Last night I cried body-wracking sobs of grief for someone's death, for the first time in my life.
I guess I'm growing.
Last night we got home from a rare jaunt to the movie theatre to see the new Vin Diesel film, after a long week of hard work and privacy seminars.
I think I was threatening to jump Dave on the sidewalk due to sheer hormonal drive, but he beat me off with the "I have to pee first" stick and I checked my email while waiting.
And read an email from one of my cousins in France, the beautiful one, that her mother had finally succumbed to the brain cancer that she's been so valiantly fighting since her diagnosis in 1999.
Rachel was the wife and mother of the cousins that I discovered upon my pilgrimmage to Paris, she was this beautiful spirit that drew me into their home and taught me that there was a different side to my family than the sick mind of my father.
She taught me that my family is generous, kind, brilliant and caring, taught me that you could believe devoutly in anything, even god -- and still be human, despite the lessons I so harshly learned in private religious schools.
That family is the family that I wished so fervently would replace mine and erase the thousand scars of the seventeen years I spent with them, they are the family who taught me that so many things I was ashamed of in myself were all skills and gifts to wear proudly.
Jackie, Rachel's husband is the man who taught me that my father was lying when he said every man in my family is tone deaf and I should never even try to sing in public, when he opened his mouth and sang the tenor role from Mozart's Magic flute (my favourite opera).
Rachel was the one who so gently encouraged me to go to the conservatory like Jackie and see if they would be willing to teach me to sing.
Oh, I'm crying again. Tears are so strange, and heavy and wet and they sting behind my face as they push their way out.
Last night I read the email twice, numbly telephoned my mother to let her know, and fled into Dave's arms to sob violently for what must have been hours.
I've never cried with grief before and have no idea how to feel about this, it is all so new and raw and bright.
This morning my father telephoned, in the midst of an irrational panic and had me searching the internet for caterers to send food to the mourners as is the custom. I spent the morning in terror, afraid to call the cousins which I had not yet even sent the wedding photos to, afraid to hear their beautiful voices.
I left a tearful message on Rachel's sister's answering machine and she just called back and let us know the funeral details, how each family member is doing, etc.
In the meantime, we started testing the circuits in the house to mark them and prepare to pull more wires upstairs in preparation for some re-arranging of rooms.
Soon we need to get cleaned up and head over to Adam and Jen's to torture their son Ian and have a barbecue out in the middle of rolling-hill country.
I'm sure it will all be wonderful, the way spending time with such beautiful souls always is -- but right now all I can think of is Rachel's impossible hair and the way too-tall Jackie used to kiss her right on the top of her head, the way Rachel would laugh at her son's overly-intellectual antics and giggle along to her daughter's enthusiasm for their crazy canadian cousin.
So this is grief. I remember wishing I could feel it through all the numbness, once upon a time.
I... yeah. I miss her already, and never telephoned her once after I left Paris.