Mourning Has Broken
Mourning the loss of Lucy comes on suddenly when it comes.
I had an ultrasound this morning and thought, “Ooh I’ll stop by the restaurant next door to the apartment I used to live in; the place with the pancake balls and the sweet & spicy bacon and the bottles of Mexican Coke I always used to get, and I’ll grab some breakfast and I’ll go home to start work.”
And I ordered it online (along with lunch for later). And I drove to it. And I parked in their small parking lot. And now I’m facing the side of the place where I used to live. Where I saved up a little to eventually buy a house. Where I drank alcohol. Often. A lot of it. Where Bonsai would escape from the backyard and I’d have to rush to find her, in the snow and running late for work, cursing the absent and careless property manager the whole time. And where Lucy was scared to go down the back stairs at first because the lighting wasn’t good and it was basically a shitty, shitty apartment.
And I’m crying.
The word “miss” is way too fucking benign and weak to describe what I feel from losing Lucy. It remains the deepest , most unforgiving, intimate and foreign sense of loss and pain that I’ve ever experienced. It is to suffer. This is what it is to suffer.
A family friend called Lucy my soul mate when she wished condolences.
She wasn’t wrong.
She wasn’t wrong at all.