10:00 p.m. - 04/15/03
(.an unexpected song.)
I went crazy that day, you know. That night. That night when Sara called, and my mom was all over me saying, �Are you getting bad news?� until my waving and someone else�s hand pulled her away. Pulled her away so I could just hear what I was being told. But I couldn�t hear it, even when she gave me the space to. I told Sara I couldn�t talk, but I didn�t know to say I couldn�t hear. After I hung up the phone, I told my family, and Marybeth, who was around for the holidays, that my roommate, my dear friend, this amazing woman-becoming Tracy, had died. They asked questions, and I answered what I could. Then, unable to take their care and concern anymore, I went to my room, which was still downstairs then, and I started rooting through everything I had, so much of it still unpacked. Still stored from New York and from Rogers. I looked through all my things, two, three times. I couldn�t find her picture. Eventually, Sarah helped me look, but I was the one who found it. I was the one who put it up with a candle, and my construction paper-and-yarn necklace that says, �My worth is not weighed in pounds� � the one I made to wear in solidarity, after Dave told her to make one. I lit the candle thinking it would help her be safe, even though in the back of my head, I kept thinking, �It�s been days. She�s been gone days, and there�s nothing for this candle to do�� I went to bed early, and I turned on my stereo, and I listened to Trying by Lifehouse over and over and over again, and I thought about her; I loved her, I grieved her. The night got darker, and I started to think about what it meant, mentally, and I realized it was impossible. It wasn�t possible that she was gone, that Sara had meant Tracy when she said that name. She must have meant someone else, some other person, some other Tracy that I didn�t know too well. She must have meant anyone else. I went to bed thinking, �I�ll call her tomorrow and tell her what I, for a second, so crazily thought she meant. And she�ll be shocked, and she�ll confirm that that�s impossible. It�s not possible.� And then I�d start crying again because impossible things- like a girl so vibrant with life she draws your eye, dying before she graduated high school from a disease she didn�t want to have- impossible things like those keep happening. And they scare you, and they make you think the whole world is unstable now, or it never was to begin with�And your view of everything, absolutely everything, changes. You have to reacquaint yourself with God and life and her and you. I had to get to know myself again. Because the world didn�t stop to love her, to show how unfair this was. Life refused to do anything but go on, and what sort of horrible injustice was that when it had refused to do so with the one person who really deserved and needed it. How unfair was it that nothing else quit, nothing else even rested, the entire universe just picked right up again�when she was gone forever? I got reacquainted with forever, too.
You know, if someone told me she was gone, I would still say, �That�s impossible. You�re crazy; I heard wrong.� It�ll be sixteen months, and I�m still saying that. Because one time, in my loft, she played a joke on me, and I laughed before I could question whether or not it was possible for someone I couldn�t see to play a joke. Because when I talk to her, I don�t feel like I�m talking to myself, or daydreaming, or preparing for a conversation. I feel like I�m having one. And maybe that�s just a na�ve trick I play to keep myself alive, but it does that much. It keeps her alive, too. I lost my roommate, and I have her close as ever now. She goes through my heart*�
And I�m honored- honestly- by that.
chord
*here
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