i'm beginning to wonder what's going to happen... will i just move forward, leave this behind and not look back? or is it all going to catch up with me, and i'll stop being strong?
you need to enter work every day with your game face on, grinning and bearing each day. this morning i was chopping a massive amount of jalapenos when lilia told me there was a man who wanted to talk to me. i turned around to see Clete, Travis' dad. I never really had the opportunity to meet Trav, often he was sleeping, and when he was awake, I would always show up at the most inopportune times. Travis was 25. diagnosed with lung cancer. he passed away this past december, around christmas. on his way home.
Clete was my first "friend" out here in tulsa. i would talk to him whenever i saw him at the center. When i saw him today it was a nice feeling, but with such undertones of a sort of sadness. its strange, the energy out here. i don't have words for it... but there are so many ghosts walking around. its so strange to walk down the hall and think about the friends you've made whom you will never see again. i can vividly remember every moment of seeing Jolie that morning I found out they hadn't gone home yet, and they were still in tulsa for more treatment. i remember what she was wearing, i remember that she seemed slightly irate [i would have been too]. I remember standing across from that same spot, on halloween, with my okie teeth, talking to Clete, and looking up as Travis was walking to infusion on the upper level. His dad shouted an introduction, and i smiled my toothless smile and waved. Jolie was my favorite friend out here, and even though I never had the opportunity to hang out with Travis, he's always had a very special place in my heart. Maybe because he's my age, maybe because of the empathy i feel for he and his family. i don't know. but these people are gone now, and soon i will be toO. leaving tulsa behind.
... so what happens next?
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