it doesn't end

it's been a few days.  I didn't mean to let it get away from me but between the training class and the cold, I just sort of burrowed into a persona that would keep me going and i put everything else on hold for a while.  i wish i'd stayed there.  i really do.  i have found that one of my oldest friends in this program, Mark Lewis from Columbiana County, died on the first of February.  I am near tears, but they're not falling.  i saw him last year, in Salem.  I'd gone to see if i could find the apartment he and his wife were living in.  they'd lived in Lisbon for years, in fact that is where they lived when i met him in treatment in 88.  but they lost the house, his addiction robbing them for the entire length of my sobriety, and his wife had a stroke and he had a number of illnesses that were killing him.  so i had a chance to see him, to sit and have coffee with him and talk to him.  I gave him some money for cigarettes at the end and promised i'd come to visit him in cleveland when he moved there with their baby girl.  but i never did, never got the chance, and seeing him sick i truly did not want to see his wife, Pat, crippled with stroke.  they were two of the best people i'd even known in my life.  and now he's dead.  I don't know how.  I don't know what exactly happened.  i only know his time came, and he's gone.  i found out about it on facebook.  i wonder how many other people have gone that i don't know about, that i will never truly know about.  one day i will be gone, and someone that cared about me once upon a time won't know about it.  but that's life for some of us.  the ones who live grieve the ones who die, and eventually we each get a turn in both roles.

i have work to do now.  i don't want to continue on in half tones and half measures.  i want to get it right.  i see the light ahead of me, i see where things can change and maybe my last years can be wonderful.  i don't know for sure; i'm not God and do not presume to know His mind.  but i know that i've been given some keys to some doors i'd not had before and i intend to use them.  so, i am going to get on with my writing, with my orbit.  it's been rocky so far.  it's been stop and start.  but i do believe i can do it.  i am going to grieve my friend for a few more hours, and then i'll get ready to get back to riding this thing.  it's all i know to do.