“Just” the Sun

“What’s going on?” She sat up in bed and stared at the light hitting her bedroom window. Her radar was tuned to inner city streets, police searches and helicopters. “Huh?” But the dogs weren’t barking and the street was quiet. Shrugging, she snuggled back under the duvet and tried to go back to sleep, but something was really wrong. Waves of anxiety washed against her mind’s beach and receded as her consciousness labeled their absurdity. “No. Your mother’s ghost did NOT push you down in Colorado Springs. The city ISN’T haunted.”

“Could be,” answered her mind. “I’m not going back there. Every time I go up there, something happens. Torn Achilles tendon. Other stuff. Not fun.”

“Be that as it may,” began her mind in the voice of her Aunt Martha, “your mother’s ghost didn’t push you.”

“OK.” She began to wonder if her Super Ego wasn’t, maybe, her Aunt Martha. “Seems likely,” she thought. “Talk about ghosts.” She snuggled further down into the duvet. “That’s the sun,” she realized. “Not a police car. It’s morning. Another fucking morning.”

“That’s a good thing,” muttered her Super Ego. “Think of all the things you might do!”

She checked her shoulder to see how things were going in that area. Better. Whatever had sent it back into excruciating pain a week ago seemed to have receded like her mother’s ghost. Her foot? She wiggled her toes. Could be worse. She’d done a number on it on a walk with her dog a few days earlier. “I refuse even to THINK that cliché about growing old not being for sissies. No, no, no. Not thinking that. At least there’s a painting.” She thought for a few minutes about the last couple of years and all she had lost, all the world had lost. Millions of people. Five million people. “That’s almost twice the population of Denver,” she thought. “Two empty Denvers.” She thought of all the grieving people, that plus all the “ordinary” reasons to grieve. “So much has changed. Even the business of relating to people has changed. I think I’m tired of it.”

“Who wouldn’t be?” asked Aunt Martha in her head. “What took you so long!”

“You should know the answer to that,” she thought, remembering that woman, her circle of lady friends and the majority of her time alone, tending her garden and savoring solitude and freedom. “Maybe it didn’t change my life all that much.” She decided to get up. The day ahead of her might not be the best day of her life, but it was the one she had.

“None of us gets out of here alive,” her own mother’s voice echoed in her mind.

“No, mom, none of us do, but…” Her mom had found a way out, a creative and somewhat humorous way out, but still…

Later on that day, posting a photo of her new painting on Facebook, she saw her 95 year old amazing, inspiring friend Lilliana had posted a meme. She laughed.

Lilliana. God, what she’d lived through, the amazing, the beautiful, the terrifying, the harrowing, the fantastic. “SOME of us are better at life than others. Some of us keep wanting it. All the things you hated? ‘Art’s a dirty word in this house!’ Well, mom, you just didn’t know how good it is or how important, or how much a part of happiness it is for me.” She cleaned her brushes ahead of a new day that might be better.

https://ragtagcommunity.wordpress.com/2021/10/28/ragtag-daily-post-thursday-the-bedroom-window/