Drugs and ghosts

Turns out that steroids have a funny effect on me.  They are doing the job as far as reducing the swelling from the poison ivy, but I am as wired as if I had drunk five espressos just before bed.  Himself is breathing quietly, but it's too loud for me, and I could swear I hear the grass growing out there.  This is a lonely time of night (morning) when the world has turned the switch to "off" and mine is stuck in the "on" position.  The computer provides the only light on the lower floor of the house.  I have one of those nifty keyboards that lights up so I can see what I'm typing.  I know the light is the last thing I should be looking at before trying to sleep but company is company.

Or it could be the prospect of picking out my parents' headstone tomorrow that looms large over my bed, causing me to toss and turn and never find a comfortable spot.  It's been almost eight months since my mother's death, and over eighteen years since my father's.  She always used to say she couldn't rest until she had bought the marker for his grave.  I guess she stretched that excuse as far as she could make it go, because she was nearly ninety by the time she left and now it's up to me.  Cemeteries are funny places.  Some people make a ritual of visiting graves and tending flowers as one last "thing to do" for someone, and that's lovely.  It's just never been me.   To me that's like enshrining the cocoon when the butterfly has flown, or hanging onto the wrapper when the candy bar is gone.  That's not where I look for my loved ones.  Still, these things must be dealt with and here it is in my reluctant lap at last.  And all the silt of grief which has been gently drifting to the bottom to settle in a quiet pattern is about to be kicked up into a little maelstrom again.