I want to thank Nancy for posting a link to my blog. I really appreciate everyone's comments and even just knowing that other people are reading my blog even if they don't comment. It gives me courage and the incentive to keep on writing. Here's some more.
April 24, 2005
Another week gone by in my life without Ashley, and somehow I’m managing fairly well. I feel guilty about that. I am resilient, and I view that as being negative somehow. It makes me feel like I am cold and heartless. I think about her often, though. Friday night I saw a Mahler concert with Zach and Sarah Melissa. Ashley played the violin for over ten years, and so I kept imagining seeing her up on stage in the orchestra. Then I started thinking about her upcoming college graduation and how difficult it is going to be walking up on stage to accept her diploma for her without her there. It’s really going to reinforce the fact that she’s not here anymore; that she’s not ANYwhere. I suppose someone could argue that she’s all around us all the time, but I just don’t see it that way, at least not right now I don’t. Her death hasn’t made me turn toward God or any kind of organized religion. Right now thinking about her death is too cold and stark a reality. I don’t see any way of glossing it over or trying to explain it, nor do I want to. Whenever I try to make sense of it, I end up back where I started from, and that is with no good explanation. What good is our ability to reason if we can’t come up with acceptable explanations? The problem there is that I rely on reason in life. Ashley is dead, but those words are meaningless. “Ashley is gone” resonates more deeply with me, but it makes it sound like a temporary situation. Maybe it is for all I know. The worst expression I heard in regard to her death was “Patient expired” spoken by a receptionist at UPenn Hospital where she had been seeing a specialist for a while. Milk expires, not people. Expire means something has gone bad that has been around for too long. People don’t expire. A lump rose in my throat, and I wondered if the woman on the other end of the line had ever experienced the loss of a loved one. She was so cool and detached, and while it pissed me off at the time, I can also appreciate her demeanor, because I can easily detach myself from just about any situation or feeling. I think that that is what has helped me get through some of the difficult times in life.
4 comments:
thank you, Please keep posting.
love-nancy
Dear Angelique,
Your writing is heart felt, beautiful, gut wrenching and brilliant. All of this is because what you write is the truth... the most difficult and tragic truth. Though it had been awhile since we had truly spent any time together Ashley was as genuine a person as you could ever know. I think she would be happy and inspired by your sense of truth and realism no matter how difficult. I can see her sly grin emerging when I read your writing when I feel she would be amused by your ability to interweave sadness and humor or irony and reality. Please do not be afraid. I have been attempting for weeks to write a comment that I felt would be supportive. However with worrying about comments, blog postings, term papers or diary entries, etc. the only thing that makes them real and worthwhile is the ability to tap into the truth. You, Angelique, hold this ability. Please continue writing. Please continue exploring the enormous emotional overload you are feeling. Please let us be apart of it... when you need us. Please know that the tears I shed are not just for the loss of a beautiful, young woman but for the emptiness we feel without her here. But her presence is here... each time I read your story. Each time you delve deeper. Let it come to you when it may... write when you feel you can... when you must. I admire you. I love you. Take care. -K
Thank you so much for your comment, Kate. It really means a lot to me.
-A
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