You loved music and beer and basketball and me. It was very flattering to be loved by you, I’d never met anyone as smart and good as you. More than 30 years later and I’ve met maybe two people as smart and good as you.
I have this huge war chest of memories that only you and I had, and now it’s just me. They are the opposite of heavy, so ephemeral I’m afraid the act of remembering them will tear them apart.
going to all the theme parks one christmas, racing from ride to ride to beat the lines, brutally passing tired parents struggling with broods of children, both of us from poor families and never having been
the corporate parties with the big platters of jumbo shrimp and you always reporting afterwards, with a giggle, how many shrimp you ate
high fiving in the monstrous living room of our second house, our hands making an echoey clap
the big house parties we threw, where once two women showed up to work the next day with tattoos, and another time H. almost started a riot diving into the pool in her Victoria Secret underwear
running every step of the marathon together in weather so cold we actually had to step into the turnstyle of a bank to warm up before going back out again
on vacation in Hawaii and seeing a bunch of people running and joining them thinking something really exciting was happening and how much I loved the fact that it was nothing but the sunset - I’ll never forget how surprised I was when you suggested we go and planned the whole thing, that something so fantastical was happening to us! How young and beautiful we were.
So many of my memories with you, of you contain laughter. Crying over that now (of course) but it makes me smile too.
I thought of you when I woke up, of how much you liked to hit the snooze button and get back in bed, how I’d feel the weight of you shifting the weight of me and then hear your sigh of satisfaction. I never minded the many times you hit the snooze, really - I never used it myself, I was always already awake, listening to the sound of the mourning doves.