Death Sucks.

.....Last night I got an e-mail telling me that a mutual friend had been diagnosed with a terminal cancer. This person was not someone I knew real well, but I had worked and played around them in the past, so there was still a connection there. I started thinking about it and then Master Julian's passing and all of a sudden I was transported back to Labor Day weekend, 2000.

.....September Crown. I had just finished loading all the gear into the car. Bjorn was due over in a little bit to help take the rest of the stuff to site. The phone rang. I had been expecting it. Dianne had gone to the hospital the day before and I told her to try and catch me before I headed to site (if she was awake). She had been going to the hospital off and on for months. The spots in her lungs affected her breathing from time to time and she would go in for a few days for breathing treatments and then come home. I didn't give any more thought to it than that and expected her to come out to site sometime that weekend at least for a few hours.

.....When I picked up the phone it was her, but she sounded different. Something was up. She told me that she was going to stay in the hospital another couple of days. All of a sudden I KNEW. This was it. She wasn't coming home. That knowledge hit hard, very hard. I was stunned. She kept talking but I wasn't hearing what she was saying. And all of a sudden I started crying, hard. I don't do that very often, it just isn't something I feel comfortable doing. But I was crying uncontrollably.

.....But Dianne, being who she is, knew what to say. She kept her calm. She talked me through it. she consoled me and told me that everything would be O.K. No tears whatsoever. I reached a point where I just became numb. When she realized that I had calmed down and that I wasn't really hearing what she was saying at all anymore, she told me to get my stuff out to site and set up before it became dark. By that time I was seriously just numb. I barely remember what I said. I hung up and started out the door. Bjorn showed up at that time. I don't remember saying anything at all as we loaded the truck up and then went out to site.

.....I set up the pavilion, headed home and just went to bed. All of it in sort of a zombie like state. My mind just shut down on me. The next morning I went to the hospital. By that time she was pumped full of drugs and wasn't conscious any more. For the next 48 hours I sat vigil around the bed as the remainder of her family gathered. Late on Sunday she passed away.

.....I went home and just sat and stared at the wall for the next eight hours or so. I didn't want to break down again and worked hard at it. After that it started slowly getting easier to deal and life went on. But every now and then it hits, the remembrance of those days. In some ways it's just as strong now as it was then. For a time I tried to block it out and just not think of it. But I realized finally that it was much easier if I let myself live through the feelings and emotions and if I just got through it the feelings evened out a lot faster.

.....I miss Dianne terribly sometimes. I could never define the relationship. Sometimes we were just roommates. Sometimes we were partners. One time I even asked her to marry me (she laughed at that and told me to go away). You never really get over some things. It's really a bad cliche, but a true statement. I like very much to think though that she's out there watching me. Laughing at all the stupid things I do and say sometimes. She would have been very proud of me for the weight loss. She would have crowed like a rooster when I admitted into the Pelicans. She was a very good person.

.....with Love, Arontius.