I’ve been so busy trying to keep up a good front, act like an adult, do the right thing, and stay focused on being useful that I haven’t allowed myself to feel down about the fact that my friend is almost done dying.
I have decided to let down what little hair I have left on my head and face up to my sadness, with the help of idioms, similes and metaphors, since they have officially become my new best friends. Bear with me as I try to describe what it’s been like for me to lose my old one.
I’ve can’t think up much of anything positive to say about watching someone I just spoke with on Sunday afternoon suddenly stop existing as I knew her on Monday morning. Watching her die has been painful, like pulling teeth without Novocain, frustrating, like trying to find a needle in a haystack, and pointless, like beating a dead horse with a stick. Dying, after all, is not as easy as pie. It’s as hard as nails. And it’s not for sissies.
For watchers like me who aren’t doing the dying, it isn’t easy to face the fact that all you can do is watch someone else do the work while you just stand around, staying alive.
I mean, watching has been comforting, that it has - but boy has it also been scary. It’s left me with a lot of down time to feel sad, guilty, angry, bitter, superfluous, and impotent. It’s also made me feel so jealous that part of me has wanted to climb into that hospital bed, next to my friend, and join her.
Watching a friend die has been a roller coaster ride – but without that cloyingly delicious cotton candy smell wafting up, or those happy-scared-ecstatic shrieks echoing through the air. It’s been a horrific house of horrors trip, full of sad good-byes, tearful embraces, and bewildered why-you’s.
This is one trip I’d rather not be watching you take – but I have no choice. So, here I stay, waving goodbye, crying out how much I’ll miss you leave on your final gut-wrenching, headache-inducing, sob-producing, if-only-I’d…, what-if-we’d..., why-didn’t-you…oh-what-will-I-do-without-you journey.
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