Somewhere Out There

 Why do we cry when people we love die?

Most of the time, especially when we're talking about people in the age group I inhabit now, the person who has died has been released from suffering. Shed of a body that no longer served. Freed to go on to...whatever comes next.

What is sad about that?

What is sad is that WE no longer have that person.  WE will miss them.  We will have to go on with a loved-one-shaped hole in our hearts and lives.

So, in essence, we cry for ourselves.

Oh, it's not as if this philosophy has made me immune to crying when my loved ones leave.

I have shed many tears since I learned of Jackie's death. They just...come.  Unbidden.  But, I think, cleansing.  

My dear friend.  

The one who stuck with me for all these years.  I was trying to think how many years it has been. More than thirty...less than forty.  Thirty-five?  Thirty-six?

We got each other in a way that no one else got either one of us.  She was smart.  She was bookish.  She was a seeker.  And I could appreciate that.  And be so, too, though I think I had only a shadow of her intellect.  But we both understood it was difficult to be smart and analytical in the minimum-wage world we inhabited.  So we...attached to each other.

And when we no longer lived close enough to see each other face-to-face, we bonded in j-land.  THAT was over 20 years ago.  

J-land and the blogging craze fell by the wayside...and all the "friends" I thought I had made in that ethereal place faded away.

Except Jackie.  

She stayed.  

She came.

She left a word or two, just to let me know she had been by, if nothing else.

That is what REAL friends do.

Our interactions became more and more infrequent.  But I always took comfort knowing she was out there, somewhere.

But knowing the state of her health, I was always aware/afraid that there would come a time when she WOULDN'T be out there.

And now that time has come.

But maybe...

Yes, I think so.

She IS out there.

Somewhere.

And I will let that comfort wash over me.

 

So...That was it.  20 hits on the entry about Jackie even though I linked to it on Instagram.  No comments or condolences left here...a couple on Instagram.  Her family couldn't even be bothered to write a decent obituary for her, nor to allow my tribute to her on her "tribute wall" to be published.  Only two weeks gone, and already mostly forgotten.  How invisible our little lives are, hardly a speck in the cosmos.  But perhaps if there's one person who remembers you and misses you, that's all we can ask for.  I'm that person, for Jackie.  And I'll wear that mantle proudly.