In Your Arms

You don't really think about how precious life is until... until the day that you lose somebody. Until the day that you go to a baseball game, a friendly baseball game, and watch your friend pass out. Until you try CPR and her eyes roll backward and her heart stops and she dies. In your arms.

You don't marvel at the good moments. When laughter and grinning and water fights make your heart want to...

You don't realize how fragile you are until you start shaking with the grief of somebody you've never met, of somebody you helped, once, of somebody that enhanced the life of your father. When her husband calls and you have to say, "My dad's on his way." When you have to sit by yourself and talk to a journal to relieve your grief for this person you've never met, for this person that made your father cry and run on his crippled knee and breathe into her fruitlessly with his smoker lungs.

You don't really think about how precious life is until... until the day that the world loses somebody with a name and a face, and an address and a husband and two little daughters.

We take for granted what is freely given, and are drawn to tears when those frail candles are, without warning, blown out.

R.I.P. Denise

June 20th, 2004.

*This was written for my Dad's friend, who died today. Everything I write here happened today.