Incongruity

We are driving to meet friends for dinner at Mi Rancho to exchange Christmas gifts. “Kirsten died in a car accident,” I say again in my head, trying to settle with the thought. Like a scab I can’t help picking at, I open the wound again to feel the raw pain. By nine months, one might easily think that it was better than this. I would have thought so at one time, but instead it occupies my every thought. I go to bed at night thinking about it and I wake in the morning thinking about it, trying to figure out how this can be real…how I can live my old life with this new set of parameters, everything so seemingly incongruous.

“What are you going to order for dinner?” My focus is shifted for a moment…fragmented, part of it on the answer to my husband’s question, part of it on the constant set of images that repeat in my mind like a never ending slideshow. “I think I’ll get the fajitas.” Broken glass. “Me, too,” Blood. “It’ll be nice to see the Wrights.” Pronounced dead at the scene.

We drive over the spot on the road where she took her last breath. A heart shaped bed of light purple pansies, now covered with fall leaves, marks the spot. There are also flowers that people have left, the letters KIR that Lindsey painted in dayglo, a Christmas wreath made by my sister and the cross Allen made with Kirsten’s name on it in green. I barely have time to blow a kiss as we pass by. I remember when I wept here, on the side of the road, when I found pea sized pieces of the shiny red car we gave her for her birthday.

We arrive at the restaurant, the same restaurant where the four of us ate our last meal together in celebration of Michelle’s birthday on the night before the accident. As we are shown to our table, we walk past the booth where we sat. In my mind’s eye it is as if it were yesterday; what she was wearing, where we were each sitting and what we ordered. Steak fajitas will alway make me think of the autopsy report.

Michelle and Chris Wright and their two young sons, Shane and Brandon are already seated. They smile to greet us. It brings back memories of us at restaurant tables long ago with two happy little girls. But tonight, our wonderful friends have taken time out of their Christmas season to spend the evening with us and we truly appreciate it, a couple hours of blessed distraction, yet it is bittersweet…their joy is both wonderful and a reminder of the way we were and what we have lost. "Merry Christmas" says the hostess as we leave. Police officers on my doorstep.

The contradictions continue on the ride home. We pass houses decorated joyfully with colorful Christmas lights as an image of a red car, lit only from above by the spotlight of a news helicopter, flashes in my mind. "Have a Holly, Jolly Christmas" plays on the radio as, in my mind, I study pictures of an almost unrecognizable red car on the police lot. Every part of my life seems to be in direct conflict with the world around me, everything on the inside in such contrast with everything on the outside. “Are you tired?” Kenny asks. So tired.

                                    “There's no religion that could save me

                                     No matter how long my knees are on the floor

                                     Everyday it will rain”

                                                          ~Bruno Mars