This morning my lungs were my alarm clock, hacking violently against my ribcage in an exercise they’ve been perfecting the past couple of days.  I waited for the spasm to end.  It didn’t.  I sat up, hoping that would help. It didn’t.  Finally I gave in and headed to the bathroom to expel whatever my respiratory system had diagnosed as foreign material.  Then I climbed back into bed, feeling quite sorry for myself on such a lovely spring morning.

A few minutes later, the phone rang and I saw my brother-in-law’s name on the caller ID.  “It’s bad news, isn’t it?” was my greeting and he answered in the affirmative.  The world lost a wonderful woman this morning when his aunt passed away after a long battle with the big C.  She possessed the sort of elegance that allowed her to make statements like, “That Tom Cruise is such an asshole,” and still sound as if she were conversing over tea with the Queen of England.  And she laughed at my jokes, even the crude ones, which always endears me to a person.  I heard of her battle in spurts over the phone and email, so my separation kept my coward ass from having to feel it deeply.  But this morning, when the news came as I had just finished asking God for a relief from my own temporary discomfort, I felt humility pretty deeply.

This latest illness of mine has banished me to my shoebox apartment at a time when spring is finally threatening to stay, the BF’s parents are in town, and the river would be a glorious place for a run.  Thankfully I have The Roommate, whose sense of rebellion mirrors mine: we toyed with the idea of sitting in a movie theater all day while the sun blazed outside, then settled for a trip to Rite Aid to stock up on Easter candy.  Now she’s playing Justin Bieber songs just to piss me off.  Thankfully I also have the fire escape, where if I squint my eyes just so, the cherry blossoms will appear to be a cloud that I am resting upon and Anne Lamott’s words are my company.  Along with the riff raff of 29th Street, which included a man pacing the block while screaming on his phone, “You never LISTEN TO ME!  Why won’t you just LISTEN TO ME!” and a dude who looked like Jacob in New Moon pre-haircut, forty years later.  And then there was the reflection of the lights bouncing off apartment windows and hitting the black asphalt, reminding me of all the light to come in the next couple of seasons…which I will not be experiencing just from my fire escape. Even if today, I don’t have the lung capacity to walk or run the city like it deserves for its good behavior.  This is a day of loss and sickness, but it is a season of open tombs and new life.  You can’t have one without the other.

Now excuse me while I hack up a piece of lung.  Then I have to help the Roommate don her Mad Hatter costume.  Some brokers are coming by to look at our apartment with potential renters.