A. made a copy of the picture in her guest room. I can’t remember who took the picture (with a bonafide camera!) as this was 2001, but I do know there was a Brasilian quartet playing in the background, I hired them after hearing them play at the airport. It was our departure party, our leaving for California party. I remembered, even then, the last “leaving for California” party we went to - your friends G. and T. departing from the Illinois cornfields for some place in southern California and how after five years they got divorced, G. scuttling back to the farm and T. disappearing into the wilds of the Pacific Northwest. Watch out for California, people from your town said when they heard our plans, and it would be easy to say they were right except what led to our divorce we brought with us to California, was well in place, California was a way to try to fix it.
I made a Day of the Dead altar with the photo and I included the stone you brought back from Brasil. I added Grandma’s sterling silver rosary (you held it that one time when I showed you our one sure defense against a vampire lay within reach of the nightstand). Plus a snow globe of the city where we first moved in together. Your favorite candy (a knowledge I may well be the sole keeper of). A symbol of the nickname you had for me, one that T. still calls me. Long ago she took me aside and asked it if was ok to use the nickname around my husband, I said sure…now she is the only other person in the world who knows about it.
I used to listen to a song sometimes, there is a lyric that goes You were my compass star, you were my measure - lyrics by Sting, sentiment by me, realized way after the fact. How I lived for your approval. When I got the big fat raise and the big fat promotion - things I had to go to bat for, things my boss said no way not likely and I decided not to believe that and went for it and got it with you cheering me all the way - you made the reservations at the restaurant with the big fat Michelin star and when we went there we walked right past the CEO who recognized me and chatted with us for a bit and then we went on to our table trying to play it cool but our faces, the way we locked eyes in such hilarity. When you toasted me at that table that I can still picture perfectly in my mind it was one of the proudest moments of my whole life, a rare time I allowed myself to accept praise and only because it was from you.
Today we took the motorcycle across the bridge. Surrounded on all sides by trucks and cars hurtling past is the last place I felt sadness would find me but it did. Your mom sent a picture of you, after what turned out to be the last useless treatment. Your face buried in your arms, the table scattered with evidence of those who sat watch with you - cold coffee in styrofoam cups, an empty paper plate with plastic fork. Always cold you wore a hat, jacket, even gloves. I can just see the ledge of your cheekbone. Zooming through space at 70 mph I can theoretically be protected by spine and elbow protectors, but not from that.
My husband, perhaps feeling the heaving of my chest against his back, perhaps hearing the howl in my helmet, reached back to briefly grasp my leg right below the knee and then we were racing back across the bridge, the city appearing suddenly before us. I remember when you and I first came here, twenty one years ago, taking this same route, the city hoving into view and my heart making this same leap at the sudden, stunning grace of it spread out before us, exiting onto an artery that took us right into the heart of the city, past our old place, empty and with a new paint job, making a right turn and then a left, almost all of our old haunts gone now - the breakfast cafe, the Italian joint with the long counter to eat at, the hardware store and the Thai place and the restaurant with the sidewalk seating we’d take every visitor to, the vet where our old pup breathed his last. By the time we get home my tears were dried and I could even laugh when my dog barreled down the steps to greet us in frantic joy as though he feared we’d be gone forever and wanted to waste no time letting us know how loved we are, how missed.