Hitting a Tree

I'm reading over some posts on Facebook and it is all Labor Day mayhem, bbqueing and drinking and sunning and I think about doing that and then I can't think about doing that but I remember what that feels like just going on, laughing and living.
Bumps in the road come along and you have to diverge in your driving or maybe you hit it head on and then you curse out yourself or the driver next to you. A few miles down the road it is over and then you are on to the next thing, the hair appt, the car payment, the rainy forecast, the things you don't have, the things you do have, your hopes and your dreams.
And then you hit a tree
and you can't move
You know you are alive
and you hear other people driving by
Some sound out alarms
and others don't even look.

On Friday we went in for a fairly routine visit to check on a lump Gary had discovered over the week. We laughed on the way in.
I told Nora who was screaming out of our living room window that no, in fact we did not have chocolate chips but we did have raisins and Gary told me that was the saddest thing you could tell a child.
Jonah came with us and Jonah and I watched Sesame Street and they were talking about the letter Q and drums, two of Jonah's favorite things.
Gary came out
we drove home
for a long Labor Day weekend.
Two hours later his doctor called, an hour later we were in a urologist's office and all of my children had been shipped off to Patricia's house.
She kept them for the next 24 hours.
I cried in the bathroom.

The type of cancer he has is treatable, they think. It is a "good type of cancer to get, if you are to get cancer."
But I can't help think about how quiet my house would be without Gary.
My friend Gwendolyn called me this morning to talk and she told me she had thought about me and Gary a lot lately, about what a great love we had for each other and I know she is right and so I told her and then I cried.