Day 108

I started a journal after you called and told me. It was actually a document in progress, a place where I keep track of thoughts that might be useful in my writing projects. When I stopped having any thoughts but thoughts of you it became a sort of de facto journal if you can call a protracted howl a journal.

The deep horror at acknowledging, by typing words I could read on a screen, that you were leaving the world is something I may never get over.

After you lost the use of your arm it went fast. When we talked you had already taken a few steps on the downside of the peak though neither of us knew it then, not for sure. But when you said your stamina was bad, you were telling me of your fear that time was short and I cried.

I’m glad I told you I loved you, glad it was the first thing that blurted out of my mouth. I was the first one to say it, when we were dating. You said Thank you! and my roommate was outraged when I told her but I was pleased because I could see how you meant it and really I had chosen such an odd time to say it, it was the best response you could have had. I said it as much for me, as you; I just wanted to share it with you, without needing you to do anything about it. It was really unlike me but then again I pursued you from the beginning. I knew the moment I looked at you, that we would be together. I just knew. Something in your face drew me. We worked together for months before my boss C. figured out I was crushing and arranged for a run-in at the vending machine where the candy choices were M&Ms and Mars Bars for 25 cents. She introduced us and I thought it prudent not to blurt out that I had bought the dress for our first date weeks prior, which I had.

I did not realize until the moment just after we hung up that if your bad stamina was the prognosticator I feared it was, I would likely never speak to you on the phone again. That I had probably just heard your living, breathing voice for the last time.

There are a lot of lasts when someone dies. Grief is an ellipses. The last time I saw you, the last time we spoke, the last email I sent. The last week that contained a day that you were still alive. The last month that contained a day that you were still alive. The last year - this year - that started with you still alive, still with hope.

When I go to see your grave, it may be the last time I see your mom. She talks of her own passing away matter-of-factly, joking that she will outlive the orchid I sent her on the day you died. It will have two blooms - one for me, one for you. She is the same as ever; A. seemed so fragile and walked away twice, unable to finish a sentence about your last words together.

When your mom dies I will likely lose my connection to your family forever, with your dad and grandma gone, only the siblings left and Aunt Jl whose wrath at the divorce is as palpable as her love and regret. You shouldn’t have left us honey, was the last thing Grandma said to me as I hugged her goodbye, knowing it was probably the last time she’d ever see me.

There was a photo album flipping on the screen at the funeral home, mostly from the past ten years of your life. I loved seeing you as a daddy in those pictures. Only one picture contained me, us. I only had pictures from my own photo album, T. explained.

Some people - people very close to me, and you - act like because we were divorced that somehow your death would not be heart stopping. It is a failure of imagination I can’t blame them for, most people don’t possess your great intelligence from which sprang your even greater generosity of spirit. I was tied to him more profoundly than you knew - a line from an Ingmar Bergman movie - is not something you can say so I just say well we were together more than twenty years. I don’t say all the things you were there for: my first airplane trip, my first house, first marathon, first international flight, first time eating Korean food, first promotion, first time I broke free and lived my life according to what I wanted instead of what was expected. The search engine that is my brain always returns you in the top ten results of almost anything I search for in my past.

For all my imagination, I could never have predicted how terrible the world was going to feel without you.