Call me if you need me

Well, I had a tough couple of days in a row lately, so I haven't written because the words were too dark.

I took the day off from work yesterday and, with Valery's love and guidance, was restored to that fragile state of being I've grown accustomed to of late. It so resembles me but which is not me but an act, played daily for the benefit of those in the audience. Today, I write again on the bus, on my way to work, present and alive, but still a little raw.

One reason for the nosedive into depression was physical; as I recovered yesterday, I could feel my body replenishing a supply of some chemical that had somehow become depleted in the course of two days of inexorable toxic thoughts. It's not good science, I know, but I believe there is a connection between thoughts and the brain chemistry that allows for and accompanies them. So I poisoned myself, culminating in a migraine and a day off.

During that time of recovery, I thought often of Lynda, and this morning when I awoke I realized what had happened; how the absence of her presence as a 'circuit breaker' for the overwhelming wave of negative emotion building in me is more noticeable only now, when the shade of grief has lifted just enough to realize and really feel that absence acutely.

She used to tell me at the close of every conversation, "Call me if you need me." Of course I thought that as she got older, this sentence ought have been "I'll call you if I need you." And it did come to that, but never did I lose the sense that I could call her when I needed her, until I actually lost her.

Now I close my conversations with Maddie with the same line. I hope that I can be for her what Lynda was to me for so many years; what Valery is to me today, strength and hope personified.