i've been waiting

when was the last time you waited? i am not talking about the last time you waited for the waitress to bring you your coffee or for the bus to come or for the game to come on, when did you wait last? when you were the subject? when was the last time you stood outside instead of waiting in the warmth or dryness? think about your memories until you come up with when it was. now that you have figured out the last time you really waited i need you to think about why you decided to wait.

see i normally think about it like this, i wait because i need it. normally in situations where i choose to wait i have other options. waiting teaches us more than just delayed gratification, it involves patience, discipline, and hopefully kindness. yeah i could walk, and sometimes i do, sometimes the walk is the wait, but sometimes it is just as important to sit at the bus stop and trust that the bus is going to eventually show up. so what made you wait? what makes any of us do anything? meaning, the juice in the joints of the motion of life.

a good friend of mine recently died and i haven't really cried about it yet. that is not my normal style, my modus operandi is tears. i don't know if i can pick out why or what i am waiting for. i guess it is some fool's hope that someone will be shaking me awake in a few minutes to say it's all been a bad dream. some sick joke where the world doesn't seem to have balance, my stomach is always upset and my friend is gone. i don't think anyone is going to wake me. and so i keep trying to come to grips with the awful reality that all these things are true. there was a car wreck, a lot of my friends were hurt and one of them didn't live through it.

i have fought hard to not ask the questions that are always on the tip of my tongue. i love knowing the why and the what of things. why did this happen, what could have been different. the burden of free thoughts, tims were i find myself alone. i know i need it though, that wait in silence. it seems like i havee't been able to just sit and focus on the reality, the gravity, of the situation. i haven't slept the way i need to, i am guessing i won't for a while. you know that profound emotion that sucks away your breath in a wordless situation? that seems to be the emotion of our group of friends. that stunned silence. denial, sure, but not really, more like anticipation, a wishing, a desire that will go unfulfilled.

so waiting, and in this case all of that wonderful emotion of waiting is just building up inside me. and unlike the bus, the coffee, a phone call, or whatever i normally wait for, my friend isn't going to come walking through any door, he's not going to call, the release i need is now trapped with all those other things that seem to hang unanswered.

i don't know what to do. if the bus is late i walk, if the coffee is late i drink water, somehow i know the sun is going to come up tomorrow, that this big planet of ours keeps turning and until we die we do our best to keep living. i wish i had something more to give but i am woefully empty handed. things that normally don't bother me are causing me to got into fits, i am easily annoyed, not sleeping, not eating right, and i am somewhere in between unable and not wanting.

but i know what to do. my friend would want me to be as sad as i needed to be, for as long as i needed to be, but after that he would want me to live. to grab ahold of each day and do more than just survive. and he would want me to hold all of those others around me as close as i can stand and let them know that they are loved.he would want me to go to the concerts where we would have gone together and cheer loud enough for both of us. he would want life to happen, what any of us would want he would want for us.

so for now i am one foot forward and one foot back but not forever. right now is a time for stillness, a time to gather, a time for reflection. soon it will not be this way, and this time will go where all others go, into memories and histories. ai think what hits hard is that someday it will be me, someday i will have finished the race and all that will be left is what i gave to others. nothing collected will last except the hearts of friendship.