I wrote this Wednesday evening, and I saved it and left it, and cried, because I couldn’t make it make sense:

The summer before last, the little sprite of an 11-year-old Makenzie was running around calling me Aunt Ash, playing, and laughing, and today she’s lying, unconscious, in a pediatric intensive care unit in North Carolina.

Things change.

We talk about how they’ll change, but then they do. And it’s so quickly, that there’s nothing to talk about or to say, because it’s done. It’s all done, and there’s no taking it back. One day you’re driving, or you’re talking, or you’re 12 years old and trying out for track, and it all changes, forever.

And on Thursday morning, Kenzie was gone.

Her myspace profile still has sparkling hearts, and cherries, and a cow. She’d asked to have her birthday present early. The valentines she and her brother and sister personalized for their cousins arrived in the mail this week. It was sudden, and it wasn’t ever expected.

It all changes. And we say it change—we talk about how it changes. But then, it does. And we can’t go back. And I can’t go back. And she can’t go back. And this just isn’t what we have in mind, when we talk about change. It can’t be. Until it all does.

I can’t stop hearing her call me Aunt Ash, and I can’t stop seeing her in the hallway in her grandmother’s room, grinning at me without her glasses on. I can’t stop hearing her sleeping with her cousins, all intertwined and wrapped up in the same blankets. I just keep feeling her, and missing her.

Tonight, I wrote to a friend, one of my few constants in life:

It’s been so, so hard and in so many ways, I feel so deeply that this family is my own, as I have spent most every day with them for the past three years. It’s just been so sad, and is only going to get more overwhelming as the week goes by. I feel like I have no tears left, until it starts all over again.

I cannot attempt to know the depth of the loss that her mother, her sister, and her brother will face. I can’t know the hurt of those who held her and rocked her and felt her in her infancy. I do know the hurt of having known her, only briefly, and having her taken away. And it is just so sharp, so needless, and just so deep.

I can know what I feel. I feel like the loss I have experienced and felt in the past two years has weighed on me. I feel, overwhelmingly, like I have the past few days, with the tears. I feel like I have no hurt left, and I feel like I can’t miss them any more, until it starts all over again.

I don’t know. I don’t understand. I don’t want to understand. I don’t need anyone to try to make me understand. I just want to understand that it can’t be understood. It just can’t.

The new landlord told me I could pick up the keys anytime and start bringing boxes, even though I don’t start paying rent there until the last Saturday this month. I would very much not like to open a calendar to find out what day that is, but it is more than several days away, and I don’t have to pay rent. That is nice.

So, since such smooshedness was inflicted upon my car earlier this week, and the estimate cited five days worth of repairs, I’d talked all week about how awesomely great it would be if I could score a rental SUV to help me move. I knew secretly, and told myself in preparation, that instead of lining up my choices from eleventy pristine SUVs, they’d probably take me out back and ask me my color preference on my rental Schwinn. “At least it’s Enterprise,” I’d sigh, “and they picked me up.”

So Friday afternoon, I walked into the local Enterprise office around 2:00 p.m. and prepared myself for the worst. I was met at the desk by a long, tall drink of a good-looking man, who was concurrently answering several phone calls from Enterprisey hopefuls. He asked me if I might do him a strange favor, and I’d already blurted out that I like princess-cut diamonds best of all and yes, yes I would marry him, when he interrupted and asked if I wouldn’t mind picking up the phone and placing callers on hold. I’m thinking an Autumn wedding.

The phones answered, calls resolved, my fiance asked what vehicle I’d like to be mine. It obviously couldn’t have been that easy, so I said, “Well, what can I have?” He answered, all-too-quickly, “Whatever you see,” and I was staring suspiciously when he finally spoke the truth—in Utah, as it turns out, insurance companies really only have to provide reliable transportation, and, get this—it doesn’t have to be pretty. The horror. In fact, I was kind of actually wondering where I might find a good Schwinn when he turned and pointed to the several Chevrolet Aveos lining the fence. Aveos. An Aveo. Have you seen an Aveo? My Camry likes to eat Aveos for dessert sometimes. I prefer cookies.

I asked what he had in something that didn’t rely on foot-power. I have arthritis, you know, and the running might could do something awful to the pedicure to which I have been desperately clinging since my birthday, 2005.

He promised to “take care of” me (read: give me beautiful babies) and promised the shiny new Ford F-150 outside the window, before he discovered that it’d already been rented. To make up for it, and to further “take care of” me (read: I think we’ll call our first-born Henry), he promised the truck price on an SUV that was, at that time, out joyriding. My fiance kindly phoned the occupants and they promised a five-minute turnaround.

Except for 25 minutes later, I was kind of still sitting there with lover-boy. Which, yeah, so totally great, but wasn’t it time he went out for a drink with the boys or something? I need some alone time, for pity’s sake. Quit breathing my air.

Mr. Ashley S. (he took my name) promised that he’d make up for the delay. I said that by the time they “made up for” the delays, they’d be paying me to rent the car, and what did he think of the name Elsie for a girl?

Eventually, this lovely specimen of an automobile was presented in all its 1/2-tank glory. For a 4′10″ driver of a full-sized sedan, I feel somewhat out of place, driving up in the clouds and all. My mother has this thing against white cars. I told her it’s orange.

I had all these grand schemes, plans, delusions that I’d somehow accomplish so much, what with an Escape sitting in the driveway and all, just waiting to, well, escape with loads full of my possessions. It’s just that convenience doesn’t always equal accomplishment. Actually, it mostly never means accomplishment.

However, the vehicle is good for driving. Driving to places like Ace Hardware to have keys made.

To my new apartment. Full of glory. And flowery polka-dots.

