Alone in a Dark Room

Someone in my family died on Friday.

We weren't close in any normal sense, but she was family, and an integral part of my childhood. Her children and I share blood, if distantly. She had cancer, fought the good fight, and slipped free of it all only days after deciding to end the medication that hurt more than the disease.

Last night, I went to bed alone and wept. I wept for the woman who died, and for her family, and because I had hoped to see her once more, and maybe also a little because I begged the Goddesses of healing, of life, of compassion to intercede, to make it go away, to let this woman be the one in a million, one in a billion, who lived...and the Goddesses didn't listen, didn't act...

I wept, alone.

Alone in a dark room.

There should have been someone with me...but he wasn't. Even knowing that I mourned, he wasn't there. The race he was watching was more important, it seems. The computer was more interesting, the game more worthy.

How is someone else's death about me?

It isn't, not really...I just felt so empty, alone in a dark room, crying and wishing there was someone there to comfort me.

His sister died of cancer not too long ago, and I drove with him to see her, to be with her, comforted him, stood by him and lent such strength as I had to give...and he left me alone in a dark room last night.

I am not the sort to weep and wail in public, make a spectacle, let slip even one tear where someone else might see and feel obligated to respond...but I would like, just once, to feel that I don't have to be alone in a dark room...that there are two arms to hold me and a voice to reassure me, a presence beyond the Gods who are woefully inadequate when one's body craves physical touch.

How is it about me, her death?

It's not.

I am a selfish ass...and I'm still alone in a dark room.