four

Sunday, 14-Mar

I woke up this morning to the chill of an overnight frost that silvers the hawthorn along the hedgerows. Their branches on the verge of green appeared petrified until sunshine thawed them out, and now it’s a gorgeous day with yellow gorse lending its vanilla and coconut scent to the breeze.

This won’t do. Munge-ing on about what the breeze smells like is all very fine, but not what I’m supposed to be addressing. I can hear you loud and clear in your most unprofessional manner: “Annie, cut the shite.”

Right. I’m supposed to be “processing” and “healing.”

The problem is that I’m not a reliable narrator anymore, even of my own life. I doubt what I had always taken for granted about myself, my objectivity, my insights into people—everything my training enhanced feels like a lie now.

Fact: News has circulated about a “suspicious death.”

Fact: Today I’m going to the wake even though I don’t know the victim.

Fact: Something niggles at me—yes, a fact buried within the sorry news, but it eludes me at the moment.

There. Objectivity. Not so difficult, after all. You now have a summation of my day with no undue effort from me. I’d rather forgo undue effort, if you don’t mind, not to mention forgo my usual cycle of self-recrimination and regret. This is a difficult time as it is, and soon to be April, the month of resurrection, the earth nodding its way toward summer, a pretty pagan season. But I’ve always found the notion of resurrection creepy because I envision undead beings scuttling under cover of night.

I’m not sure what I mean by that, so never mind. The only thing that scares me these days is him, out there somewhere. I helped resurrect him in a way, didn’t I?

God, I’m a sick person. Given my life choices, especially moving here to County Clare, I expect I deserve whatever comes.