Calling Me

The pull to the cemetery right now is overpowering.  It's weird because there for awhile I couldn't go at all.  It was just too hard, too painful.  Lately, my car seems to turn in that direction of its own accord.  Even if I had no plans of going there, even if I am empty handed, and most often when my insides are a shaking, jumbled up mess, my hands turn the steering wheel onto the narrow lane.  I always see her, standing tall above the others in her row and in her section.
A friend asked me lately what do I do there...do I talk to her?
Well, sometimes.  But it's awfully depressing to pour your heart out and get no answer.  So sometimes I just sit in the car and cry.  Write.  Draw.  Other times, I bring her flowers, pull the weeds, arrange her little trinkets...a heart breaking substitute for folding her laundry or hectoring her for the thousandth time to straighten up her room.  Sometimes I walk.  I come here with Jake sometimes, but alone most of the time.  Tim visits what?  Once a year?  And only then, when I set it up, like a play date.
Why the many visits just lately?
I guess because I can feel and see everyone passing her by.  Their stories are getting longer and bigger.  Hers was cut short and it's over.  Her story is over and I wasn't ready for it to be.  She wasn't ready for it to be.  Someone told me the other day, that with her mental health issues, perhaps Cory had prayed to be taken out of the situation.  I could feel rage boil up my throat like a tactical missile.  But my affect has become rather flat lately, so I just said, "I think she wanted to be here."
Yeah, she wanted to be here.  Even if it was hard.  Even if she'd gotten a shit deal.  She wanted to be here.  Can't you tell from how hard she tried?  Every day?
Which brings this circle to the same painful closing.  (Get ready, Dr. Z, the four therapists I've seen, and countless friends and family, to cluck your tongue and shake your head.)
I should've gone to the store.  If I'd gone, the lady never would've hit her.  She'd have been safe at home.  And to the people who think God has your days numbered, I say maybe, maybe not...I'm not so sure.  Not so sure there's a God so even less sure there is a giant ledger somewhere with Cory's departing death date on it, stamped in waterproof red ink.
  What I do know for certain is that I could have gone to the store myself instead of letting her walk to the store for the chili powder.  And if I had, she may very well be here. She would be 24 years old.  She would be adding to her story.  Maybe she would be getting ready to be a Little Momma, too.  Who knows?  I will never know because I fucked up.  This knowledge sits in my chest like a rock..a rock with sharp edges that cuts me just a little every time I move.  Any criticism from others, any small mistake I make, changes route with lightening speed to "well, that Nicole Mansfield?  She couldn't even manage to keep her kid alive, so what do you expect?"
That's the voice I hear.  How about that?  I guess I hear voices, too.  I wish I could tell Cory.  She'd be flabbergasted.
I'm not sure what going to the cemetery every day accomplishes.  I don't know if it's helping or hurting.  I just know I feel her getting smaller, fuzzier.  I see it when I pass  her spot on the road and the weeds have taken over.  I see it when I kneel to pull them from around the base of her monument.  Jacob sticks to a few trusted stories and when I trot out others, he often says he can't really remember them.  This kills me.  She must be remembered.  She must be remembered.  She must be remembered.
So whether all these visits lately are a good thing or not, I don't know.  I just know that when I hear her calling, I go to see her.  I couldn't make it to her in time that day on the road.  This is the least I can do.