Once upon a time there was a nice lady.
She was a lady wandering in a fine mist. She wouldn't describe herself as lost exactly, and she wouldn't describe it as a fog. She knew both of those terms from past experience, and to use them would be dramatic.
And she wasn't a drama queen.
Not exactly.
She was a nice lady who enjoyed her children, camped with her husband and remembered to call her parents sometimes. Even wandering in the mist, she remembered to feed the dog. Because you see, she carried the mist around her, sort of like Pig-Pen's cloud of dust in the Peanuts.
The nice lady hadn't always been in the mist. In fact, she didn't notice it at first. The mist crept in gradually, and thickened over a period of time. Maybe you're thinking, "It's starting to sound almost like fog," but I told you already it wasn't a fog, so stop that.
At first, the mist didn't create much trouble. She carried on with her normal life. She went to work, she drove the carpool, and she made dinner several nights a week. She didn't make dinner every night, but no one noticed, because she'd never been very good at dinner, even before the mist.
The problem with the mist, however, was that it was a barrier between the lady and everything else. Maybe barrier is too strong a word. The mist was more like a lens that distorted her vision, or a cataract that blocked it. When she peered through it, everything looked very far away. It made her feel very separated from everyone on the other side. That made her feel weird and alone.
However, there was one place that made her happy: the cozy nook. The nook was a corner full of twinkle lights and office supplies, two of the lady's favorite things. So, as the mist thickened, she visited the cozy nook more and more. And at first, it helped. Early in the morning, she'd wake and go straight to the cozy nook. She'd draw and write and pray and ponder. And the time in the cozy nook would refresh her and fill her with wonder. And strangely, the mist didn't seem like a hindrance there. When she was in the nook working, the mist was like gentle white noise that only enhanced her focus.
One day in the nook, she read about the poet, Theodore Roethke. Based on his poems, she suspected he'd been funny, but also very sad. She wanted to hug him for all the words he'd given her, so on impulse, she drew herself as a cartoon hugging him. It made her laugh a little, and it made her feel better.
Drawing it made her feel so much better, that she drew herself with more dead authors whose words had helped her over the years. And then she drew more. And some more. And it was so fun...until it wasn't. But even after it wasn't fun, she kept drawing, and she spent more and more time in the nook. Except now, she wasn't feeling refreshed anymore. The nook was feeling like a compulsion, like she couldn't stop. She felt stuck in a skip, like every dvd that you get from a public library.
And she didn't want to stop, because things outside the cozy nook and the mist were starting to feel very difficult. When she left the nook, there was so much work and life waiting. She didn't seem to be able to do it anymore. She felt flat and saddish. She just wanted to nap. A lot. And watch Bob's Burgers. A lot. At first the kids watched with her, but eventually wandered away. Only the dog never grew tired of watching and napping. She considered scheming up a Bob's Burgers reenactment club, but couldn't find takers, even though she'd only asked the dog.
Eventually, inside the nook wasn't fun either. She looked around and realized it was full of dead people, and not in a cute way.
And then one day a friend or two asked her if she was okay. And when she said yes, they looked at her like she was lying. And she wondered if she was lying. Maybe she should go to the doctor, they suggested. She'd suspected she needed to go for a long time, but it seemed time consuming and nap-conflicting. Finally, she went.
The doctor said, "Nice lady, you are stuck. I know you're scared, but let's try something different, and get you out of that fog." The lady said, "It's just a mist." And the doctor said, "I have a lot of patients today, and I'm wearing very uncomfortable high heels. I don't have time to argue with you, and if I say it's a fog, then it is a goddamned fog." (It was okay, that the doctor said GD because God hated the nice lady being in a fog too).
So the lady went home with her insurance-covered new shiny pills, and they worked.
They worked. She couldn't believe it.
The lady felt a little better the very next day, even though the shiny pill bottle said "full-effects not experienced for four to six weeks." She was an over-achiever. It was like a miracle.
A quiet miracle.
The lady didn't jump around and hoop and holler, but she woke up.
She felt capable.
Wide-eyed. Aware.
She saw her kids -- really saw them-- without the mist. She saw her husband. She saw her dog.
She saw the cozy nook with its twinkle lights, and she loved it again. And she looked through the drawers of her desk and found so so very many pictures of herself with dead people. And she was surprised. She thought, "I didn't know there were so many. I barely remember doing them. I was quite prolific in my misty fog." Frankly, the quantity and the lack of memory scared her and her husband a bit, but otherwise, everyone in the family was pleased.
She decided she loved the dead people even more. They couldn't help her out of the mist, but if you have to wander in one, you might as well keep good company. And so, the nice lady pressed on. She put on her fingerless typing gloves her sister had given her for Christmas, and she sat down and typed-- really typed--for the first time in months. And only the dog was disappointed, because it knew the napping would be reduced significantly.
[Art of Dead Friends Photo Album in other attachment]