Day 137

I asked Father N., wherever you went do you know how much I still loved you? Because *I* didn’t. I didn’t realize my heart was still so full of love for you. I locked it away but it seems that it has survived all these years behind that locked door, and now that the electrical system governing the lock has died, it has walked out and made itself at home in my living room. Nodding at me each day when I walk past.

I asked Father N. if he thought you forgave me, really and truly. I should take your word for it, I know. We had fun, you reminded me - we were lucky. Me more than you.

In answer Father N. said you now see and understand the big picture of our life together. All is well for C., he wrote, and someday it will be for you as well. It was nice of him to add that, like throwing me a rope. I see it lying there. I can pick it up anytime and I am glad of that but for now it’s enough to know it is there.

Take comfort in knowing that the love you two shared was good, says Father N, echoing K, who told me what the two of you did, back in St. Louis. I owe you my life twice, then. There I was out in the world thinking I was doing it on my own, when you two were carrying me all along. It’s the kind of realization that unhinges the knees and cracks open the heart. I called K. and thanked her again, and we cried over you. She finally had to close the browser window with your picture, telling me how she apologized to you for moving on even in that small way.

As I write this the sky is full of the shredded thunder of the Blue Angels flying overhead, practicing for the annual show they put on over the Bay. The sound reminds me of us in our twenties, when you worked for a defense contractor. We’d drive out early in the morning to the airport where the fighter jets took off, going vertical to avoid breaking the sound barrier over the sleeping suburbs. Those guys are such show offs in their flight suits in the employee cafeteria, you said, but I could see that you admired them too, the astronaut dream never too far from the surface. A brainiac electrical engineer with a master’s and the resting pulse rate of a sprinter would seem to be a shoo-in but back then your astigmatism ruled you out. Had you lived, you could have become a citizen astronaut - the first all-civilian crew launched into orbit around the earth exactly four months and two days after you died.

I hope you can find peace, Father N. wrote. And don’t hide your feelings - they are special because they are an expression of the love you shared. I don’t know if writing a secret journal will bring me peace - I suspect part of me doesn’t really want peace, confusing it with forgetting you, confusing it with letting myself off a hook you never put me on.

You love him, and he loves you, Father N said, so be the best you that you can be - a promise I have already made to you, to myself, to the universe.