November 27th 11:30 AM

    I fainted this morning.  I brought the kids to school and came home.  I was depressed.  I’ve been depressed.  The house is empty.  Lonely.  Rob is missing and yet he is here.  He is everywhere.  He is in the kitchen reading the paper, in the den with the TV.  He is in the bathroom and the bedroom and the bed, beside me when Anna is not there.   Anna was not there this morning and Rob was out of reach, out of touch.  I could see him, feel him but I could not feel his touch.  I could not touch his body.  He is only in my mind.

 

    I crawled out of bed and into the bathroom.  I lifted the lid from the toilet because that is the first thing I do.  I drain my bladder.  Don’t you find the first thing you do, every morning is run to the bathroom and drain your bladder?  I do.  Rob did.  He would climb out of be, go to the bathroom and fill the room with the sound of urine streaming into the bowl.  Sometimes, I would just lie there and listen, wishing he’d finish up so I could relieve myself and sometimes I would lie there in awe of the endless flow.  Sometimes I could see him in my head standing there and wondering if he would ever get out of there, wondering if this would make him late.  His voice would come trailing out of the bathroom.

 

    “Jeeze, hun.  You hear that?  The endless whiz.”

 

    I would smile.  It always made me smile.  It was the stupidest thing in the world and yet I couldn’t contain the smile.  It’s like that first time you pass gas with someone you love.  How many guys have you gone out with and ate something that didn’t quite agree with you and you feel it building, you feel it coming and you fight like all hell to contain it, hold it, keep from what?  Showing some idiot you decided to go out with that you’re human?  It was different with Rob.  It was love.  It was funny.  We laughed.  Me, with a little embarrassment and him just because.  The embarrasment passes.  Your comfortable.  It’s love.

 

    I lifted the lid off the bowl and turned to sit and then turned back around because I was suddenly sick to my stomach.  I was down on my knees.  My face was hanging over the rim.  I hate being on my knees.  All my life, I’m on my knees for one of two reasons.  I’m either heaving my guts up, or, having someones dick shoved down my throat.  I’m not sure I’ve ever had any other occasion to be down on my knees.

 

    I was sick and I didn’t even know why.  Sometimes, we know things before we even know them.  Surely, you’ve had that happen to you.  You think of someone and then they call.  You find yourself alarmed about something and then it happens.  We have some kind of collective conscious and what one person knows, everyone knows, but we don’t know it.  We don’t know because what everyone knows doesn’t matter to 99.9% of everyone else who knows it, without knowing it.  It isn’t important, so we never know it.  It never crosses our mind, even though we know it.  It isn’t important enough to surface.  Does that make sense?  Do you get that?

 

    I was sick.  As quickly as it came on it passed.  I sat, long after my bladder emptied and then I pushed myself out because there are kids and school.  Kids are like that.  Kids get you moving when you know you’d rather just crawl back into bed, shut the phones, draw the blinds.  I’m gone, today.  Stop the clock.  I’ve stepped off the world and I won’t be back before tomorrow.

 

    I took the kids to school and walked back into the house.  I fixed myself a cup of coffee and went into the den.  I always walked into the den in the morning.  There is a local news-cast that starts at ten.  It’s the mid -morning report on channel 37.  I turn on channel 37 and the news comes on.  It’s just the news.  The usual news.  Never anything exciting.  Burgaleries.  Someone vandalizes a car.  Drugs and then a picture of Jim Horowitz is on the screen behind the reporter and they’re reporting on a brutal murder, only the brutal murder isn’t the subject of a Horowitz investigation.  The brutal murder is Jim Horowitz.  Jim, whom I spoke with only a few days ago, is brutally murdered and then it hits me.  It hits me so hard I can’t fend off the dizziness, or the spin of the room.  I must have hit my head on something hard.  It hurts.  I took two tylenol and it hurts.  I have to get away from Annie.  I have to think of my kids.