I may not have mentioned in the most conducively lucid way possible before, but my mother’s cousin died last week. She was 41. She has two young children. I am sad.

For the most part, I’ve gone back to work and gotten settled into my good old ridiculous routines of self-destruction. But sometimes, I pause and it all floods back and it just hurts, so badly.

I found out at 8:00 a.m. on Thursday, 16 March. She’d been in the hospital sometime (a day? a week? I don’t know) after contracting pneumonia. Or something. Ninety percent of what I know at all is from my brother’s communications from overhearing anyone talking. Or my overhearing things. We don’t ask questions. Never have.

She’d been feeling tired. Spent. Worn out. She’s never been healthy.

She’s always been kind. And fun. And loving. And faithful.

She was tired. She went to the hospital Wednesday night with chest pains. She died on Thursday morning. In the hospital. At 4:30.

While her husband was in Afghanistan.

And her babies were asleep at home.

And I was in Utah, pleading with my dog to please just go to sleep.

And I am struck with the normalcy & blandness of my own life the time at which it happened. And I’m struck with the inability of my soul, so inextricably intertwined in hers by some strange bond of blood and experience, judgments and distance—and those times when she’d hang on Daniel’s arm and grin, “Smile if you love me”—couldn’t know. It couldn’t prepare me for the reality of it all. And I’m a little offended. Hurt, if you will.

The last time I talked to her was Monday, 26 December 2005. I was sitting at the back corner booth at the McDonald’s off of Interstate 85 in Lavonia, Georgia. Mom, Nana, Daniel, and I had driven halfway to meet Mama and Papa so I could see them before I went back to Utah the next day. We sat around the table and laughed. Leigh called on Papa’s cell phone and he passed the phone to me. She asked how it was to be at home. I sighed, “Oh, you know, it’s … ok.” But she didn’t know. She sounded nearly taken aback when she responded, “I love to be here. I love it at home.” I hurried through goodbye and passed the phone to the next person and it continued around the table. While Mama was saying goodbye, I took a picture of Nana with everyone’s food piled around her and we all laughed.

While I was preparing to fly to Atlanta, I thought back on our conversation and analyzed it as our last. At first, I was nearly offended. How could she judge me the last time I talked to her? How could she take what I said and disagree with it? How could she not understand how hard it was for me to be at home? It wasn’t fair for her to judge me for the choices I’d made and for the consequences which were inevitable—but understandable—right? And how could that be fair, that it’d be the last time, and I’d offended her and made her upset with me?

As I traveled, and as I spent time with these people—these proud, faithful people who have lived in the same small town and known the same people all their lives and who, meaning well and more by reflex than sense of duty, had filled two refrigerators to capacity with fried chicken—I realized what it meant for Leigh to be home. And how, as I replayed the tape of our conversation in my mind, it must feel to these people when someone leaves the sense of comfort and security they know they can always have.

It wasn’t until the plane ride home when I realized what had happened and I repented, for being so judgmental myself. And I understood what she meant. It was so very good to be at home. To have a history, and to find comfort in its sweet unchangeability. I realized that for the first time since I’d left three years ago, I wasn’t banging down the door to hop the next plane out of there.

I lingered in the kitchen in South Carolina before my mother and I left for Atlanta, the night before I flew back to Salt Lake City. I took in the scents and hugged the people and came to terms with the differences in where I’ve been and where I am. And I took comfort in being home. Not where I was raised the majority of my growing up years, but where it mattered. Where it felt like home should feel like. Where days of the week aren’t pronounced with that final ‘a’ and where they play music while you pray in church. And where the people are so good and so full of good intentions and so much the stability I cling to as the goodness of my childhood.

So yeah. I guess you could say it isn’t all bad—and why dwell—because there were all those moments of transparent self-realization. But I don’t buy it, yet. I’m not at the point where the last conversation I had with her was worth it for the end result. Because it feels wrong to have even had the opportunity to grow through the sorrow I and everyone around me felt.

It’s so easy to console someone when you can’t feel the grief. And I’m really great at rephrasing the clichéd standbys. But when it’s this close, and when our family is so dichotomously combative and fiercely close all at the same time and when her seven-year-old stood at her casket and stroked her mama’s hair, “She’s better off now,” just couldn’t cut it.

Working Title: Maybe it shouldn’t be allowed for someone to write so many words about such little time.

