It rained on my way home wednesday night, like a cow pissing on a flat rock.

Rain is palliative for me, it eases my pain without actually fixing anything. I mean, I guess, other than the pain. And mostly, just at that moment in time.

it is a month since Jenny died. During that time I haven’t thought overmuch about it, other than those times I wondered to myself what was happening with her, or those times I wanted to share a thought, a photograph, a joke. And she wasn’t there. My calmness about her death frightened me a little because I feared I have become so jaded I had died inside.

For twenty years, we shared most of our thoughts, our fears, our joy, just because in many ways we were kindred spirits, autodidacts, we had gone our own way despite it being hard and painful. Often insomnia brought us together late at night and we shared our fears in the iron dark and talked one another in off the ledge, when needed.

I hope I was as good a friend to her as she was to me. I still talk to her every day, and I comfort myself to think she is listening. And sometimes yelling at me.

Anyway, on the way home, around Manteno, “Right now” by Van Halen came on the radio. Not a big VH fan, but this one speaks to me, not least because of the original music video (Remember those?) which is now 27, and old enough to get a break on it’s car insurance.

It was a painful reminder of how fleeting life is and how fast things change.

And the waterworks started. By the Wilmington road exit in Peotone I was physically incapable of driving and I pulled off the road at the overpass, sliding out of the car and standing in the rain as great heaving sobs ran through me.

By the time I was finished I was soaked through and had to wring my shirt out to get back in the truck.

No, I’m not dead inside. But part of me wonders if it would be easier if I was. Anyway, thanks Jenny, for everything. As this Shloshim ends I hope that I have somehow helped you on the next phase of your journey and I hope you have a great story to tell me when I see you again.

Meanwhile the rest of you fuckers take care of yourself. Nobody else is allowed to die!!!