Sarah's Inscriptions

January 29, 2023  I was in the shower, rinsing myself off underneath the nearly too-warm water, when I suddenly got a writing idea.  This has not happened to me in quite some time, but when it does, it never fails to arrive at the most inconvenient time - when I'm half asleep, driving, taking a shower, at work, etc.  Nine times out of ten I will not be able to jot down the idea that floods my brain in full.  If I'm lucky, I will remember it long enough to where I'm awake, parked, my hands are dry, all the kids are asleep, etc., and then I can make it permanent somewhere. The rather lucky and unlucky scenario that happened to me in that shower, was that I didn't forget the prompt.  But I'm certain that's because the initial prompt only prompted even more thoughts, which flashed my brain with traumatic images, which made the remainder of that shower feel simultaneously like two seconds and two days had passed. When thoughts like this intrude so suddenly, it can al...

October 24, 2022 I cannot bear the approaching sound of an aero-med flying overheard without thinking of my mom.  It seems, since she died, they have almost flown over weekly.  While she was still here I could not recall a time I ever heard one. Mom became very acquainted with their sound during her many countless hospital stays.  I remember one time in particular, I believe it was in the heart hospital in GR, mom heard one either flying off or landing on top of the hospital.  She mentioned it nonchalantly, passing seamlessly in the conversation already being had.  As if expecting the rest of us to notice it so easily as well. I notice them constantly now.  When mom first died, I imagined they would land right in our backyard and whisk her down to us.  Her hair would be blowing in the wind of the helicopter blades whirring, and she would stand before us whole.  They never landed though.  Just proceeded on to their destination.  I can onl...

August 14, 2022 (Two Years) Today is the dreaded day.  Your death day.  The second anniversary of it, no less.  Though somehow, today, I am not particularly overwhelmed by it, yet anyway.  Probably because I have been thinking about it coming up since your birthday.  These two days are so close, it's unfair.  One is meant to celebrate your being brought into this world, and the other, this one, symbolizes you leaving it.  I'm not yet sure how to spin it into a positive day.  I don't know that it needs to be, or ever will be.  If I have learned anything through losing you, and Aunt Diane and Grandma, it's that some things are just sad.  Shitty things exist, and it's okay to call them what they are.  Not everything needs to be spun in a positive light.   Two whole years though... How can that be?  24 months.  730 days.  All three ways to describe it sound so unbearably long, and yet it feels like you have been...

 Monday, July 18, 2022 9:48 p.m. Sometimes, if I think about her too abruptly, I almost believe she was just a figment of my imagination.  Like this whole time she was never real.  I never touched her.  I never heard her speak or laugh.  I never felt her love.  Because sometimes, in this immense grief, it can feel like she's been gone forever.  It can feel like she never existed at all.  And other times, I feel as though we last hugged just yesterday.  I just heard her laugh this morning.  I just saw her smile.  I could still tell you what she looked like.  I could pick her out of a crowd even now.  I think I would run to any woman who even slightly resembled her, just out of habit.  They would simply vanish once I got too close, just like she did.  She just disappeared, if you think about it.  One day, she just vanished.  That's what her death feels like to me I suppose, like she just went missing....