Cut in on our hapless heroine. Curled up in bed furiously typing with her thumbs on the illuminated screen of her phone. The room is dark but from the glow at the edge of the black curtains we can see morning light penetrating her dim purgatory. Her bedroom acts as a holding cell keeping her safely ensconced in darkness until she summons the strength to move. The glow of the screen lights her face as her thumbs pause in contemplation. She glances at the time but the digits only serve to drive her deeper into her blankets as the rapid thumb typing escalates.

And then the phone rings scaring her enough that she lightly tosses the phone from her hands bashing her nose. Has she forgotten the primary purpose of a phone? Is she afraid the caller bears sad tidings? Bad tidings? Perhaps her nerves are just completely fucking shot?

That reads like a caricature  of a morning. An exaggeration of a frazzled woman. It’s not. That’s a fairly accurate description of so very many of my mornings of late. When my phone rings it’s almost always my boyfriend. But when he isn’t on the other end it’s usually a member of my family calling to let me know that someone is dead. Or dying. Sometimes it’s that too.

Two weeks ago the school district’s auto-dialer called to remind me of the district wide late start, I wanted to hug the woman who made the recording simply because she wasn’t telling me anything shocking that I didn’t already know.

Death has loomed like a reeking cloud. A creeping horror movie fog obscuring all it touches and filling the spaces in my life with grief and mourning.

It seems I’ve reached an age at which people I’ve know all my life must leave us.

Ugh. Leave us. Pass on. Meet one’s end. Depart this life. Expire. Kick the bucket. I don’t like any of the euphemisms.

Those I love keep dying and I’m just done with it.

I fear my friends and co-workers are beginning to think I’m making up family members and killing them off as an excuse to be moody and absent. I can’t make this stuff up. I may be morbid, but I’m not that creative. Just tired.