Here’s the thing. I don’t know if you can really, honestly infer this from any photos you’ve ever seen of me or if it will come as a great shock (only if you’re blind): I am not an athlete.

Let’s be entirely truthful here: I am not a walker. Neither leisure or necessity.

Let’s be painfully aware of how lazy Ashley is. I used to live at 159 West 200 North. Using the ingenious grid system, you’ll see that it’s really not very far from work. Using your vast knowledge of Salt Lake City (or going by my assessment), you’ll also know it would be idiotic to drive the route daily.

You’ll also be appalled to know that I used to work at 35 North West Temple. I will not note that location out of my loathing of my very existence. Also because then you will sue me. Because people this stupid shouldn’t be allowed to own cars.

Anyway, today the guys at work wanted to go out to lunch and because I was in the room when they started making plans, I was begrudgingly asked along (also because I keep whining that they always invite me after I have plans) and also asked to make a decision on location and approximate time of departure.

Jane, who does not count as a girl—not because she is not womanly, because she is, but because I am a girl and I have legs 1/17 the length of hers—suggested the Indian Market somethingorother “within walking distance” on D Street.

And because I am an ungrateful pip of a child and was not satisfied with the menu, I decided to veto with the approval and encouragement of the director and instead designate a lunchtime blessing of savory deliciousness at Sawadee, a â??Deserves a â??Utahâ??s Bestâ?? for Best Thai, hands down but donâ??t tell anyone because I want it to stay specialâ? authentic Thai restaurant Camille recommended over the weekend.

I mentioned it to the other guys who said, “Oh, ok.” All of them. In unison. Bryce asked where it was and I told him the address—1.2 miles to the east of our office. He said his preference would be to walk. Of course, I thought. Walking! Yay! Walking is fun! I walk with Ethel! Ethel likes to walk! Ethel likes beer! Lunch=beer!

Oh stop. I’m as sober as David Letterman. When he hasn’t been drinking.

I started out with great enthusiasm and little to prove, determined to make the 1.2 miles a negligible distance, though I knew I was in trouble, if only for the fact that I had, at the most, three doses of Albuterol left in the white inhaler in my maroon paisley purse, and my lungs have been acting awfully snotty lately. They’re too good to inhale.

They were the first culprits. We were on our way up a hill, passed a man with a lit cigarette and Mark thought it necessary and cordial to discuss my family life at that very moment. As did I, except for the whole breathing and talking part. This is where my theory that we’d all be better off if we as people and at young ages were required to take maybe 7 years of American Sign Language in elementary/secondary school and then take at least one ASL-only course the rest of our time in school—because SOMETIMES TALKING JUST GETS IN THE WAY OF COMMUNICATION—would come in handy.

I got a good puff from the MDI—or as I like to call it, a sweet drag off my joint of life—and moved on in my state of increasing awareness of the difficulty of the walk closing in around me. Not quickly, not inducing panic quite yet. Just realizing that the walls may or may not be closing in on me, but there’s still plenty of room to laze around, so let me nap—unless maybe, wait, are the walls moving? Really, don’t screw with me.

Then my shins started hurting. And while that was uncomfortable, I would have traded quite quickly for the numbness that quickly followed.

I don’t know who of my servants chose my shoes this morning, but whoever she is, she’s fired. They are an old pair of shoes. I’ve had them since the summer of 2003 and they’re a pair I used to wear daily until the clasps on either side of the mini-Mary Jane-like straps broke … leaving the shoe feeling a size or two too large.

That’s fine, the self told me. I’ll just take off my shoes. And walk in my tights. Because walking in a shiny skirt with a bunch of really huge men and an inhaler in a grip tighter than Dr. House’s on Vicodin just wasn’t enough to single me out.

The shoe removal seemed to be not such a great idea. Because my shins were so numb, something about the muscles contracting and writhing in rebellion made my gait ridiculously reminiscent of polio-stricken agony. Not that I would ever jest about such a thing, but what I felt was actually quite disconcerting. I couldn’t walk in a normal way. And it was beyond discomfort and embarrassment … it was just weirdly frightening.

But back to the sarcasm.

All I could think besides prayers for my very soul and my ability to continue walking without a limp later in my life was, â??Camille better be right about this damn restaurant.â?

