March...

March approaches. In an hour or two. The 8th was Summer's fall. The 18th the day she passed. A couple months ago - I wrote of this somewhere, probably not here - I was at her grave. I'd been there for an hour or so. It was dark. A car pulled up. I said to her "Here come your parents, sweetheart". It was her Dad on his own. I stood up as he approached and soon fell into his arms. "You really loved her", he said. "I still do", I cried. Somewhere I wrote this. But the next thing he said was "we can't just do this (grieve inconsolably) for decades. It'll be a year in March but then..." And he trailed off because how we can we not? What can be done? We'll all try to try harder, sweetheart. But life is so lonely, the world so empty and wrong without you.

Human...

There's so much music that I can't bear to listen to anymore because it was so dear to Summer & I together. DCFC, The National, Bon Iver, Goldfrapp are a few. Nothing in those catalogs is safe. With some other groups it's just one very specific record. The last Radiohead for one. Some of it is inescapable - Adele's "21" had just come out this time last year and Summer was singing "Rolling in the Deep" all the time. She was singing it on our last day, hours before she fell. Needless to say, this has not been a good year for avoiding Adele. Anyway, last night I was at dinner with some friends. A song came on. A song I don't even like. "Human" by The Killers. But the last time- indeed, perhaps every time I heard it before - I was with Summer, I was in the midst of our beautiful life. Maybe driving her to rehearsal or waiting for our take-out order at Crepevine on Irving Street or grocery shopping at Andronico's like we did on the last day. I sat there listening to this song, this song I don't even like, this song I probably mildly mocked the last time I heard it ("Are we human or are we dancer?" Really? Really?) and I started to tremble and tear up and just weep. I miss you. I miss you. God, I miss you, my sweetheart...

No one...

Whenever we went out to eat, instead of sitting across from me, Summer would always slide in on the same side and sit next to me. No one else ever did that. No one else ever did a lot of things...

Travels...

In Lenox, MA on roadtrip to Shakespeare & Co. Packed my Northface vest because it's meant to be cold up here. Putting it in this morning I felt something in the right pocket. It was a Virgin America boarding pass JFK to SFO, dated Feb 12, 2011 - my last flight to see Summer, one year ago. Miss you, little sweetheart. Love you forever.

Valentines

Remembering my first Valentines Day with Summer... February 14, 2009. Her parents rented a big beautiful house in Lake Tahoe and we all met up there. When we "went to the snow" we always call it. A couple days earlier, Summer & I were walking past Macy's on her way to ACT and she saw this cute bra and panty set in the window. It was black and pink/red polka dot. I went back and got it for her and gave them to her when I picked her up in the car on our way to leave town. She was teaching that day. We stopped to get gas high up in the mountains and I bought her a pair of Valentine sunglasses. She had a really nice pair of shades, so these became her spare set. We went snowmobiling on trails for hours and made delicious meals in the huge kitchen and the first night we all sat down to dinner together- they were about 15 of us - Mike (Summer's dad) said "I just want to say that I read something this week that I really liked. It's Michael's play Seven Pages Unsigned. It was smart and funny and I really cared about all the characters. And I had a little tear in my eye by the end". I think that was maybe the nicest thing anyone ever said about my work and the most generous, kind thing anyone ever did in public. We had the most wonderful time. It snowed so much- we got 60 inches in a day and a half. The day we left, everyone had gone but Summer, her parents and I. We stayed for another hour or two and they all told me at the greatest length I had yet heard the story of Summer's double organ transplant. We had to have chains on the tires of our cars, the snow was so heavy. I drove Summer's Prius, following Mike & Linda through the mountains. At a pass up there, there was a roadside stop where guys would quickly take off your chains for you. We did that and in a hour were back in sunny mild NoCal. We stopped for gas and Mike said to me, "you're a very good driver. Much better than Summer. Don't tell her I said that." The Bon Iver record had just come out. We listened to it in the car, Summer & I, singing along, singing to each other, me in tears even tho there wasn't anything then to cry about. I was so happy, that's all. The second to last song ends with the line "your love will be safe with me". I promise, Summer said to me. I promise...

Feb 13

A still of Summer from my short film, Two From the Line. One year ago today I was in SF for its first screening. The next day, Valentines. Didn't know these would be our last weeks together. Love you forever, little sweetheart.

More on the lost life...

It seems I’ve settled, however uneasily, into my life in New York. It’s a solitary one, to be sure. Maybe I’m not so settled as I hesitantly now concede. I do spot the signs of an earlier planned migration. I bought a dozen, indeed, maybe two dozen, plastic storage bins 3 years ago when I thought I might move to SF. I had someone here on a (largely illegal) sublet and had boxed up much of my books, journals and CD’s - the things I thought I might ultimately want at the ready for a cross country van trip. I went to SF for 5 months but work called me back to NYC. I never really said “no” to a move but Summer sometimes let slip she thought I had. Last year at this time she was all but resolved to move here, so I have that as both a comfort and an endless pang of longing - to have her here.

Anyway, the boxes remain, mostly re-unpacked, but stacked and a few still with their contents, an aching reminder of what could have been. What perhaps even should have been. The regret! Anything now to have one more moment with her. To have thrown over everything, gotten a job at a video store and lived in a tiny flat above it, just to be near her always. I know that’s not where we were going. I know why she loved me, I know that she was ready, even, finally, to come here. But it hurts. It all hurts. I miss her so.

There’s a picture, a blurry one, of Summer on her last visit here. I was in the front room and heard her padding her way in from the kitchen. I wanted to film her but my iPhone was set to still instead of video. What I got was a grainy shot of her in her pajamas, coming into the room - the aforementioned plastic bins stacked in the background and what somehow looks like wings at her back. My angel. I call this picture “Resurrection”. Resurrection One, actually (I’ll post it here, forthwith). I find myself mindfully (as opposed to mindlessly) perusing Tumblr for shots as resonant as this on the same subject - Summer and her resurrection, our reunion beyond the immediate knowledge of those things solely mortal…