So, we’re back to me dying alone. These dramatics come from a call with my grandmother, as a lot of my dramatics do. My grandmother, Sheila, has been single the entirety of my life time, at least 28 years. She hasn’t had a boyfriend or girlfriend or date or romance or fling that I know of. We’ve spoken of her great loves and lovers, my grandfather Hal being the best. I even know, in mildly graphic detail, the story of the night of my mother’s conception. But I’ve watched my grandmother without a man all these years and never once did it cross my mind that my grandmother was lonely.
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Maya has not lacked her own excitement and tribulations or close encounters with death. The first morning after bringing her home, I took her into the backyard, a tennis ball in my hand, my very own Jack Russell to play fetch with now. Maybe a dozen throws in, I accidentally launched the ball over the fence. And with some Tom Cruise action movie scientology slow motion magic, I watched as Maya spotted a (previously undiscovered to me) hole in the fence. And she was gone.
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I cried reading the news. I cried because relapse so frequently feels inevitable in the mind of an addict. It feels like the only sure thing I know - that if I do not actively try to do everything I can to not drink or use drugs - that it will happen.
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Company was a reprieve. That sad, lonely, smoke-stained house. They were kind, until they weren’t. They were helpful, until they weren’t. And I liked having them around, until I didn’t. As my best friend would later put it, “They get to vacation in your grief.”
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I knew I wanted this apartment the moment I saw the bathtub. I knew the top floor would be exhausting, four sets of stairs and no elevator. But the wood floors, the windows overlooking Spokane, and it was a new beginning for my new love in our hometown that we were so desperate to write good into. I would sit for hours in that tub. Reading books, writing in my journal, eating dinner, soaking away sore feet from my serving shifts, hot water coaxing life back into a body wretched by another hangover.
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