daring to have hope and imaging escaping her useless state. I understood at once, I thought, and went in to see how she was doing. She was shaken, and while we were talking, Wayne appeared in her. He was scary, sadistic, violent, and powerful. I told him/her that I knew exactly what was going on, that I knew what it was to be more than one person, that I wasn’t intimidated or confused. Wayne got violent and tried to tie me up with electrical wire, but I wrestled him/her to the bed and sat astride them. I’m more than one person, too! I yelled, You’ve messed with the wrong tutor! I was determined to help this girl by helping her defeat Wayne. But, she, as Wayne, was dangerous and even pulled a knife on me, albeit a paring knife. Was I underestimating Wayne? And was this actually severe MPD and not, as with me, a playful expression of different parts of the personality?

Later, I talked with her father, who was very disturbed at the violent turn. He was leaning towards institutionalizing her. Also, he was disturbed that I’d been so forceful with her. Wasn’t that abuse? he wondered. I tried to explain: 1) She was relieved by my forcefulness; 2) If I was forceful, it was with Wayne, not her.

Later, she mentioned yet another person, Mrs. M-something alliterative. I was like, Oh brother. But then I realized, hey, this Mrs. M can maybe be called in to fight Wayne. The dream ended before we sorted out whether I was going to work with this girl, when, and for how much.

I recount this dream because it was toying with the border between play/the others and insanity. It reminded me how peculiar it is to maintain a living relationship with Casey when there is no one to play with her. And yet, I can’t exactly give it up and pretend that she doesn’t exists, or that she’s irrelevant and has no place in my life. But it’s pretty impossible to play with her on my own. I’ve actually taken to speaking out loud to her sometimes, as if she’s there beside me – not just talking to her in my head and saying, Casey go to bed! In December we were driving upstate, or rather I was driving, she was in the passenger seat, and the dogs were in the back. I told her, actually out loud, that if there was any possible way for me to deal with her, to put her across my knee and settle her down, I would. Believe me, I would! Plus, she had desperately needed That Thing for days (due to prescription Codine for shingles), but neither of us could quite face the whole shebang. It was just too grievous.

Will he really never ever come back and take care of her? No matter how long I wait and how much I apologize or cry or change or whatever it takes?? It’s a lie, obviously, that you can accomplish whatever you want if you want it hard enough and try hard enough. Even this wish, lodged in the heart of God, will never ever be answered. Nothing can bring people back from the grave. Even people who are part of you and are absolutely indispensable and who go without any warning much, much, much too soon. I don’t want to be this person, this bereaved person whose life is over, but it feels like there isn’t anything for me in this world, nothing real.

God, do you have any ideas for me, about me? I hope you’re working on them double time. Let me tell you, I do not want to be a slave – and by that I mean I someone who snatches bits of nourishment here and there while I fulfill my “purpose” which is to help others while having nothing worthwhile for myself. I want to be the protagonist and I want a good thing! And a really good thing, the real deal, like you gave me the first time, and now, soon, before I get old and defeated. And, Lord, if you can’t send someone to look after Casey, properly, then could you kill her, too, and take her away to be with you and Marky and RP and Uncle Maurice and M, who love her. But please, don’t take her because if you did, you’d take me, the heart of me, and I’d be this tedious shell of responsibility and grown-up-ness and reasonableness and I’d never write anything worthwhile again and I’d become really invisible and there would really be no purpose.

So, OK, I see that and I don’t really want you to take Casey away. But listen: Casey is orphaned, bereaved and orphaned, and she has only this pro tem guardian – me – who can’t do anything with her. Please send her the perfect person. Please have pity on us. Stat.