scabs

They both reached deep and found a frayed corner.

In the back booth of Angie's Kitchen, a restaurant filled to it's brim with Veishea partiers, accompanied by friends on both sides, syrup-filled plates pushed away, Eve 6 thumping violently in our ears, the three of us were sobbing. Boys don't get that when they send text messages after three weeks of nothing, it throws girls' orbits off. People who haven't been through it don't understand that you can't get over your dad's death. Not after one week of missing work, not after three weeks in a foreign country, not two years after his death, maybe not quite ever. Yeah, people don't get each other. We'd find that out the next night. I always say "We're all in this together!" and I mean, "Every human is dealing with some huge struggle every day; why can't we realize that being nice and considerate and loving is going to help all of us more than being rude and perverse and mean?"

They started to pull at the yellowing edges, blood and puss getting on their fingers. I was doing it to them, too.

One text, and a domino display that's been months in the making was set off. Broken hearts, because of men in our lives not being there to help us. Ex-boyfriends or dead dads, or both. Nobody caught my eye once. In the busiest room I'd been in for weeks: not one person could see our tears.

We all started tugging, peeling back the festering layers of scab. It wasn't pretty. It was necessary. Something we hadn't been able to do alone.

Here is the thing about my dad: I've never, ever in my life met or known someone else who "got" me so deeply. My dad really understood who I was, and I really understood him. We used to joke that we were made of the same soul. It's been spliced prematurely. I'm missing a part of me. The scab has been keeping me from thinking about it for almost a year. It's like he's a phone call away, but I keep just getting voice mail. It's like, any minute, maybe he'll call back. The saved message on my phone plays every once in a while: "Hey Kimmie! Just calling to say hi... just wanted to hear your voice. Guess you'll need to be a parent some day to understand that... Just wanted to tell you I love you." I got it days before his colon burst.

Amy's honest words and Sarah's gentle spirit worked like spades and axes on the thickest layers of scab that have been covering my heart since the Fourth of July. My common experience and Sarah's soothing understanding took fists of rotten heart and stagnant pain, shoveling them out of Amy's heart. And Amy's sharp discipline and my sincere efforts carefully glued and held the fragile pieces together, until the blood was pumping again without seeping out. And God was there, a protective bubble around us, so that even the people sitting at our table weren't aware that something amazing and painful was going on until we were wiping the tears away and smiling again.