distractions

The envelope, please.

Today's winner of the Most Absurd Distraction Award --- the MADDY --- is a much-crowned champion, tough to beat in any MAD competition.

It is: The IRS.

And it has nothing to do with Rich.

They are interested in my mother, who died almost two years ago.

Give us, they say, her forwarding address.

No wonder we fear the IRS.

They are God.

But like all worthy MADDY contestants, the IRS cannot be ignored. They must be responded to and (temporarily) dispatched.

These days, all is absurd. From the Latin absurdus, "out of tune," this applies to conversations, news reports, and what I once called reality. I am trying to avoid the conversations and the news, all of which assault me with notes thunderous and dissonant, but the reality of my illusions --- where would I be without them?

Perhaps where Rich is. Far from me, now; and as it should be. The dead have better things to do than chat with the living or file IRS forms.

As I do, but I'm not officially dead. I'm weary of expectations that I'm the same -- minus Rich. And so distractions are hurled at me, as if I have learned nothing in these past months and years, as if the person before 25 October is the same as afterward, as if I have "plans."

I have an opportunity, of course. Or I can continue as before, knowing that the most deserving winner of the MADDY --- the envelope, please --- is me.

Candace