beware the gnomes

i'm back in real life with the heat and the mess, the death and separation highlighting the week of love and support i just flew away from. trying to figure out this equation and the lesson therein.
i made some significant connections at the wedding, and as the secret maid of honor i felt if was my duty to throw a party at my cabin. it was a kind of constant party that peaked the night before the wedding when the groom and his entourage from nyc showed up to spill out of the hottub and make lively conversation around the campfire. the cabin was appropriately named "the gnome house" and the gnomes were not altogether bad fellows, though mischief was in the air. the worst such incident i call the mystery of the missing key. the shuttle which was rented by the grooms family had a single key that somehow went missing that night. the boy who lost it was going crazy looking in the dark for it, and i finally had to talk him into staying so he wasn't up all night. the next day, we looked. nothing. where oh where could it be. we resigned ourselves to calling the van company and seeing if they had a spare. the hustle of wedding day took over and i didn't think about it much until our friends andy and savahn showed up with the key. huh? well, the story goes that as savahn was taking things out of her car to prepare for the wedding, she set her dress on top of her car, then removed it and the key was sitting there right on top of her hatchback. now, this is nearly impossible to explain without gnome intervention. she WAS there at the party for a while, but when she found the key it was at her hotel which was nearly 10 miles of bumpy, hilly roads away. also when she set the dress on the car, there was nothing on top, when she removed it, the key was there. the dress wasn't at the party. what happened? we were all mystified, but glad to have the key. moral: beware of gnomes.
the good times continued, the wedding was beautiful, the dancing unabashedly hot. the afterglow lasted through the next day and we all went hiking on mt. constitution and ate wild berries and currants from the generous northwest island forest. the cool semi-cloudy days were a welcome respite of 60 to 70 degree temperatures. i felt the atmosphere like a blanket softly draped around my shoulders, sheltering me with humidity and cool breezes.
then, as suddenly as it appeared, it dissolved, and here i am typing and sweating. while i was gone, my friend from work, jess, lost her brother to an accidental overdose. she's understandably a mess, and i have no idea what to do for her except be available. hearing this news made my heart sink, and my thoughts turned to eric. i want to talk to him so much! i wish he wanted me to be part of this part of his life. so i called him. and he changed his number. once and for all wiping me off his map. what do i do with this? i'm at a loss and have no plan of action. just sitting in the swirling mass of life's events, reevaluating what my best purpose could be.
rollercoaster's gotta roll to the bottom if you want to climb to the top again.