and they lived happily, ever after

shortly after my friend, lorraine, died last winter, i looked at my Beloved and i realized that if this was my happily ever after, it was headed toward a very bad end.

one of us was going to have to die first.

the loss of my friend and the realization that either i was going to have to experience an ever more terrible loss, or Beloved was, sent me spiralling into a nine-day depression. i remember the day the gray cloud descended, i remember the moment i felt it lift.

i was in the bathtub, crying my eyes out not just because i'd lost my best friend, but because i also faced the inevitable loss of the best friend i had left. for nine days the Reality of The End wrapped itself around me like an iron shroud.

if all love ends in loss...why bother to love at all?

and then i heard lorraine say, clear as a bell: STOP CRYING.

lorraine, i remember i sniffed. is that you? i whispered.

it was her.

suffice to say that my experience was sufficient to pierce that suffocating night. i climbed out of the tub much more at peace. the depression lifted... i was able to allow a new clearer day to dawn.

but what i carry forward from that nine-day walk into the Valley of the Shadow of Death, like a sharp pebble stuck in the bottom of my shoe, is the bittersweet awareness that each day, each season, each life... inevitably ends.

and furthermore, the war must end. blessed be.
nanowrimo word count: 17,645/50,000