Every now and then the wind brings me one as clear as day, up and over the barrier and it hits me in the face, making my eyes sting, blowing my hair straight back from my forehead like water. That happened last week when I took Bonham up to the tracks to walk hard, and I could see Jacob throwing the frisbee for Butterfield and then trying to wrestle it away from him again. He was wearing his faded blue jeans and a blue plaid work jacket, steel-toed boots and he hadn't combed his hair yet, it looked like a nest of wheat on his head, straggled into his eyes. He grinned and waved when he saw me and I started to cry again and I only knew that that was a new memory presented to me from over the glass and I knew it was because I had to work harder to remember this place where I would run along the tracks and every single time the train came I was afraid because the noise was so loud and at the same time I had comfort in knowing I could just cross too closely and end my own misery. Because of that I'm not generally allowed up here alone anymore.
And so I took a picture of them playing, just so I could keep it. Only I got home and looked at it and Jacob and Butterfield are missing and I knew they would be, it's okay. A blurry little picture as a reminder of absolutely nothing of consequence to anyone but me.
See? Blackberries suck at photos, for the record. Shaky princesses suck even more at taking pictures.
It gets a little easier as time goes on but at the same time it's really fucking selfish that he gave up and left us behind to figure out the hard parts. At least there is someone there now to take care of my dog.I'm having a party tonight. A quiet, solemn and important one. I'm gathering everyone to mark what would have been Jacob's thirty-ninth birthday with a dinner and a few words and then I'm going to pack his memories away so that my mind is clear to focus on the move. To focus on the living. To focus on the good. We're going to eat whatever, most likely roast beef and gravy and roasted vegetables and cake because Jacob never really had a favorite dinner, he just liked large quantities of whatever I would cook because he was a bottomless pit, energy expended from a guy that only sat down to read and counsel or sometimes play guitar. Jacob was not a metal guy. He liked acoustic songs, deep songs, save for the famous Across the Universe warbling that made me laugh so hard I thought I would explode. I hurt for days after that incident and he was banned from playing it ever again. It's too bad, really. I would love to hear it now.
Jacob would have found my blackberry confusing. He had an old Motorola flip phone, the silver paint worn off the plastic long before the phone was toast, and it was always warm because he hardly ever stopped talking on it. Talking to Sam, talking to August, talking to Ben about me. Making sure I was okay when I had taped up ribs and a sling and a bruised ear. Ben would lie and say I was doing fine, because Jacob couldn't handle the alternative answer and so he would rush through his hospice and the chaplaincy shift and come home and find lilacs on every table and me with a little color in my face from a short walk and Ben making an oddly-efficient nursemaid, having scheduled pizza delivery and figured out who belongs to what laundry now sort-of folded and sitting on our beds to be put away.
Ben. Who is long past thirty-nine and approaching forty-two very soon and thinks this dinner is a very good way indeed to bookend the memories of Jacob so that I can bring them with me. Ben, who always drops his entire life and steps in when things go wrong because he doesn't care about himself and maybe if he did a little more he would be in better condition, instead of so rough and torn around the edges and in need to so much reinforcement these days. And Ben isn't so much an acoustic guy, he likes metal. Hardcore heavy metal that draws out all the pain and leaves you refreshed and exhilarated. Only he isn't allowed to play Across the Universe anymore either because frankly he mangled it and that was a travesty because the Beatles deserved to be done well and he demanded to know what Jai Guru Deva Om meant and I couldn't tell him, because I have no idea.
I bet Jacob knows what it means. That and a host of other mysteries have probably been solved. I hear that's one of the rewards you're given when you're sent to heaven. He told me so himself.
Out by the tracks.
Before I took his picture and printed it to tuck into a book, to find some other day.
Nothing's gonna change my world.
Nothing's gonna change my world.