I wept today. Hard, and in that odd laughing-sob way that I wonder how many people can have; in a way I've not wept in years. My head hurts now, like someone's forcing cotton in around my brain.

Yet half of what I feel is a shock that I feel so strongly.

I feel it simultaniously all so coldly. My aunt died. Tonight. At 6:30 PM in Virginia-Mason hospital in Seattle.

I only visited her two days ago. It had been the first time in months that I'd seen her, and I felt guilty when I ran around Seattle with my best friend and only visited her twice in the two days I was there. But I thought to myself, then, as I comforted my mother and spoke to my aunt, that I would be as cold as I've always been.

I can't seem to feel much, most of the time. At any given time I only care for a maximum of five people. And I was angry at myself for not caring, for predicting that I'd just accept her death should she die of the infection that was setting in, for not visiting enough.

I don't know whether or not I should be happy my anger was misplaced.

I feel like I'm living Kubler-Ross in fast-forward. Like some psych student took bad notes and now I'm living them. The anger and denial and blame and sorrow all hit at once. And that's why I took a bath just to hide my sobbing behind the sound of running water--I'm so cold, I can't live up to my own sorrow.

I can remember everything. She lived with my family for quite a while when she was looking for a new house after divorcing her husband, and I remember her living with us. I can remember as a child baking huge oatmeal-raisin cookies with her--my mother never baked, having a full-time job, and that cooking was sacred to me. I remember times spent in her new house, which she barely began living in. I can remember her two days ago, innumerable tubes criss-crossing the bed.

And at the same time, I feel anger--anger at myself, at her. I'm angry at myself for not caring more, for not seeing her more, for not being nice enough to her dog, for spending too much time with friends and not enough with family, for going away to college, for fucking everything. I'm angry at her for dying before I got to college, before I could get everything squared away, for upsetting my mother, for not getting her fucking gallstones removed in the first place, for messing everything up in this final summer before I go away. I have no time, I feel. I'm angry at myself for being angry at her.

I just wish I had a little more fucking time, that's all. I have a week before I go to college, and I don't know how to split it between my family and my friends. I don't even have my luggage yet.

I wanted to visit a friend tomorrow, and I'm sick of putting it off. Tomorrow would be the last day I could go up to see her. But I'll need to be here tomorrow. My mom needs someone sensible, after all. Again, I'm angry at myself for worrying about the whole trip thing at all.

I find myself hoping they'll postpone the funeral beyond my leaving time.

And of course, in a final fell blow of irony, when she died I was on the way to a friend's wedding. It was a beautiful and happy and amusing affair, and the two have been inseperable for years. I was so immensely happy as I headed back home, only to hear the news.

I can only think of Lou Reed at a time like this.

There's a bit of magic in everything

and then some loss to even things out.