In some strange turn of events—and really, I did it—we somehow walked through the doors of the restaurant with the life of breath still within my soul. The decor was lovely and as the men discerned, authentic. George and Bryce, who kindly walked EXTREMELY, UTTERLY, RIDICULOUSLY slowly with me for the past few minutes and who only teased me a little about how the food had better be good because Wow, you little asthmatics should be fired, made certain points to verbalize how impressed they were with the ambience.

Heavens to BETSY AND HER SISTER LOLA, that food was good.

I can’t even fathom the beauty of the place the person who invented peanut sauce dressing has in heaven. Because it is definitely goldenly pearly shinily lovely.

Everyone loved it and praised me and gave me a raise.

Then we walked back and that was that. Good story, eh?

Hi everyone.

I thought I would sit here and listen to Jack Johnson and tell you about Saturday—from two weeks ago since I can’t seem to write anything at all in less than a month—and because if there’s one thing this world needs more than American Idol, it’s posts from me. Straight up. Now tell me.

Saturday, my dog was awake at an unearthly hour but I don’t want to talk about that. I figured since we were awake and there would be no more sleeping—ever—that we really ought to go up to the Tanger Outlets at Kimball Junction. If for nothing else, to search in vain for a bed set to fit the full bed I would be trading for on Monday.

Let’s take this tangent as far as we can run, ok? So my work-person (not quite a co-worker, not quite a boss—but since this is the Internet, from now on we’ll call her my very much subordinate file clerk), Jane, needed a guest bed. She didn’t quite have room enough for the full-sized bed her parents offered but knew I had a twin-sized bed. She initiated and followed through on the exchange, which involved my receiving a Sertapedic Luxury full-sized mattress and boxspring and her receiving a twin-sized Deseret Industries set.

Not that the DI mattress set isn’t wonderful, it is. And it only had Diet Coke spilled all over it once. The beauty of it all was that she was worried I would be unsatisfied with the situation.

Back to reality. I needed a bed set for the new mattress because Hello, if there’s one thing I like to do, it’s to buy things and with a good excuse. Preferably very shiny things.

There wasn’t anything at the Westpoint store, but just to make sure I wasn’t missing anything, I checked Fossil, Ann Taylor, and GAP and came away with two beanies, two blouses, a hooded sweatshirt, and cropped pants.

After the shopping was all shopped out and after a visit to the local PetCo where there was much treat-and-portable-dish-garnering, we set off in an Eastward way. I didn’t know where we were going (except for east) and I didn’t know how long it would take, but I did have half a tank of gas and had been wanting to just … drive … for a long time.

The Southerner in me liked the idea that one side of the road was covered in snow while the other was dry. Something about sun shining and rising in the east or west or something.

We drove through the curvy way and stopped at the scenic overlook to whatever it was that was scenic but was most certainly covered in snow. Which was also scenic, I guess.

Scenic. Also, cold.

It may or may not have been Echo Reservoir. Either way, Ethel loved running around in the snow and sniffing beer cans. Boy, does that dog love beer.

Gazing off into the distance wistfully and asking why I don’t keep more Heineken in her crate at home.

We ended up in Echo, Utah—not too far from Echo Reservoir, it would seem—and rambled our way through “town.” Turns out there’s an historic church there, complete with historic cemetery and GAS CAFE MOTEL.

The church has a plaque, and that’s nice and everything but I haven’t even read it. Nor do I know if it is a Mormon church or a Protestant church or if it is a government front for a church. Nor do I know if a Pastor, Priest, or Rabbi have ever walked in and ordered drinks from a duck.

Church.

I have this thing about cemeteries. The thing is, I don’t care. I don’t particularly like a cemetery if perhaps I have a close relative interred therein. But that is just that it freaks me out that I knew someone who is now in the ground there. Ok, so back to reality. I don’t have many “close relatives” interred in Utah … nor do I have any “close relatives” who have ever or will ever set foot in Utah for fear of being baptized. But the cemeteries are fine.

Cemetery.

I wasn’t kidding.

On the way back to Salt Lake by way of Park City and Kimball Junction, the snow started falling and did not stop until Sunday morning. Because I am an absolute idiot and because the laws of nature do not apply to me, I drove only slightly nervously through two inches of ice-snow-slush on Interstate 80 out of Parley’s Canyon. And because I am an absolute idiot with a death wish, I photographed the effort. I’ll close with one, which may have easily become my visual suicide note to flickr.

Goodbye, cruel world.