happily, the doctors are through reviewing my chest x-rays and are satisfied that i will not perish of tuberculosis anytime soon. on the other hand, that the skin test was positive is testament to the fact that my immune system is extremely sensitive to stress; if, let's say, the love of my life dies, it's not just my mind that falls apart, but my body also. fun stuff. the ultimate upshot is that i meet my assigned child next week, as well as with the principal, who will help develop my lesson plans. excitement amidst tragedy! for the past few months, there are three things jake and i talked about: his sickness, my job search, and how much we missed each other/what we were going to do once he was better. he would have been more excited than anyone to hear that i'm finally going to have my own personal pupil to corrupt and enrapt. i hope to do him proud.
i'd really like to get ahold of his mom and offer my condolences (whatever the hell that may mean), but my attempts to find a way to reach her have been stymied. on the one hand, she is living in a nightmare world where her oldest son died after courageously fighting- and defeating- cancer for months, and what could i possibly have to say that wouldn't fall on pain-deaf-and-numb ears? but on the other hand, if she loves him more than anyone else on earth, then i am at least a close second for the title, and i wish her to know that i understand and am there if she needs anything at all in the world, because let's face it, she made him and i love him, and one of the bigger regrets among the untold thousands that i will harbor from now until eternity is that i didn't meet her while he was alive, in his presence. he was so certain that she would love me, and he loved and admired her so much that i was sure i would love her as well, and yet we never met, thanks to the unhappy confluence of geography, insecurity, coincidence, and sillyness that were our lives for the past few years.
and it feels like a betrayal to even think of this, but what about the funeral? if i have thought about him and the fact of his death every day since the day it happened, and i have, and if i have mourned it, constantly and quietly, every other minute of every day since i got the news- via text message, let it be noted, because really, how absurd can you possibly get?- and i have-- if these things are so (they are), then i wish someone would tell me why and how it doesn't feel quite real yet? i read the comments everyone is posting "to" him and about him, i look through pages and pages of pictures, i relive snatches of our times together, i call his phone just to hear his voicemail recording, and i know that he's dead. and still i think, maybe? maybe i'm dreaming a really vivid dream where all the pot i've smoked is catching up with me, maybe it's all a terrible misunderstanding, maybe i can find a wormhole and go back in time and save him, maybe the ground at my feet will open up and i'll fall through to some hideous inferno where he's being held hostage until i can with my wit and cunning and vast stores of alternately love and rage win him back to the world of the living. maybe i can push through the screen of reality and touch all the other realities that might have been, and find the one where he got better and stayed better, where i can call his phone and he'll answer, where he grows up to be a famous writer, a husband, a father, a world-reknowned activist-singer, the so-cal master of barbecue, a grouchy old man on a porch somewhere- i'll find that happy land and stay there, if i can't bring him back to this one, to undo the things that need to be undone for him to be here right now.
my favorite, the one to which i always return, is the one where i attend his funeral and walk up to the front of the room to see him pale and somber on the wooden dais, whereupon the tears start up, and i lean in to kiss him one last time, and voila! like a post-feminist snow white fairytale dream, my kiss and the love in my heart and the tears in my eyes bring him back, and everyone oohs and ahhhs and we live happily ever after, content with the destruction of death and modern science that we have wrought.
if i see it, if i see him and see that he's not himself anymore, i think i stand a better chance of believing it. at which point i will attempt suttee, or cry mutely in his mother's arms. unless she hates me. ah life.
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