Sunday, April 26, 2015
Requirements After Dark
The Enormous Funk lasted seven weeks, and then one fine day
I plucked the bills folder from the shelf.
Owed everybody, so I wrote the late checks, ripping up the
reminders.
Mailed them, some with penalties to teach me a lesson!
I never learned, I suppose. Darkness has its way of cloaking
lessons.
I did decide to walk to the drug store and pay in person there.
Holkie was a snap person on such matters, so I prepared for his
"You finally paying me? I gotta pay people too you know!"
He up in his lighted enclosure and Stelly at the register, her smile...
her wonderful smile.
But, no Stelly, and Holkie took the check silently.
“Where's...?”
“Lost her. Some...kinda stroke. Collapses at the register and gone
that night.”
“I’ll miss her terribly!” The first sincere thing I said after the
cessation of the blackness. I had been faking it to make it and was,
therefore, most unsteady.
“Me too.” Both crying.
Her smile stayed with me as I walked home, all the jostling cars
like double their bright colors. Somebody berated a "Tijuana" in
the taxi garage.
Just before I reached my block, Stelly spoke.
"No chance to say goodbye, Rolf."
"I'm so so sorry. I...don't know how I came out of this last one!"
"Ask me not to leave."
I did.
Labels: death, depression, funk, ghost, recovery, stroke
