Francis Bacon in the year 1625:

"Avoid envy, anxious fears, anger fretting inwards, subtle and knotty inquisitions,

joys and exhilarations in excess, sadness not communicated." 

Avoid subtle and knotty inquisitions? Wow. I tend to run straight for them. I should stop that.

My best friend died this time last year. We had known each other well since age 6 and been bffed upped (ffedup) since about age 14. I knew her better than anyone. When she died we were estranged for the first time in our lives. No one--not her extended family, our mutual friends, nor her husband understood why. To our community, I look as wrong as wrong can look. I look like a person capable of abandoning a dying woman. Which I believe she calculated and intended. She was profoundly wounded emotionally and mentally way before she ever got sick. But who she was underneath all that unrequited trauma, was beautiful.

The day she died I went shopping alone in Tractor Supply. I wandered in there for a few hours, wearing sunglasses and weeping quietly on the dog food (canis lupus). I fell asleep in so much pain that night I awoke and fainted. The drama was large in me and her. But in truth, I was also relieved when I realized she is gone from here forever and she can never hurt anyone again.

In the supply store that day I bought two stock tanks for my children to play in, which they did with great joy all summer long. Now those tanks feed my goats--one for each of them to hold clean hay and provide lovely dry wind sheltered ground for naps. (Who doesn't want to nap surrounded by food?) Its only today I see them for what they really were that day last year: black, coffin shaped, twinned vessels, the negative space of unspoken truth.