MOG

We only managed to get back to OKC for Christmas 2006 by talking my work into granting a temporary transfer to the Target on May Ave in OKC. So I worked 8 hour days there, bumping into all sorts of old friends who were shocked that I wasn't in Florida. A few people thought Erika and I had broken up.

I was an odd fit at the May Ave Target. I've been on the east coast long enough to forget that people in OKC are suspicious of outsiders and they considered me a Floridian. The fact that I wore a scarf also seemed to throw people for a loop. Much less a scarf with skulls on it.

I was consistently hung over every day I worked at that Target; and it was bizarre and depressing to be in the same city as all my old friends again, but to be too busy to see most of them. I worked all day and then did family stuff with the in-laws at night and then E & I would sneak some wine or beer and get drunk late at night. All the time, hanging over us was the mostly unmentioned but vastly conspicuous absence of Janis in the house.

My only alone time was the drive to work and back. The Black Goat With A Thousand Young made me a comp CD of French pop music and two songs got stuck on repeat: Remember by Air and Comment Te Dire Adieu by Francoise Hardy.

These two songs are the surreal experience, the horrible reckoning, that is the death of a loved one. They probably don't sound like grief to you; but you'll be surprised the forms grief will take when you lose someone.