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Its been a month since our last conversation. I've salvaged bits and pieces of your life from the chaos you left in your passing - small evidence of you in flowered boxes, curling pictures and jaundiced paper - but the wreckage in my heart overwhelms me. Questions echo unanswered. Why did you keep in chronological order the newpaper trail of my classmate's trial and conviction of murder - yet the copy of my first published article archived in a box of urine yellowed bills in the back of your closet? In your last days - why was your independence more precious than a little more time to spend with a daughter who only wanted to make your life a little easier. Did you fight me every moment because you could not bring yourself to simply love me? In these moments I remember your anger - but not your love. Did it hurt your heart to consider that I would be waiting in your future as your voice, your legacy and the only way the world would know you once you left it would be through me? How do I reconcile your truth and mine? I choose to love you.
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It was the summer of 79 and my bestie sat, feet tucked beneath her on the couch as her hand rested lightly on the cassette player. "I want you to hear this" she said as she pressed play. And I listened with every fiber of my being, to the song but more to my bestie as she sang along quietly. In that moment as we sought respite from the midday desert heat - a single song repeated - and something deep in my soul awakened. Fast forward a couple years and I'm a zealot for words and music - a decade or two and I crave the story - the novel - a trilogy perhaps before this moment now where I find myself broken and weary - not from life played out - but more from being held hostage by my own inability to press play...
I am saddened by the passing of Olivia as she sang so many songs that are the soundtrack in my heart, but her passing was breath over ashes. There are still songs unsung, stories untold, words uncommitted to paper. Olivia was an inspiration - but I am reminded it was you, Terry Bird and you Laurie Ann Smith and you Susan Guess Burgess and Buffi, you inhabit my words - you are the heros in my stories and you are always in my heart. Press play ladies. PRESS PLAY! I used to be a "morning" person. The quiet hours before sunlight burns and the world accelerates were when I was most creative. Since 2016 - mornings have become problematic. And in the past few weeks? They're next to impossible. Everyone processes trauma differently and trauma itself is subjective. I miss my mom, but even more I miss what could have been. And I struggle to not be overwhelmed by the physical wreckage left in her wake. There is a part of me that wants to walk away from all of it. To get in the car and put a state or two in my rear view mirror. To find a quiet place, lock myself in a room with a view and write until I cannot write anymore. Adulting at this level simply sucks. And running multiple concurrent emotions through the brain - that sucks too.
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TL BOehmDo people blog anymore or is it just me? Archives
January 2023
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