World Keeps Turning

I'm sitting in Glass's office trying to get caught up on my deadlines when my mother calls me. It's a general call. I mean I am in California after all. I'm her only son. She wants to know how I am. She also wants to tell me that my cousin Ashley is dead, that he died nearly a week ago in a traffic accident. He's gone.

I only truly learned about my grandfather's nephews after his death when I interviewed them for a book project I was working on that eventually became The House on Childress Street. He had five nephews in Norwalk, Connecticut then. In the six years since that number had dropped to two. Doug died due to diabetes complications. James Marvin died of injuries inflicted by the bitch he married who decided to cover him in kerosene and set him on fire. Now Ashley. He couldn't type for shit but he always reached out to me via email. He'd send me these notes telling me about where he was visiting. He traveled the world whenever he could. I always wanted to go with him. Now I can't.

I talk about it a lot but I have this thing with time. When it comes to the things that matter, the things I want, my clock always appears to be set for too early or too late. It is only in the things that don't really matter to me that I find myself keeping to my own sense of time.

God doesn't have to play fair because he created the game. I'm teaching myself how to not talk back to my boss, how to not ask questions that I'll never get the answers to, other than by living life. I held my okay sister in my arms tonight and felt her tears stain my shoulder for reasons that have nothing to do with my own sadness. But as you can't stop what's coming, all you can do is the job, your job in the scheme of things. I'll continue to do the work because it's what I'm here for, even if playing by his rules killed me slowly. Out.