Two days after Christmas and the emergency room is full. She didn't know what she was doing, a week's worth of pills. Forty-two pills. A week's worth.

In the next room a man has taken something and fallen off of a fishing boat. He is cold. He screams for two hours while they try to figure out his name. Down the hall a little girl is so sick they send her straight to Children's. An old woman wanders from room to room doing EKGs.

We watch as her heart speeds up and slows down. We wait to be moved. A woman with chest pains sits and waits alone. A man with a blown-out knee waits on a stretcher.

The next day when I go to the hospital to visit I find a slide on the wet pavement. The corner of the Public Garden by Beacon and Arlington. The corner I sat in so many times. The edge of the statue shows and I remember what it says. Neither shall there be any more pain.

Christmas night the day long and gone and a lot of good in it. Plastic toys rattle in the back of the car. Sam cries as we sit in traffic.

I am trying to keep the tender parts of me tender.

Pickup truck rolled over. Car smashed in. A peace in knowing she would not be alone. The rising of a voice brings me to tears. The way we light things up and call them joy.

I ask if I am doing all I can. Am I doing all I can.

Thursday night a mind of its own with snow and cold and no dinner and bourbon. There will be mistakes and I'm sorry for them but it's the way it is there are always mistakes.

So it's Thursday and it's blues night and we end up out, out with Shilo's brother, and eventually I'll call him Ryan but not tonight and the music's okay but loud and the night is ending and in comes Mac and he sits with us of course he sits with us and the music is ending and I let him buy us drinks because the night is nearly over and his wife is dead and I was thinking about her Sunday and we have whiskey and I dance with Mac because he is lonely.

And the music ends and we sit down and we talk and Dave Sag comes up and Dave knows Gregor I'm his right-hand-man and Dave knows Anne Marie and Dave came to Gloucester after her. And it is December 13th heading into December 14th and Dave tells m he held Galen in his arms when he was a baby and it is December 14th and I make Mac get me another drink and it is December and Dave knew Anne Marie when she was baking bread and I baked for Mac and it is December 14th Dave held Galen in his arms and I will remember that this morning when my baby wakes up I will remember Anne Marie whailing in my kitchen as her baby lay dead in Great Barrington.

And it is Thursday night and I haven't eaten and we are talking about Galen and Gloucester and Anne Marie and Mac says out of nowhere that he misses my father and hell I miss my father and we drink to that but I'm the only one drinking and I am a Lacey and Dave talks about my mother and he remembers her and she doesn't even remember herself. I drink to that. And the night ends and I stumble home in the snow and I reheat leftover spaghetti and I've had too much to drink but I love you and I miss you and this morning it is fifteen years and nearly four years and who knows when my mother started to lose it but I love you I love you all.

It's feeling like a hot stove life these days. I don't know who to talk to. I don't know who to trade.

I'm waiting for the Mitchell Report to blow it all up.

Today it is difficult not to drink. I mean not to drink early. This morning with ice over everything and no cream for coffee, like a sign or something that whiskey would do or bourbon or scotch or anything but coffee with no cream.

There is a smell in the house, a bad smell, like lost sippy cup or worse. Keep doing laundry. Close the gate upstairs and mop the floor. Replace the bad smell with the bad smell of bleach. Strip the beds.

Wash Sam's chair. Scrub yogurt from the grooves in the table. Bring the garbage outside. Knock the ice off the lid. Shovel the steps, the walk. Throw salt on it.

Watch the crows fly away. I forgot about winter, this way things have of freezing shut. The way windex freezes on a window.

At one o'clock Jane brings me cream. I give her soup. I set oranges and cloves to boil on the stove.

It is after noon and I haven't had a drink.

My streak stands unbroken.

My house is filled with balloons. The kitchen cabinet is falling off of the wall. My living room is filled with fabric from another of my mother's closets.

Today she watched Sam while I put parts of her life in boxes and into my car. She sat him on the counter and fed him pieces of bagel. She gave him antiques dolls to play. And when her dog snapped at him she pulled Sam up quickly and cried with him.

She cried and was sorry and couldn't talk. She wandered around and couldn't find her things and cried and said she was sorry. I told her not to worry. Everything is fine.

I would lie through my teeth to make her happy.

Funny to watch Joe standing, his chin up just like Celeste's.