I haven't been sleeping well lately. A year ago I was sleepless turning over thoughts in my head - what if he dies? what if he doesn't die? Sleeping felt like a betrayal - I didn't want to sleep. When you know it's the last few days with him, you somehow want them to drag on, even when it is the most painful days of your life. You just want it to pause.
We have these befores and afters and in-betweens that make the major dividing lines that mark the major changes in our lives - moving house, new cars, graduations, weddings, births, and deaths. Not sleeping feels like you aren't allowing it to happen, to admit that something is changing.
But now I just find it hard to sleep. I stay awake through the night, see the sun rise and at some point I guess I am exhausted enough to pass out - usually waking up as the sun is setting. It winds up being about a Pacific time sleep schedule, although 6000 miles off center. In between waking up and falling asleep I walk somewhat aimlessly around my neighborhood, or ride the bus to nowhere in particular. Exams have ended. Most everyone has gone home. I am here.
It suddenly feels like it was much longer ago. I wish it didn't. The last really vivid memory I have of him is at the movie theater, on my birthday in mid-November. We had brunch with the parents. My mom told me that he seemed to be having a rough time, I should talk to him. So after brunch we hopped in my car and saw "Role Models" - he liked Paul Rudd. Our usual division of cost - I buy the tickets, he buys the sodas. It was a small theater and it was empty except for us until about 5 minutes into the previews, when 2 or 3 other people came in.
I drove him home, to his apartment. He had been living there nearly a year, but it was the first time I'd seen it. My parents old couch was in the living room, the place wasn't fairly clean. Save for an abundance of cup-o-noodles, he seemed to be living a relatively normal life. His roommate and his roommate's girlfriend were there, finishing off some old birthday cake.AAA
After that, there was Thanksgiving. I don't really remember him there. I spent the day cooking with my sister, at some point the rest of the family went to see "Four Christmases" which I had not interest in seeing - I saw about 10 minutes of it recently and I stand by my rejection of the film. The Saturday after Thanksgiving, my mom wanted to go back to the same place for brunch. I really didn't care for it on my birthday - it was expensive, but institutional, it was kind of gross. It was a theater of gluttony. So I passed. My sister was mad at me, because she was heading back to college. That would have been the last meal I ate with him. Six months later, we ate there for father's day.
I don't know what the coda is to this mess. Maybe it's to say yes more often. I've been trying to do that.
