SOLSC Day 24: Colliding Lives

My lives collided this afternoon. Have I mentioned that I seem to be living three lives simultaneously? There’s the life of memory and the past, remembering Jack and  random thoughts, experiences, stories. There’s my life now, moving on, on my own. Then there’s the imaginary life of what Jack would have thought, liked, hated, what we would have talked and argued about.

           Today the life when Jack was still alive and the life when he isn’t crashed together when I ran into an acquaintance in our neighborhood. I was at Mondel’s buying custom chocolate Easter eggs, and the husband of a woman who I first met at the sandbox when our kids were toddlers came in. I’d probably last seen them in November, after Jack had fallen at home.

            “How’s he doing?” the neighbor asked. My heart clutched. He didn’t know, and I had to tell him.

            I hate these moments. Later today I’m getting a refresher with my physical therapist, whose colleague treated Jack over the past two years. I will have to tell him, but I’ve been preparing myself. In Mondel’s, it was unexpected. I told him, he was shocked and sorry, and I left the store. But I had to sit down outside on a street bench to put myself back together. These moments, when the life when Jack was alive and the life when he isn’t collide suddenly, feel like the emotional atoms of my being have scattered like pool balls. I need to gather them back into the frame of my body.