I don’t know for sure what made me think that way. Maybe it was waking to the sound of a ghostly woodpecker pecking at the wall outside my room. Perhaps it drilled a hole into my skull and all the hazy thoughts inside drifted out, leaving space for everything I tried to forget. It could’ve been the shower that lifted the veil. Droplets of lukewarm water that dripped down my body and washed it of its contented apathy.

I went to church yesterday. Out of obligation or desire I couldn’t tell. I met a kind old lady named Pam who called me pretty and cute and friendly and familiar. We had never met before, but she reminded me of another old church lady named Pam I met years before. That Pam treated me like her own grandchild when I knew no one else. How wonderfully strange the two Pam’s were; they reminded me of every mother and grandmother that had ever loved me.

I suppose the deadness of the day could have been caused by the headache. The headache, I pretended, hadn’t been a constant presence for the last week. The headache that worsened with every forgotten meal and glass of water I left scattered around my home, untouched. Pam would’ve made me some mint tea and given my forehead a kiss with a cold compress.

An owl was perched on a dead tree in my backyard that evening. I had never seen an owl before. It left so quickly I suppose I could’ve imagined that it was never there at all. As sleepy pictures of woodpeckers and owls played through my head, the day ended and began again. I woke to sweat-drenched blankets and the remnants of a dream of Pam singing me to sleep and promising it would all be okay.

I guess I finally realized how close I was to it all. How many times do you have to talk about death for it to not be scary anymore? It was practically a joke among my friends. If you go, I go. Who wants to walk into the ocean with me? We joked until we remembered it wasn’t a joke. I love you and don’t you dare and what would I do without you came quickly after. We all worried it wasn’t enough, but we never said that out loud. Pam would’ve given me a hug and tucked me in for a nap. She would’ve told me that Jesus loves me. I might’ve been comforted by that; I might even believe it.