Two Step Repost

Do you believe that we
Might last a thousand years
Or more if not for this?
Our flesh and blood it ties
You and me right up tie me down
Celebrate we will
Because life is short but sweet for certain

It's hard to celebrate the sweetness of life when it is short. I stood in my sister's kitchen, washing dishes, my lower back hurting from a day sitting in a courtroom bench, taking frantic notes so that all the girls waiting to be witnesses would have some idea how things were going on the inside. When one of her roommates, Ellen, had come home that night, her eyes scanned my face as I told her what had happened so far, looking for some message that would mean everything would be just fine. It wouldn't be just fine, it couldn't ever be just fine. Jesse had been killed 10 months before, killed by a police officer he'd been having a secret relationship with, left to die with his throat cut so deeply it nicked his spine. Jesse had lived like someone who assumed he would live a thousand years. He took reckless chances sometimes, like getting involved with a married officer so deeply in the closet he had scratches from the hangers. Who then killed him out of fear of exposure.

I had met Jesse only once. But I watched my sisters and their friends be so brave and honest on the stand. Passing my daughter back and forth in the hall because something had to remind us of life, of joy, of the sweetness of a baby's smile. There was nothing sweet in that courtroom. The whole business was gruesome, the details sometimes more than we could bear.

Standing in the little kitchen cleaning up the first real meal some of these girls had eaten all week, I listened to Dave Matthews and pretended I wasn't crying. This life--it ties you and me right up. Death sometimes is the only thing that makes us realize we're alive.