The Official Website of Author Tarah L. Wolff Writer of Embraced by Darkness

I wonder, if we all know what its like to hold someone against us, that we love so much, that is wasting away, literally, in our arms. I guess maybe we all do. Or we will anyway. I look at the people around me and wonder how they deal. I wonder if there is some kind of method that I don’t understand to make it all ok. To make pulling them against our hearts, wrapping our arms around their failing bodies and feeling their heart, so strong, against our own, knowing it won’t last long, it simply can’t.

I have pets. You guys know this. You’ve been with me through the burial of the last two, over the past year and with me through the death of my grandma (that felt like she went far too soon, just a little bit ago). I have my last grandparent too. Who is a wraith. We sit around her, not knowing what to say. It’s not awkward. Awkward would be a cruel and entirely wrong word, as though it could be cut with a knife, and that’s not true. It’s sad. And it’s quiet, because there are no words for someone you love that is wasting. I wonder, is this the sound of someone going away from this world? Is it always so fucking quiet?

I pulled my poor dog Reny against my heart tonight and thought, not for the first and surely not the last, time that I should probably dig his grave before the ground freezes. Reny is my last dog of my “boys”. The last animal that held my heart (and took care of it) all those years while I was in Oklahoma. His brother was my doggy soul mate, and Reny knew him better then I ever could. Litter mates since birth. I think, I know, Reny will finally get to go back to him and end the painful year since his brother’s death, sure, ok that somehow makes me feel better. His death will be the proven end of my decade and how obvious it is when I pull Reny to my heart and look at my last grandparent. They look alike right now, and how truly awful is that? Both slipping through our fingers, not eating enough. Skin and bones. Too thin, or light, or whatever you want to call it. Reny’s heart pounded hard against mine as I tried to hold his skin, and his bones tonight and it is very hard to swallow. But isn’t it always?

Grandma is worried, and she looks scared to me, as she has for the past decade. With her many problems she will be moving into a place the day before Halloween. She is 95. She had a good run right? Is that what they call it when you live this long? Never mind the quality, it was, surely, a good run when you live that long, right? Oh wow, I suppose they may say that about me someday, if I live past 80, and oh what a miracle that would be. Funny though, isn’t that what everyone always ever said when they were in their twenties, before they had something to live for, before they knew what “old” meant? And I suppose I will find that out too.

But I really hope that I find out, better, how to deal. How to need… Wait, not need, WANT, support less…. Or at least learn how to ask for it in better places because I have seen in myself the want, the desire of support, from no one who can give it. Flying right by those that want to give it to me, as always, maybe I’m just a self centered martyr. Well, that’s easy enough. Being a martyr is as easy as closing your eyes and holding out your arms and believing in it. Maybe I’m just lazy in that case. But I do wonder when it is that I should start digging Reny’s grave. And is it horrible of me to think that that might be a relief, somehow? When my poor little doggy slips through my fingers. I know he will be flying with his brother. And, I know, my grandma, when she goes, will be at her best again, dancing with my grandpa. Fair enough. Yeah, those thoughts are what keep me dealing. Is that how everyone deals? Imagining good things like we’re children just pretending to be adults?