Look Up

"Paradise lost is sometimes Heaven found." Sometimes.

That was the moral of the children's book Holly and I read last night. "Hey Al." I went to her house after cheer and we spent an hour talking on her bed, and the book came up when we were talking about our childhood memories. She had images of her dad taking time to show her all the details in the pictures, and just the name of the book made it all flood back to me, too, how my dad read me the same story over and over again.

I think, that when Lauren was diagnosed again with cancer last January, that I lost my chance to ever be happy again in a certain way. Happy in an innocent sense. Since then I've of course become more fulfilled and sustained, but I think we all lost something irreplaceable when it struck in resonating waves.

I won't be ready. Not in a week, not in six months, probably not ever. But it'll happen and I'll have to be. And I can try to imagine the day or night-of -- devastation. But what's harder for me is imagining the days and months and even years after the fact. Every single second I've been alive, so has she. How could I go on?

I don't know. I don't think anyone does. All I have are my friends and family who care and the heart she showed me how to open. From now 'til always, we have love, love, love.

"I feel like I'm moving in slow motion and everything around me is moving so fast. And I just want to go back to when things were normal, when I wasn't poor Izzie laying on the bathroom floor in her prom dress with her dead fiancee. But I am. So I can't. I'm just stuck. And there's all this pressure cause everyone's hovering around waiting for me to do something or say something or flip out or yell or cry some more. And I'm happy to play my part. I'm happy to say the lines and do whatever it is I'm supposed to be doing if it would make everyone feel more comfortable. But I don't know how to do this. I don't know how to be this person. I don't know who this person is. "

posted by Allison Francis @ 5:06 PM