He gave up on me about 4am and got out of bed.

I guess I’d been tugging the covers all night in a restless too-much-garlic-makes-me-hurt sleep. He’s already gone for the day - at the gym huffing and puffing - while I’m hiding from Grayson so I can type.

We talked last night over dinner at Marlow’s about the same things Mary Jac and I talked about on the phone at lunch yesterday afternoon: purpose and feeling full. He doesn’t, I don’t, she doesn’t. Maybe you don’t either. We have roofs over our heads and great friends, we don’t go hungry at night unless it’s by choice and life from the outside seems good. Our hearts tell a different story.

Maybe it’s more of that spiritual void I’ve been stuck on lately, maybe it’s the bigger picture trying to fold us in maybe it’s like when Annie Potts is telling Molly Ringwald about her friend from high school in Pretty in Pink: “Once in a while she gets a terrible feeling, like something is missing. She checks her purse and her keys, she counts her kids, she goes crazy. And then she realises that…nothing is missing. She decided it was side effects from skipping the prom.”

I wonder if this strange little crisis is a side effect of not having kids, or if we’d all share these sensations regardless of our breeding choices.

I think we would. I think that given the selection, we just have a little more time to think about it - and to do something about it.

Maybe it was sparked for The Mc and I when we said good-bye to Amber, maybe it’s always been there. I think it probably has. Lurking. Waiting.

I don’t know now if filling it means getting involved with Now I Lay Me Down to Sleep (an organization run by a close friend of MJ’s) or what Trevor Romain did here (you remember Trevor…) or something similar that may or may not have been created yet.

What I would give for one last snapshot of me and my siblings and step-mother with my dad. If there had been a picture of us from the sitting room that day we had the talk…

It’s in my head, but it will fade with time (even if the pain doesn’t) and holding a frame in your arms to rock with while you mourn is so much different than sobbing alone with empty arms.

The point being, I suppose, that I don’t know what it looks like yet - the bigger purpose and the way to give back - but I’m open to it and looking for it. I hope you are too, and I hope you find it if you haven’t already.

For now though, I need to get in the shower. Blithering on is going to make me late for work.