Grief'in...On a Jet Plane

Days Walking - 123

I was up and wide awake very early today (4:35am!) for whatever reason, maybe I was afraid of oversleeping. It's been raining on and off all morning, Ack is crying for Gabe's departure and this is fitting.

I went out and let myself get rained on. Everything was very quiet, all I could hear was the rain. It was a soothing, meaningful experience somehow. After I dried off, I scribbled out a new poem that might actually be halfways decent after some editing. I'll try to remember to post it, if it's ever worthy.

One thing I noticed about being up so early is, I still have not gotten around to getting some new books to read. I think I spotted a used bookstore, now I just have to remember where it was, once payday comes. I jotted down the suggestions you guys made - a few weeks ago was it? - and will be looking for those.

We went out to breakfast and then took the bus to the airport to drop off Gabe for his flight home. Despite all the caffeine, we were a pretty depressed bunch. You want your last meal together to be upbeat, but it's hard.

Good grief! Did you know it's like $600 to fly from Fairbanks to New York? One way! There's two very depressing words, 'one way'. Unless you're escaping from your miserable life where your husband beats you nightly and you head down to the train station and get your 'Destination Anywhere' going on. Then 'one way' has a note of righteous escape from a difficult situation.

We couldn't really dawdle at the airport, cause a few of us have jobs now, so it was painfully brief in more ways than one. Everybody cried at some point. Church got it out of the way during breakfast, and was dry-eyed later while the rest of us were all blubbering like fools. The guys tried to do their muy macho back slap, take care buddy bullsh*t but they were wiping their eyes too.

Gabe is a good solid guy and I know I've had issues with him in the past, (mostly my fault, stupid stuff, because I was being bitchy) but he was a solid member of the team and it really f*cking blows that he has to leave. At least he's leaving with all of his fingers, toes, and limbs - one of us could have been seriously hurt, and much worse than a knee injury. We've been very fortunate, lucky, and blessed.

You'd think that a job like mine would be hampered by the rain, but that's not how my boss see's it. I'm glad I packed well, for all weather conditions. But to protect the flyers, they give you this one-ply disposable poncho thing, which might as well be a garbage bag for how easily it tears.

So I slogged along in the rain, and the flyers were limp and pathetic. I wonder if the ink should happen to run and ruined someone's pretty door, could they sue the flyer company? I'll bet they could.

I'm just glad we weren't given a huge stack of little flyer condoms - like the little plastic jumper they put on newspapers - and have to sit there for hours creating individually wrapped pieces of junkmail that no one will ever read.

Litany Webb, signing off

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