STAYING @ SUSAN'S END OF AUGUST 2010

it will be strange to sleep over there. china was more real to me when i was still living there. now she is really gone although i think about her every day. i think she must have been hit by a car right away, in her first panic. that nice young woman who thought she saw china on the 4th and the 6th could well have been wrong. i think china would have come back. i feel really sure that no one would have kept her because she was so freaked out by a lot of other things as well as by the fireworks. i'm really sad all the time when i'm not distracted. i feel so lonely without robby, my parents, and those two dogs. it's nice being a part of this life here, and there were problems with the previous life, not least of which was robby being so sick and handicapped, but it was my life and i miss it. supposedly grief peaks around six months so i still have two to go for robby. it will be four months tomorrow since he died, and four months a couple of days ago since i saw him still conscious. i wanted to be there when he died but i couldn't do it since it wasn't my place. i hope that someone was actually paying attention when he left his body. i think it was my place to be there but i couldn't push the others out of the way, and i couldn't stand to be there any longer while that strange party was going on - a wake with a live body. i wonder if it was any stranger for robby that way, with all those people swirling around and chatting and eating and occasionally stopping to look at him. he said it was strange to know that he would die in a matter of days. i suppose his mind was slowed down so much by morphine that it all didn't matter but it sure mattered to me. it was just horrifying. i just cannot believe that they are all gone. i don't know why it matters so much, except about the dogs who were part of every day. i didn't see robby and dad, and rarely spoke with them. i don't know why it seems so important that they still exist, and so lonely to know that they don't. why can't i just be glad for them that they aren't suffering any more. maybe because they were full of so much knowledge and experience and i can't figure out how that can just cease to be. how can i theoretically be fine with death and still be unable to bear these deaths. i want them back for myself and i can't stop being sad.