Letter to a Friend

dearest j.

as most things do, your letter made me weep. i think i can confidently say that i understand sensitivity and vulnerability, tied in with the profound beauty, divinity, and fragility of life and death...more than anyone else now - or at least as much.

my dad's cat just entered the room and meowed. i picked him up and kissed him and smelled his fur, which always holds the faint aroma of dirt. it is difficult to summarize what "these days" are like - as i - and my life - are changing so rapidly and drastically as i muddle through this brutal time of exhausting grief. but right now - feeling a cat or dog's fur seems as profoundly comforting, sad, and beautiful - as drinking a cup of espresso with my dad and sister in prague, hearing moby's words sting my peripheral audio, as he sings over and over again: "hold onto people, they're slipping away...hold onto people they're slipping away". looking at my own hands - looking into the mirror - or looking at a crowd of sweaty dancing people at a club, while i dance in front of them, as if the end of the world were about to sweep us all into an oblivion just beyond the dance floor...these things make me feel the overwhelming pulse of being alive - so intensely i might die from it.

i was doing really "well" for a while i think...living inside certain semi-comforting abstract constructs i'd built around my broken heart...but for the past few weeks, i've been so unbelievably sad. the sadness so tangible and relentless. so sickening, ripping, tearing, bludgeoning. so torturous. the reality stabs and grabs and bashes and haunts until i run screaming, or crumble into a heap with my eyes squeezed tightly shut, for i can bear no more of it...she is physically gone. i can't see her ever again. i can't ever hug her or hold her or cry in her arms. she won't know my children.

i miss her so much. it's so bad, j. so bad. i try and feel her all around me - in the clouds and rain and in butterfly wings. but i miss her physical body. i want HER. i want to see her walking toward me, holding onto something insignificant but REAL, like a coffee cup or a hand bag. i don't want to only have memories of her! it's too soon. it can't be true.

all of this pain is all of my love for her. both so much bigger than me. as you talk of your love for j., and for your unborn baby - your child - your flesh and blood. these connections grow so far beyond us, and come from so many infinities before us. i, too am blessed. that is what i always know at the end of the day. no matter how much my head and heart and eyes hurt from crying. i know that she is with me every second, and that to have her as my mother, i am eternally blessed.