11-24-08 vitamins

you were always so private. i feel like a strange spy looking through your emails and your drawers.

i arrive this morning to start going through your things in your office.
it's something i was dreading this weekend when i agreed to come do it.
i didn't realize how much stuff i had given you, all art, and how much of it you put up on your walls. some of it in frames and everything. i feel both proud and sad, i don't want to take it back. i wrap some of it in newspaper and think who might like to unwrap it as a gift. it was meant for you, i don't feel like i have a use for it right now.

the the week your oldest and dearest friend that i've known in my time called you
'the universal mother' refering to your purse and how you'd have everything someone might need in it--a tissue, a band-aid...
your drawers at work are no different. i'm fortunate that you are so organized. everything in a ziploc bag. i find all the stuff you, or someone else, might have needed for your work day---tampons, pads in every size, a brush and curling iron, band-aids, lotions, anti-itch cream, it's all here. including pantyhose, also in a ziploc bag. and extra ziploc bags. snack bars, vitamins..the vitamins really get me. you were always so in to taking vitamins. always worried about calcium and how i probably never got enough--especially my years being vegan
'you really should be taking supplements' you tell me.
here they all are and i think how in your last year you ended up with osteoporosis, due to the terrible steroids they kept you on for so long and at such a high dose. you were 2 inches taller than me and by the end i could see the top of your head. compression fractures in your back you needed surgery on, 2 different times. all the pain your back caused you off and on this past year....meds you took to rebuild your bones. you were so good. walking, taking vitamins, eating well...that's how i remember you. how did you get so sick? all these bags of vitamins, some looking a bit moldy after sitting in a drawer for a year...how much control do we have? someone can do what seems like all the right things and look how it plays itself out.