Everything she ever said

Sunday December 3, 2017

I know I should write down everything that happened and everything that is happening. I don’t really know what’s happening though. One day, there was Tam, and now there is no Tam. Except, now everything is Tam, and I barely feel like Tiff without her. I talk to her in my head. I look for signs from the dead. I miss her. And yet, everything in me is now her.

I wake up in the middle of the night with pressure to write. I hear her telling me to write Tiff write don’t hide all that stuff away for too long you have to write Tiff write don’t hide all that stuff away for too long it’s really important that you write that you get your stuff out into the world that you write it all down that you say what needs to be said that you tell your truths that you write Tiff write because no one can say it like you no one can see it like you your voice is needed you have to write Tiff write

Everything she ever said…a phrase that haunted me a few nights ago. Everything she ever said…something that started haunting me a few nights ago. Haunted…

I am now haunted.

Every night and every day. By words and memories and by my new muse. I was her muse in life and she is my muse in death. My muse is deceased. I barely know what is powering my fingers, what is pushing these words forth; my eyes are so filled with sadness, my heart is heavy, and flushing red again…it’s been so many years since I felt that…since I felt so convicted. My calling is screaming and I walk through this house of ours in a complete daze…haunted by the things I have yet to write… I’m squeezing my fists, digging nails into my palms, and tears are coming to my eyes. I don’t know what I’m doing. But my calling is screaming. These are the things I know.

Monday Dec. 4, 2017

Spiritually tasked with documenting the last days spent with my closest friend of nearly 20 years, I sit down to write these words I’ve been wrestling with since my 40th year grew near…since my 40th birthday came and went, since that fateful moment on my 40th birthday when she told me what her doctors said. Stage 4 cancer. No treatment possible. Your life is coming to an end. We had known for a few weeks that it was likely cancer causing her body to fill with this violently invasive fluid. We had known for about a month that a lump had formed in her breast. We had known that something was different when she kept having seizures. We did not know it would end so quickly. We did not know what they told her, what she refused to tell us, what she refused to buy into. We did not know, when we arrived on Nov. 3, that she would die on Nov. 4. And so here I am, this fateful night of Dec. 4, having barely blinked my eyes since that night, no longer tethered to this earth by the concept of time, left to pick up the pieces of our entire 20 years together.

Tuesday Dec. 5, 2017

I’ve been wondering why I’m not crying that much. Before Tam even passed, people started checking on me…asking how I was doing, how I was holding up. I was likely to report that “I’m just one foot in front of the other,” and I was, as I booked flights, packed, unpacked, took my daughter to daycare, maneuvered around work and managed to take all the days off I needed while doing the minimal and appearing to do the most. Short staffed? Can’t get a good temp? Production deadlines? No problem. “My friend is very sick and I don’t want to talk about it,” I told a couple of colleagues as I shut down my computer en route to Atlanta one more time. They looked at me solemnly and respected my decision. I told my work wife all about Tam though, in great detail, from the roota to the toota, because that’s how we talked…over lunchtime double vodkas for me and bits of home food for her, at the bar near our job, her little tupperware containers containing nothing appetizing as I squeezed lemon slice after lemon slice into my rocks glasses and tried to understand what was happening with Tam. When I told her it was Stage 4, my work wife said resolutely, “You just gotta pray.” I thought to myself and what the fuck will that do? Not shit. But whatever. She meant well and I still love her and I still loved talking with her because, like Tam, she was another person I could talk loudly and crazy and uninhibited with, over and under and in between each other’s words, but we never offended each other and always had more shit to say.

She happened to be on the phone with me that Tuesday night after I missed my flight out of Atlanta. Tam had just died and missing my flight was of no consequence. I’d been sitting at the bar drinking with Beth. We were numbly reflecting on all that we’d witnessed. My work wife called to check on me. I missed by flight messing around at the bar. Nothing mattered then and 3 or 4 drinks in, I wasn’t the least bit stressed. I vaguely remember my lubricated words deftly maneuvering the conversation. As always, we talked a lot and fast, and all I know is we were laughing about something one minute, as I strolled toward my gate with Beth, and the next minute, every ounce of sorrow and dread and grief and pain that I had been carrying hit me at once as I realized Tam was really dead. The truth of that fact sat me down. My voice hollowed out and grief overtook me.

Work wife stayed on the line well after I dropped the phone on the floor and dropped my face deep into my lap while my mouth, it’s own entity almost separate from my body, opened wide and howled loudly from the seats at someone else’s gate. Beth rubbed my back as I heaved and sobbed and screamed, but even her balmy warm voice couldn’t calm me, couldn’t console me. I couldn’t stop screaming words which have since left me. But all 20 years of my life with Tam washed over me, every memory, every moment, every laugh and while I sobbed in that moment, it was real.

A month later though, it’s back to being not real and I don’t cry much because I don’t understand much about how we could be talking and laughing one minute and she could be in my arms taking her last breath the next. When she did, I put my arms around her and screamed, “TAM!” And I heard the weakness in my own voice. I heard myself falter, I felt myself weaken when she slipped to the other side, when she finally stopped struggling to breathe, I felt her go and I knew it was over, but I screamed at anyone and everyone in the house to come/quick/go/move/get/grab/wake her back the fuck UP because it can’t be over yet! But it was and she was done, no matter how hard she tried to fight. No matter how she struggled to breathe. No matter how hard anyone prayed. Cancer devoured my friend but it’s true what they say…her spirit is all over me every minute of every day guiding me and pushing me and prodding me into the future where she is still with me and we are together.

I was her muse in life and she is my muse in death.

That much seems clear though it doesn’t explain my dry eyes.