To sleep and forget everything for a few hours...

To wake to the sound of the foghorn in July.

To look out the window with a heavy heart and see fog

hanging in the pear trees, fog clogging the intersection,

shrouding the neighborhood like a disease invading a healthy

body. To go on living when she has stopped living...

A car eases by with its lights on, and the clock is

turned back to five days ago, the ringing and ringing that brought me

back to this world and news of her death, she who'd simply been

away, whose return had been anticipated with baskets

of raspberries from the market. (Starting from this day

forward, I intend to live my life differently. For one thing,

I won't ever answer the phone again at five in the morning. I knew

better, too, but still I picked up the receiver and said that fateful

word, "Hello". The next time I'll simply let it ring.)

First, though, I have her funeral to get through. It's today, in a

matter of hours. But the idea of a cortege creeping through this fog

to the cemetery is unnerving, and ridiculous, everyone in the town

with their lights on anyway, even the tourists...

May this fog lift and burn off before three this afternoon! Let us

be able, at least, to bury her under sunny skies, she who worshiped

the sun. everyone knows she's taking part

in this dark masque today only because she has no choice.

She has lost the power of choice! How'd she

hate this! She who loved in April deciding

to plant the sweetpeas and who staked them before

they could climb.

I light my first cigarette from the day and turn away from

the window with a shudder. The foghorn sounds again, filling me

with apprehension, and then, then stupendous grief.