Year Six.

There are few more impressive sights in the world than a Scotsman on the make.  ~J. M. Barrie

Two thousand, one hundred and ninety days in and things are evolving again. I would say maybe I'm slow to notice or plodding in my acceptance or so stubborn if you stood in front of a midnight blue sky in proof I would face you with clenched fists and an angry red face and insist that you're wrong, it's inky black.

Because that's how it's supposed to be in my head but every now and again the outside world proves me wrong and I need to step out of my brain and take note.

Lochlan has settled back into his alpha role in my heart, I think. He runs a tight ship, but he's unconventional too and he's somehow able to come up with his share without fretting, he just digs in. I know he worries but not outwardly so, the way I do. Ask me How are you? and I tip forward and drown you in emotional tea, without a lid or an acknowledgement when you say enough. I will pour until I'm empty and then turn around and do it again. He takes it. He's fashioned a snorkel in order to breathe, drawing in air from that navy-blue atmosphere and keeping us alive when some days I'm so determined to follow Jacob over that edge you would still be so surprised and most likely disappointed in me.

But I didn't and I won't and I keep writing to try and figure it all out and sometimes it's fun, sometimes it's comforting, sometimes it's maddening too and sometimes it's downright surprising.

And sometimes I wake up feeling numb and slightly removed and uncaring and that's usually the day after I've lost my mind and someone, and I think I know who, doles out one magical tablet but doesn't tell me, just stirs it into the juice he offers without actually seeming like he's monitoring me so closely and I drink it because I'm always thirsty and then I realize what he's done and I'm grateful. Grateful for the escape from a day that isn't ever easier to manage, not even six years later.

I know there are supposed to be timelines on grief and shock and improvements and fading of memories and moving on and I'm here to tell you that all of that is purely guesswork and BULLSHIT and it's a-okay if you're still in that moment that changed you forever because you're you and you do what you need to do, not what some expert tells you to do, chosen as an appropriate answer based on an average taken from people who are not you.

It's okay and I'll back you up on that forever. I didn't think I would still be able to generate as much complete and total hysteria as I did yesterday but PJ said he could have bottled it and run the whole point for years on the energy I put out for ghosts.

It very inappropriately made me laugh. That's okay too.

***

When I went out to the rock wall, Jake was there but he was so faded I could hardly see him. Maybe it was the weather or maybe he's eroding from my brain with time just like they said he would. He is disappointed that I have turned him into the holy trinity especially seeing as how he is was a Unitarian minister and sad that I am so miserable but also heartened that we have not self-destructed in his absence. What absence? I ask him and he laughs and shakes his head. Aw, Pig-a-let, you're so willful. I'm not sure I'm worth that energy you expend on me. 

You are. 

What would they say? He nods toward the houses, gesturing like he's in front of an imaginary pulpit. There's a reason you have to move on, if you don't you get stuck forever. 

So what?

So, you didn't die, I did and you need to live. 

Fuck right off, Jacob Thomas. 

Mad is better than sad, Princess, but neither is better than glad. I return to my clenched fists and red face because I'm about to get into it with a ghost. I hated that saying. It made me feel immature and ungrateful. Which is exactly his point and so he grins faintly. I have to go. I'm not supposed to be here anymore, Pig-a-let, remember? I'm the anchor wrapped around your ankle and if you don't free yourself you're going to drown. 

You're speaking my language now aren't you?

Yes, can you hear me?

Loud and clear, Pooh. 

Go find your Peter Pan and plot the future. It's time to pick up that other fairy tale where you left off. The fucker.

It's not a fairy tale. It's more like a reject paperback from a sale table that no one wants to buy. Pulp fiction. Everyone picks it up but no one has ever finished it.

Bridget. (Oh there's the stern, serious face I loved so much. His eyes are narrowed, mouth turned down and set tightly, just waiting. He looks just like the Sundance Kid.)

I know. Anchor. Fairies. Books. Live. Future. I squint my eyes to focus but he fades completely. Before I turn to walk up to the house I know that if Lochlan is standing just at the edge of the patio, hands in his pockets, flicking the dry empty lighter over and over and over again that my future will be less obscure than I feel like it is sometimes.

I turn and he grins at me in relief because sometimes I think he thinks I'm still going to bolt when I walk all the way down to the end of the wall and stand there talking to the flowers that persist in growing out from between the rocks, appearing to be as crazy as I feel most days. I start the long walk across the wet grass to get back to him and I get the feeling that between now and Year Seven I probably won't see Jake at all. He's beginning to repeat himself, looking for different ways to get through to me. He's beginning to find his end.

That would be something. If I don't get to pick when grief ends but he does instead.