adult swim. the last of john.

I love food, been eating it for years, but between the packing of the boxes and the breaking of the heart, I didn't have much of an appetite last month. So, while I existed on a diet of coffee, cigarettes and the occasional Slim-Fast shake, I imagined FDA employees using Xeroxed copies of the Nutritional Pyramid to dry their bitter tears. "Fuck it," they said to each other in the hall, "I give up."

When my hands started to shake, I looked in the fridge. Dash's food had been boxed up and sent with him to Peter's house so all I found were condiments, a huge jar of maraschino cherries and celery limp enough to knit. In the freezer, there was a lone bottle of vodka left over from Slim's 40th birthday and a rock Dash once told me was "for science." For reasons I will explain in another post, I quit drinking last December. However, my wagon was less one wheel that afternoon and as I tumbled off, I chose the vodka - because it has potatoes in it - and thought about packing.

"The Box" sat in the corner and continued to haunt me. A few days before, I had found some crime scene tape in the alley behind the loft and wrapped the box in it. "Caution/Cuidado," for reals. I thought it was hilarious at the time, but now it just made me sad. I wandered around, getting progressively fuzzier from the drink and progressively sadder from the memories. I don't know why empty stomachs and alcohol hate each other so much, cause I'm not the Surgeon General, but they do. I got pretty drunk pretty fast and thought, again, about packing.

First, though, I took the penny jar that Dash and I used for the wishing well waterfall in the courtyard and grabbed two fistfuls. In a few days we would be gone and I still hadn't made it into the LOVE cup. VACATION, HEALTH, PEACE, LOTTO - these were no problem - but because of the way the waterfall is designed, the LOVE cup is Escher-like in it's inaccessibility and I was determined to beat it once and for all. LOVE had cost me dearly and I wanted a return on my investment.

I threw the pennies and wished. I thought I was fine - just another woman throwing money at a rock - until I heard a little girl ask her mother, "Why is that lady crying?" The mom and I shared a knowing look and I ran back upstairs. I was resigning myself to another night of Crypacking™ when I got a phone call.

It was Lucky. She said her mom was making tamales and her sister was coming home early from work and wouldn't it be fun if we all got together and played cards at Mama's house. "Yes," I said, "Fun." She told me not to listen to The Ballad of Love and Hate (anymore) and to meet her in front of the bakery in 20 minutes. "Bakree," I said, "twenny misnuss. Okay."

No one greets you more warmly than Mama. She squeezes her love right into you and wont let go until she's satisfied that you got every last bit. Lucky and her sister, Rocky, are the same way. The three of them also share the loudest and most joyful laugh. The single best laugh I have ever heard... times three. It's strong enough to fill every inch of empty space, including the empty spaces inside of us that need filling the most.

They choose the present whenever they can, which is most days, and I think of them as the Buddha in disguise. Between the loving and the laughing, it's impossible to stay stuck in the blues so, I follow them around and pick up whatever magic they drop and keep it in my pockets for later. My name is Alex and I'm a magic thief.

Mama cooked and we drank wine and played cards and laughed until our sides begged for mercy. Eventually, the day of drinking finally caught up with me and I started to cry. They had all known John back in the day and they were all aware of his recent antics, too. Rocky loves a good outrage session, so while the rest of us pounded the table for emphasis, she ripped into him until there was nothing left and that got me laughing again. So much so that I peed in my pants a little. I excused myself and went to the bathroom downstairs. You have to go through the family room to get to it and when you do, you pass Gavin's altar.

Gavin is Mama's son, and Lucky & Rocky's brother. He died in a car accident 14 years ago and even with all this time gone by, it is the strangest sentence to type. It was a sudden, five o-clock in the morning phone call, un-translatable kind of death and it's still impossible to accept that it's true. I stood there and looked at his photo and remembered the afternoon, a couple of days before his funeral, when we had all gathered for a BBQ. One of many impromptu memorials that week...

Mama was upstairs in the kitchen, which was weighted down with well-meaning casseroles and cases of booze. I don't remember where Rocky was but she was really young and I remember being worried about her. The rest of us were drinking beer in the driveway, telling Gavin stories. Our smiles were broken but every once in awhile, for a second, it seemed like any other BBQ at Mama's house until someone would stare off into that horrible middle distance. We each took turns being genuinely surprised that Gavin hadn't come. Where the hell was he? We hugged and grieved for Gavin and gave way to the tears until... the sound of laughter carried downstairs and hit us like a wave.

Unmistakable and unbelievable, his mother was laughing. Now, hopefully, I will never know what she has endured but I can imagine and I'll tell you - only someone touched with God's own grace, like directly, could manage that. Only someone fiercely committed to gratitude for all she still had would be able to laugh like that. She was in it for the long haul - something I assume she knew instantly - and if there was a laugh to be had in the midst of her immeasurable grief, she would take it. I promised myself that I would never let small things, or small people, get me down. I would take the gift of her resilience and be grateful for my life every day. Sadly, it was a promise I could not keep.

Back in the family room, standing in front of the altar, I thought about heartbreak. When you are in love with someone and they decide to leave, it hurts. We all go through it at least once in our lifetime, and it's real, but in the spectrum of true grief and true loss, spending one more instant on John felt totally self-indulgent. Upstairs, the women were laughing about something (probably my drunken ass) and, once again, the sound hit me like a wave and I knew on the spot that I was done with John forever. I dried the last tear on the old librarian's handkerchief and threw it in the garbage.

The rest of the night is blurry, at best. One of the reasons I gave up drinking is that I can't remember anything the next day. I believe they call that "blacking out" and "blacking out" is a big no-no. Cheney and his pals down there in Cuba could waterboard me for three straight days and I still wouldn't be able to tell them anything that happened.

Allegedly, once I stopped crying, I started singing. Allegedly, I won at cards. Allegedly, I knocked a painting off the wall, while Mama and I were dancing to Pink, and broke the frame. Allegedly, Rocky tucked me in. The next morning, I met up with Mama in the kitchen. I apologized for the painting. She said she always wanted to change the frame because sometimes changing the frame is all it takes. "Mija," she said. "Life is delicious. You just haven't been eating enough." She got up to make coffee and I got busy collecting more magic.

When I got home, I thought of how Gavin must have known deep down how short we are here and how long we are not because he didn't suffer fools and he didn't waste time. He ate up life with the biggest spoon he could find and even though we wanted him to have more, maybe he had his fill. I have never found any meaning in his death but continue to learn a lot from his life and wasting mine doesn't serve his memory. He used to say, "My philosophy is kindness." Amen to infinity.

I have never been able to repay Mama for the gifts she has given us all, just by existing, but with the flowers I sent, I renewed my promise to live more fully. To let stuff go faster, eat dessert before dinner, and pee in my pants more. I threw the box in the dumpster with some leftover pennies and wished John well, then I went upstairs and made myself a feast. With each bite, I sent up a prayer to the Universe, no matter what you throw at me:

Thank you for my life.