Lughnasa Waning Harvest Moon
Rigel has not come home. We don’t know where she is or how she is. Her absence is palpable. At night she sits on the couch with me, her head in my lap as I watch a few TV shows, wind down from the day. She was not there tonight.
Our neighbor left in an ambulance again. Another suicide attempt, this time with tylenol pm. We cannot know the pain in another persons life, not even those close to us. The barrier of flesh and mind holds us out, even when we try to overcome it. This is the truth in solipsism.
There were two police cars, an ambulance and people going in and out of the house. I watched for a while, behind a gauze curtain and felt like an Italian grandmother leaning out a window in a Boston neighborhood. Drama, the kind that touches lives daily on every block in every city and town in the world, grabs us, makes us want to know how things come out.
Kate gave his wife a call and offered to be there for her. She has a big heart and a generous spirit.
The longer Rigel is gone, the more a feeling of sadness creeps over me. I don’t want to feel it. It seems as if I do that I’ve given up on her and I haven’t, but now she’s gone at night.
