The librarian who runs the branch where I worked today asked about my family and whether I was spending Thanksgiving with them. I explained all my siblings were gathering in the South but I couldn’t go this year. Then she asked if my parents would be there as well. I guess I could have said that they would be there, as I’m sure they’re around inside our hearts, but I just said they were both gone. Oddly, she asked how. Hardly anyone does that. So I gave her the brief three sentence explanation and we moved on. Or so I thought.

Turns out I can’t sleep tonight. Every time I close my eyes, there they are, Mom and Dad. And the memories just keep sliding through my mind. Mostly the memories of that summer day when my cell rang and I heard about Mom, and that early winter morning at work when both brothers called independently, their ragged voices supporting the truth of what they were saying about Dad, even though my mind refused to believe it. And the memories of standing in a UPS store late that night, two days before Christmas, waiting for a fax from the funeral home; a form for me to sign giving permission to the funeral home to cremate Dad without us seeing him. Because the damage from the semi truck crash was so great they said. And the employees in the UPS store laughing and goofing around behind the counter, and my husband getting angry with them. And me pulling him away and saying it was OK, they didn’t know. And memories of us sitting around the Christmas tree that Dad put up before he headed out to the airport that year, waiting for Christmas Day to be over so that we could start calling his friends. We didn’t want to ruin Christmas for them.

So this night I try to exercise those ghosts. But it isn’t working. Funny how you think you’re moving along, doing pretty good, and an innocent question, a quick reply can stay inside your head until you relax, and then you’re just blindsided again. And you realize that four years isn’t so long, and yet you keep it all to yourself because the rest of the world rightly has moved on, and you don’t want to drag them all through this again. And when your husband goes to bed after wondering aloud why you’re still up you just say simply that you can’t sleep and let it go.

Because really, what changes if you try to describe the inside of your eyelids to anyone else? The movie playing there is a private showing. And the only way you can get it to stop playing is to let it go on until it wears you down and you finally sleep. And tomorrow will be OK.