sadness hangover

I woke up today with a sadness hangover, brain full of fog, and forced my reluctant body through the motions of a morning while impatient cats swirled around my ankles. Yesterday’s double dose of grief – the loss of Mark on what would have been my mother’s 83rd birthday – and the horror of the attack on Venezuela are weighing me down. I made my way to the office, but instead of working my way through the endless to-do list on my desk, memories of Mark – so many actions, meetings, long bus rides, memorials – were playing like movies in my mind. Mo, our senior security staff who is a father figure to many of the clients, showed up early and came into the office looking for a blank timesheet. He has worked for me for a long time and he could tell I wasn’t fully there. He sat down, and I told him about Mark. “I had a friend,” he said “back in the day. He got AIDS. I went to see him and I was shocked because his face was shrunken like a skeleton. He said ‘are you afraid of me?’ and I said ‘you’re my friend, I’m not afraid of you.’ He asked me to spend the night to keep him company and I’m glad I did because that was the last time I saw him.” We sat quietly for a minute, and then the smell of warm garlic from the kitchen two flights below us reminded us that the volunteers were cooking sunday dinner and we needed to get ready to open the doors for however many hungry queer young people found their way to us.