I was remembering how that one time we were on a ski weekend with a huge crew, most of them strangers, us only really knowing the host/organizer, and new at skiing and excited about it. We were always the most athletic couple in any group we were part of - the umpire for the softball league sponsored by the tavern we frequented after games called us Robocouple, and everyone called you Robo-C and me Robo-S. I led the league in double plays and extra base hits and you in home runs.
How after the games we would go to this really old diner on the south side of the city that served something called a slider, real old-timey diner food - a bed of hashbrowns, on top of which is some chili, on top of which is some some cheese, on top of which is a fried egg. A slider supreme had - do you remember - a burrito on top.
I can picture us there at the counter watching the fry cook, G. sitting on the stool next to you. The fry cook had the palest skin, the palest eyes, the most scars, the worst tattoos we’d ever seen. G. would sometimes get Special K instead of a slider, actively managing his weight. You on the other hand always went supreme but G. tended toward fat, you never did - we ran too much for that and you had your mom’s genes for sure, at the funeral I told her how great she looked and she said well J. always said I’d get fat after the divorce but I never did and we had a good laugh. How I love her, miss her. We are in touch every couple of weeks, a connection I think will not be broken til one of us passes (your death cured me of thinking I will outlast anyone I love). I’m so glad she has A. - I still tear up when I remember how broken he was at the funeral home, turning away with great dignity so we wouldn’t see him weeping. It was a real joy to see him after so many years.
I was remembering how on the ski weekend we were playing some game where a person draws a card and tells someone else what they have to do and mine was sing a song with the word imagine, and I sang a Bjork song but had to sing like six sentences to get to the word imagine. We had just seen the movie Dancer in the Dark, and I had Bjork on my mind, her being one of the many musical gifts you’ve given me. This same song I sang then always for some reason occurs to me when I go for a motorcycle ride with my husband, perhaps because I worry about crashing, my body arcing up and out over the guardrail to fall on the rocks below, something the narrator in the song concerns herself with:
It’s early morning, no one is awake
I’m back at my cliff still throwing things off
I listen to the sounds they make on their way down
I follow with my eyes as as they crash
I imagine what my body would sound like
slamming against those rocks
and when it lands,
will my eyes be closed, or open?
I remember after seeing the movie you bought me the CD, us in the kitchen playing it while cooking and both of us crying when the song 107 steps came on.
You died exactly 107 days after your last birthday.
Whenever I sing Hyperballad inside my helmet my husband sometimes catches snatches of the song and reaches his hand back in its skeletor motorcycle glove to squeeze my left calf.
A couple of years ago I started writing haiku, a challenge by a friend to do 100 days in a row, posted to Facebook. The habit stuck. Since you died, you, the loss of you is the topic of almost every verse. I always know when one is good, because your mom will “like” it. It’s like her hand reaching through the ether to squeeze mine.
Your daughter turned 12 yesterday, her first birthday without you. I can just imagine the family navigating around the empty space that is where you should be. Your mom texted to tell me about little V. going to get something from the closet by the entry door. She said he wrapped his arms around your coat (ah the pain of opening that closet door to see that coat each day, my heart aches for R.) and V. told your mom, I like to wrap my arms around Daddy sometimes. Your mom told him, Daddy knows you are hugging him.
So your daughter shares a birthday with Bjork as it turns out, not knowing that hearing Bjork’s music (or even just her name) is just one of those things that will always make me think of you - and now your daughter - and I’m glad.