I stopped on the way home from Chicago, just on a whim, at Thorn Creek Nature Preserve. I didn't realize it's almost literally just around the corner from the train station. This is a place I love and don't come to often enough. It's a little weirdly out of the way from where I live, but not terrible, as I've discovered.
Riley and I used to come here a lot when she was little. It was a favorite place for nature hikes. Every autumn we did a fungus walk here because, for some reason, the fungus grow here like crazy. We took pictures and looked up what they were. Good times.
We also used to come out here on Saturday mornings for the Jane Goodall Young Naturalist program. Riley did a project one time about Eastern Massasauga rattlesnakes and made a poster, and I'm pretty sure she donated the poster here.
It's almost sunset right now. I can hear songbirds singing as they get ready to settle down for the night. When Riley was little, my mom used to tell her the birdies were putting on their pajamas and getting ready for bed.
I can hear birds singing, and somewhere in the distance a rooster is crowing its full head off. It's been going for at least half an hour now. I don't know how it doesn't have laryngitis. I just heard a barred owl calling out, "Who cooks for you? Who cooks for you all?"
Unlike LaSalle, I can't bring the dogs here. Also unlike LaSalle, this trail is heavily wooded.
A couple of years ago, I came here after working a ridiculously long shift. I think it was a 24 at Elite, and I ran all night long. Or maybe it wasn't Elite. I don't know. Anyway, I came here afterward and saw a white owl flying in the middle of the day. I suddenly had the most irresistible urge to start learning about witchcraft in that very moment. Such a strange moment.
I meant to come out here and walk and think and process Riley's new job because it does make me very sad. I know I should be happy for her, and I am, because getting a new job is a good thing. It's going to do her a world of good to have meaningful work and autonomy and her own money.
I know she's not leaving me, but it kind of feels like she is.
For five years I've been bragging that she's an EMT like me. I've had dreams, or maybe wishes, of us being able to work together again, and now none of that's going to happen. A lot of my comic strip was about us being EMTs together, and now that's the thing that ended. It's going to be another thing to grieve.
I'm so sick of looking over every fucking thing and thinking: this future thing that I thought was going to happen, this other thing that I lost, and the things that never happened because I was too busy being in a shit marriage and a shit life, or too busy being broke, or too busy falling in love with the wrong man.
I've had to grieve my childhood and my parents, not only when they died but also when I came to understand the kind of people they were. So I had to grieve each of them twice.
I had to grieve for Rick and for the future that we never had. For medical school and my commission. For all the kids I never had because of fucking Ted. For my farmhouse and my homestead and that life I could never have.
I grieved each stage Riley went through as she grew. I grieved the son I thought I had when I found out I had a daughter instead.
People can say everything they want about how every new beginning comes from the end of something else, or that God never closes a door without opening a window, and all that Pollyanna shit they like to say. I think that's a lot of drivel made up by people who have never suffered a serious loss and don't have the patience to sit with somebody else who has.
For whatever reason, I feel loss deeply and I grieve hard.
I'm tired of it.
I just realized it's kind of late and there's no one else around here. I probably shouldn't be out here alone, and that in itself annoys me. A woman should be able to enjoy a peaceful evening in the woods.
I think I'll turn back now because, now that I've realized I should be a little bit afraid, I can't help it, but I am.
Sometimes I think I watch too many crime shows. Ten or eleven seasons of Criminal Minds and the entire series of Bones will do that to you.