I'm at my Mom's, dinner just happened, packing stuff up is happening, and there may have been some shopping today.
It's the last two weeks of my Mom living here. It hasn't hit me yet. At all.
Instead, I think about other memories, not involving the house, my parents, anything relating to "now".
My Mom and I watch Sex and the City (even though we've seen them all a thousand times) because it's Saturday night, and I want Mike to watch them (haven't I watched enough hockey games in the last few months?).
So we put on Sex and the City on at the appointed time, I thought back (again) to years of watching the show with friends. One night, my friend N. decided to have an SATC 'marathon' where we all went over to her apartment, ordered Thai food, drank a tonne of wine, and watched SATC until we almost fell asleep (or passed out). It was amazing. Literally, seven hours of watching.
The best part is, with the exception of a couple of girls, we are all still friends today, even with moves, marriages, kids, etc.
As the show is on, the three of us, my mom, Mike, and myself are looking online together at a wedding album, one I have just discovered (oh Facebook, you do not disappoint sometimes with your tricky 'view as' settings).
It was the wedding of someone I once worked with, someone whom I once viewed as a friend, an ally, who went through a difficult divorce. I know this because I wrote a letter commending his character when he asked me to, during said divorce.
I thought enough of him to do this (I wonder if I still have a copy? I write a mean letter. And by mean, read: amazing).
And then, when I went through a time of intense betrayal and unkindness, he was one of the people who knew what was going on (before I did) and did not have the character, wherewithal, or common decency to tell me. Instead, he became part of the betrayal.
A few months after this happened, he text-messaged me (oddly, on my father's birthday, November 13th), to say he was thinking of me and my family. In a rare moment of clear anger, I texted him back, this person who had such colossal nerve, this person who had left the task of having me find out about said betrayal up to one of my best friends, another N., who had the thankless task of having to call me one evening to tell me just what had gone on, as I had been too preoccupied with my father's illness to know or at that point even care. I will admit this, though--I had many solitary evenings in the roof garden of Princess Margaret hospital to think about the goings-on of my life, where I would visit my father after he had chemo (he would stay at the hospital overnight on those occasions).
And let me tell you: there is little time to feel sorry for yourself when patients in the palliative care ward are being wheeled outside for some evening summer air.
I texted him back, in a kind of brazen move that is very unlike me:
"You knew didn't you? And you didn't tell me?"
(and then the kicker):
"Thanks alot, friend."
Then I deleted him out of my phone.
And now I get the intense pleasure of laughing at his ridiculous wedding photos with my mom and my husband, on a Saturday night because that's what life does for you sometimes. The wheel spins, and justice is served.
It feels good.
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