Dark clouds, sunny skies

Felt like a cartoon character today, with a dark cloud floating above my head. I tried to shake it off but it kept following me. My mom used to call me “LBC” (short for little black cloud) as a kid when I was in a bad mood. And LBC was back, set off by a series of the tiniest things: the kids took forever to get dressed and motivated for school; 10 zillion things on my to do list, when all I really wanted to do was go back to bed and sleep.

And then I found out that the author of the “Llama Llama” children’s books died of brain cancer at age 50. I was just frozen, paralyzed, unable to breathe. I thought: did she know? Did she plan? She has two daughters. What did she tell them?

And I cried. I cried for her, for them, for all of us trapped in this circle of fear and illness and survivor’s guilt and pain and PTSD. I looked at my driver’s license picking up a medication, and thought: remember that time? When you smiled like that? Not a care in the world?

I let my LBC follow me, acknowledged it, and then went to bed. Sunny skies tomorrow.

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