Starburst and Skittles Forever

I stopped writing the night they both died.

I haven’t even looked at my blog until today. I got lost in it all and had a hard time finding my way back. They were both part of the “old timer crew” both had been there before the new year, watched winter turn to spring, spring to summer, and then died within hours of each other.

One was expected. He had been hanging on for awhile and I had time to say goodbye and make peace with the knowledge he was leaving.

But, him? I wasn’t ready for his departure. He was too young, it seemed impossibly wrong, an ocean of injustice crashing unnoticed except to the few of us who swim against the tide.

“Starburst and Skittles”

There isn’t a day gone by you don’t pop into my head.

I promised him he wouldn’t be alone. I sat hour after hour after hour watching his futile fight for every breath, sounding like he was drowning in a small pool of water. That sound comes back to haunt me often, I didn’t understand how one night would be like an eternity forever etched into the fabric of who I was and who I am.

“Everything he has endured, all he has not lived, aches in me.”

Today, another “old timer” needed a t-shirt, so I looked in the supply room and pulled one out. I glanced at the collar and saw his initials from the t-shirt I had given him months before, it was bittersweet. The continuous pattern of the hospice gives me comfort, but sometimes it’s hard to mourn when the next day a new resident enters and erases the space that belonged to someone else for so long.

I can’t even write his name on this blog, I mourn him, but I don’t know what’s normal, or what’s “borderline losing it.”

I’m wearing the t-shirt that I gave him with his initials (I kept it) while writing for the first time since his death. I guess that’s something……