I Thought You Said This Would Work

by Ann Garvin

We always protected Katie, not because she was weak, but because she was so strong. If she was crying, something terrible was happening.

Katie is so me

“We’re odd, we humans,” she would say. “We know people die, but we act astonished when it happens. What is astonishing about death is our certainty that it isn’t going to happen to us or anyone we know without some kind of warning. And, we live our life doing stupid things like gossiping, when we should spend all our days planting flowers.”

When you were a child and you were taught to avoid fighting at all costs, you never got to see the rewards of having the hard conversation. If this continued as you aged, you got the message that the spoils must be so terrible, so ungodly horrible, that nothing was worth an argument. When you were an adult, you could reason yourself out of that, see evidence everywhere that wasn’t true, but your child hid and whispered, But what if the result is worse than the fight?

“If you had told me then that after graduation Holly and I wouldn’t be friends, I would have laughed at you. Laughed and told Holly, and we would have pooh-poohed it together. As if we’d ever let anything get between.

That was what true survival was, keeping the heart beating while continuing to feel everything.