Cleanse Day 8, and Shanti
I’m at Amazon today, and had to bring my backpack full of cleanse supplies. The glop shake ingredients, the two different kinds of herbal pills, the lemonade I use to make the glop shakes (because if you make them with water they taste like caca). It’s quite a bunch of stuff. I’m feeling pretty good, although I was definitely hungry last night. I snapped at Andreas a couple times (hey, would would too if you’d only eaten one meal in the last 24 hours), but on the whole I’m feeling pretty good. Just had my second of four glop shakes for the day and yessir, I can feel that bentonite and psillium husk settling in quite nicely.

Last night I got a call from Ananda, an old high school friend. I hadn’t heard from her in a couple months, and left her a voicemail at her home in Florida a few weeks ago. She finally returned the call, and explained the delay: Shanti, her little sister and dearest friend, died a few weeks ago in a car accident. Poor Ananda’s family was simply destroyed–they were all very close, and such a jovial bunch that the grief must be hitting them especially hard.

Ananda returned home to Florida last week, and then came down with a severe infection that had her in the hospital for four days. She was delerious with a 102 degree fever, too weak to stand, the whole bit. And to make it even worse, she avoided calling her parents from the hospital because she didn’t want them any more upset than they already were. Such a brave, stupid girl. It just about broke my heart.

But, as she said “You know, I don’t KNOW how to be sad. I know best how to be happy and loving and cheery, and Shanti would kick my ass for being sad, so I’m trying to celebrate her every day. I don’t know how else to be.” Aww…*sniff* Grief.