Reality

She’s got terrible handwriting.  You can’t even read it by the time you get to the end of the paper.  She starts off real good but the longer she goes, boom, can’t read a thing. And she whistles in the shower.  No one I know whistles in the shower.  Singing in the shower, yeah, but no one whistles, and it’s only ever two damn songs:  the Mario theme and “The Chinese Dance” from The Nutcracker Suite.  For the record, I only know that last one because she’s told me a million times what it is.

"I figured as much."

Did you know she can go a whole week without changing her pjs?  God forbid you were to ask her to wear a pair of socks for more than six hours and you can forget about it.  I swear, there’s dirty socks and mail everywhere.  It’s not that she doesn’t read her mail but instead of throwing it out when she’s done with it, she just puts it on the dresser and lets it stay there.  I’m not saying I’m the cleanest person around but Jesus, socks and mail everywhere.

“People get set in their ways.”

The weird thing about it though, it’s all kind of endearing.  That’s weird, right?  Like if she started whistling “Welcome to Paradise” or Bach or something, it wouldn’t be right, you know?

"I guess."

You know, it doesn’t even feel like it’s a habit, like it’s something she just picked up one day and stuck with.  It’s like we’re born with these quirks embedded in us that we’re waiting for the day they’re meant to appear.  I know it’s just our personalities and stuff, but it feels like more.  You get me?

For example, did she ever tell you the story of the piece of paper she had when she was a kid?  She’d pulled this little blue piece of paper out of a box of reward stuff when she was in kindergarten and she took it home, and she used to hide in the bathroom with a pencil and write swear words on it just to see what they looked like.  She’d erase it then and put the paper in her pocket and come back later to write a new one.  I’m not sure what that says about a person, but I feel like it says something really interesting.  Even that young, she had these strange little things about her.  She’s fascinating.

“Listen, I think you’re missing something really important.  I get that maybe you’re in denial that she’s gone, but she is.  She’s not coming back.”

She’ll be back.  I know she’ll be back.

“She’s not coming back.”

She is.  She has to.  She didn’t take any socks.