Friends, Memories and Maggots
What I wanted to do was sit down after a long day and write. What I got to do instead was spend an hour or so killing maggots! There’s pretty much nothing grosser. I decided to take out the kitchen trash because it just wasn’t smelling good. I looked down on the floor and saw the first of a multitude of the white, creepy, worm-like creatures. They seemed to multiply before my eyes. I didn’t know if there was a maggot protocol. For the sake of time, I made up my own. I started picking up the buggers one by one with a paper towel and dropping them into a big Zip-loc bag. Then I sprayed the floor with cleaner and wiped it down. If there’s a better strategy, I’m all ears. I don’t have a really confident feeling that I won’t wake up to a maggot party in my kitchen tomorrow.
If I’m being really honest about how this journey goes, I have to tell you that today as I was standing at the copier at work, thoughts of Chandler in the hospital kept flooding my mind. Specific images were overwhelming. I had to erect a dam to stop the flood because I had a family in my office that I was meeting with. I thought to myself how odd that these images would come to me while performing a routine task at work that had nothing whatsoever to do with Chandler. That’s how it works, this grief thing.
Now for the good stuff before arriving home to find the maggots.
Charli and I went to a reunion of sorts this evening.
When we moved to Dove Canyon 17 years ago, I was blessed to have neighbors who became my closest friends. Our kids played together every day. We did outings and mini vacation getaways. There was an open-door policy at all four homes — your kid is my kid. Countless evenings were spent at the house in the middle eating dinner and sipping wine while the kids made all manner of creative messes.
We were on each other’s emergency pick-up lists for the kids. One morning, Charli had decided to take an early nap, so I was curled up in my chair with a cup of coffee and my book, savoring the rare silence while everyone was at school. Out of nowhere comes a knock at the door. It was Chance with my friend and next-door neighbor Mary. Apparently, the school had tried to call and tell me to come pick up Chance because he had a migraine. I hadn’t heard the phone ring. Mary schlepped her own baby out to go pick up my son 15 minutes away only to walk in and see me lounging in my living room with my beverage and my book, oblivious to the fact that I had unknowingly transferred my motherly duties to her for NO good reason. She will never let me live it down, but she would also do it again in a heartbeat. That’s friendship. I can count on any of these friends, anytime, for anything.
Tonight, for the first time in years, all the moms and kids were at the same place at the same time —eating dinner, sipping wine (the moms, not the kids), laughing, and telling stories about building things, falling off things, swinging on things, and making messes of things (the kids, not the moms).
On a day that ended with maggots, I needed the laughter and love of friends who will always be friends. It may be what kept me from utter maggot despair.