And even though the landlord whines about “such short notice” and “the dogs” and “blah blah blah.” And even though the insurance company is giving me the runaround. And even though the check-engine light came on in the Escape tonight. And even though I feel so very overwhelmed, the keys are everything that is right in the world at this moment.

Dear, Sweet Everyone:

I haven’t felt much like writing, really. Life’s activity overwhelms me into silence. There has been no lack of drama, much of it involving the inability of my residence to properly respond to the weather, at any moment, ever.

Remember over the summer, when the air conditioning broke? And then the tub refused to drain? And, despite my kind and loving pleas, the landlord didn’t ever do anything about it.

Well, there comes a point when it’s just not any fun, anymore. Not that it was a riot to begin with, but maybe there’s some novelty in sticking your hand into day-old shower-water to try to discern what’s blocking the water’s way to freedom? Maybe. But now the novelty is gone. It has vanished, along with my ability to ignore the way this rental has sunk to even lower lows, lows which may very well be the lowest of lows, of all time.

It continued about a month ago, on a Saturday night, when I went into the bathroom to wash my hands. Which is a normal thing to do. I like to wash my hands. I enjoy, greatly, the bottle of Cool Citrus Basil antibacterial kitchen soap perched atop the porcelain. I buy a new bottle every semi-annual sale. They’re usually $4.

And then I started for the towel, which had somehow found its way to the floor—who knows, how, really, because my life and home are the picture of pristine cleanliness, usually. And when I touched the towel, it was already wet. Quite wet, in fact. Sopping, if you will.

Then I beheld the soppiness of most everything else on the floor (not that there was a lot, maybe). And in a dramatic turn of discovery, I peeled back the shower curtain, to find the tub perilously full of water. Swaying, as it were, from the sheer stress of having the curtain moved. The water, not exactly glistening from its own pristineness, swept itself overboard and onto my already-soaked and very favorite pair of brown flip-flops, which I bought at Cato with Lauren when I was in South Carolina last year. We don’t have Cato in Utah, at least I don’t think we do, and it’s not like it’s really even flip-flop season and how am I supposed to find another pair, especially with the little rainbow tags? Those are the thoughts that flew and fled.

The water wasn’t running. It’s not like there was anything I could do, except kind of stare at it and think about flip flops and, “There’s nothing I can do.” Well, there was nothing I could do except awaken my mother at 1:00 a.m. and ask what to do. Because, apparently, that’s what you do, when you’re me and when you’re 2000 miles away from home when something goes awry. I called my mom. My mom said, “Talk to Blair.”

I ended up plunging the ever-clogging goodness out of the sucker and left it for an hour. When I returned, feeling better and in possession of a crisp new Diet Coke, the water had lowered itself and over the next few hours, in the most unfunny game of limbo, EVER, it slowly drained.

But the water hadn’t been on during any of that. It was a Saturday, after all, and it’s not like I showered. Saturdays are for slothfulness. That is why they begin with the same letter. And the horror that struck my very soul upon discerning what exactly was making its way up the pipes and onto the very floor where I was standing was the kind of horror that one might imagine would accompany one’s realization that it was toilet water.

Just so you know, too, during the whole thing and in a show of the most consistent inability to care, the landlord never once answered his phone or an email throughout the entire debacle. A month later, I’m still in talks with the insurance company regarding my claim.

Then? Oh children. Then, there was this:

As it turns out, the landlord was unaware that the heater in my apartment on the top floor in my 600 square foot apartment is unable to heat the entire 2000 square foot house beneath me. And look, I’m sorry for all the rich-text emphasis and stuff, but really: I am quite emphatic when I am saying this to you. Because, oh my hell, what an idiot.

News flash: heat rises.

The pipes inevitably froze last week. And then they broke. And then there was an ice rink in the backyard and I went an entire week without water in my apartment. At all. Ever. Does renters insurance happen to cover the 15 miles each way I had to drive to get to someone’s house to SHOWER? Or the bottled water I had to purchase for the dogs to drink? OR THE UTTER RIDICULOUSNESS OF IT ALL?

And for good measure and to up the drama a few thousand notches, I HAVE NO MORE WALLS.

Then there was this morning.

In a fateful turn of event—during which fate decided she wasn’t being quite the bitch she ought to have been as of late, this morning I readied myself to leave for work and upon doing so, found this scrawled item of curiosity shoved through the quite large and drafty, draughty, and otherwise inhabitable space between the plexiglass and wood frame of the front door:

She met me outside, where it was made quite apparent that her Dodge Ram SuperHeavyMassive-Duty truck had made mad, passionate love to my Camry, in front of the entire neighborhood.

Thankfully, though, even fate realized that in light of recent events, she’d dealt a low, low blow and worked it out that having my car smooshed was as pleasant an experience as could have been managed: the woman who hit the car (Anne, the neighbor lady, who has a penchant for lending me her Volvo wagon and for growing babies inside of her) assumed immediate responsibility, went out of her way to take responsibility, involved her insurance without hesitation, uses the same insurance company I use, and feels really, really badly about the whole thing. Also a plus is that she has rental car coverage, which is something I opted out for on my end and was musical dewdrops as it fell on my ears as she announced it from across the street this morning—and the having-a-car-present-in-my-life-right-now requirement becomes clearer if you make it to the PS below, with much joy and celebration.

For my lunch today, I took a drive down to the collision-repair center to have the damage appraised and documented. Left-merging? Not so swell. Without even peeking inside the door, the damage is estimated at $1500. And I am kind of thinking looking in the door may magically inflate the already tripped-out number. Heaven help us all, I am so finished with the drama.

Love,
Ashley

PS: Oh and also, I am leaving in an hour to sign a lease. At a new place. I am finally moving.