What You Always Teach Me

They're doing the layout for Electric Hymnal, little sweetheart, and they asked me this morning about the resolution of one of the photos we're using inside - a beautiful one of you that you took yourself and sent to me when we were apart for a week or so while you were down in Carmel in rehearsals for The Blue Room. I'm pretty sure it's going to be just fine because I have quite a big enlargement of it framed and hanging in the bedroom here (with a lovely sculpture of an angel just above it). But I went back into Mail to look for the original message you sent it in to make sure I had the highest res version.

Oh, little sweetheart, how wonderful just to look through a few of our many, many emails to each other. Even ones I sometimes think about and regret in the back of my mind, believing that they may have been sad, are not. Even when there has been some misunderstanding - and I like to remember and point that out, we are passionate and emotional and crazy and intense with each other, not cautious and quiet and reserved but big and messy and just in it! Thank god! - we both pour our hearts out to each other. No one gets on a high horse or goes silent or threatens or walks away. We both pour our hearts out in love and detail and longing to be together immediately and in super re-assurance that no-no-no, it was MY fault and I LOVE you.

Oh, sweetheart, there is no one like you ever. I am so blessed to have been loved by you and to STILL be so. I feel you with me in my best moments, sometimes even in my worst. Looking through these just for a short time today made me remember that (not like I ever forget, not really) and to know that even in those moments that I could just about kill myself for ever having been cross or stupid, any moment that might have been squandered by a misunderstanding however brief, we came back at it, never letting go of each other, always finding our way, never hiding how we feel, only ever wanting each other even more.

It's hard not to feel regretful for any moment not seized upon. I know you understand that more than anyone. You were so impatient with life, wanting everything now! I love that about you. And today taught me that again.

I'll tell you: it was about that morning you left here to fly to Thailand in the middle of the night and you didn't want me to go to JFK with you and you were all wound up and had barely slept and what I had mis-remembered about it, what sat on my chest like a thousand ton weight, was that when finally I did let you go on your own, that what you really wanted me to do was go anyway and that I failed. And I do wish that I had defied you and just gotten into a cab and been at your side until - like it usually was whenever we had to part at an airport - security had to intervene. But...

But I see now what we wrote at the time. We both poured our hearts out to each other from halfway around the world, frustrated that we couldn't be instantly in touch and instantly in each other's arms and so unguardedly apologizing, both of us only angry at ourselves, and telling each other everything with longing and honesty and the deepest truest love.

You always made things right, my little sweetheart. My angel. And you taught me to do that, too. I don't need to avoid anything or feel regret (well, not too much). I just need, as I always have and always will, to trust in you, trust in us. Everything I need, everything I am, can be found there.

Love you forever... xM

On this Day

When my mom died six years ago, I was in London. I got the news in the middle of the night. I was alone. When I called you, little sweetheart, eight hours behind, in California, you immediately burst into tears, and then told me to get on Skype. "I want to see you drink an entire glass of water", you said, "And lie down and try to sleep. I'll be right here at my computer. I will watch you. I will watch you while you'll sleep." You watched over me like an angel, a cyber angel. And when I awoke, you and your mom were there getting me a flight back to New York and on to Michigan. And then, my darling, you flew herself to Detroit and waited all night in the airport to meet my plane. We ran to each other the moment we saw each other, remember? And you were with me, were at my side the entire week as I buried my mother. Who does that? Irrepressible, irreplaceable girl. Until that day, my little sweetheart, when my eyes find you and I may run to gather you in my arms again and forever.

Waves of You

Little sweetheart, I've had a bad day. Maybe I shouldn't call it "bad". Just very very sad and hurting and longing for you terribly. I got up this morning and went to that little church I've told you about. It's good. I'm glad I go. It's very mindful. I know I use that word a lot. Maybe too much. What I mean by it is that I guess in those moments when I feel I am mindful, I'm not so distracted by unimportant or trivial things. I'm present. I can feel deeply and connected to my interior life and, often, these are the moments that I feel very close to you. But it can also make me terribly sad. Even inconsolable.

Sometimes waves of grief come over me. Did I ever tell you, little sweetheart, about how once when I was swimming in the ocean I got knocked down by a wave? It sent me all the way to the sea's floor and I hit my head and then, as I tried to get back to the surface, I kept getting knocked down and pulled under again and again. It knocked the wind out me and I was gasping for air. It probably only lasted a few seconds but it seemed like ages. I couldn't get out of it. When I finally did, no one even saw me on the shore or was worried about or even looked at me. I went through it alone. That's not the important part, but I did just remember that now, too.

Anyway, there are days like this when I get so knocked down by my grief for the loss of you, my angel, I can't do anything. I just cry for hours and hours. Often I go back to bed even in the midday, my fingers clutching the edge of your bed clothes, the ones I keep always on your pillow on your side of the bed to comfort me and remind me and to know they are there - you might need them still, maybe by some miracle you will come back!

I got knocked down so hard at church today, little sweetheart, when the choir was singing so very beautifully. They'd already done a wonderful version of Bach's "Jesu, Joy of Man's Desiring" with the organ part and everything and then they did this lovely piece, "The Call of Wisdom" as the offertory. There was a line in it that repeated over and over: "I am here, I am with you. I have called: do you hear me?"

Oh, Summer, I cried and cried and as I heard that. The waves hit me and I hung my head, resting it on the back of the seats in front of me and just shook, gasping with sobs. Later, after the service, a nice man, Doug, who has been very kind to me before, approached me, kind of warily. He said he wanted to tell me something but he didn't know if he should. He told me that I would love again. That I should be open to that. I shook my head, little sweetheart, my eyes filled with tears and said "she" (meaning you of course)'s my girl". And I said "I just want to be with her". It's hard for people to hear that, you know? He said right back to me, "No, you don't". And I said right back to him, "yes, I do!". He went on to say that God had given me my life and that He wants me to live it. And he told me about his own father who lost his wife to cancer and eventually remarried. Remarried a woman who turned out to be his (Doug's) mother. That his father and mother had five children and that he had been the fifth of them. I think he meant well, little sweetheart. In fact I know he did. After, seeing that I wasn't exactly having an epiphany, he said "should I apologize or just walk away?". I hugged him instead.

By the time I got home I had to lie down. And that's where I spent most of the day, little sweetheart - crying and sleeping and longing for you. It's dinner time now and I'm warming up the last of the homemade chicken soup I made last week. I took a bath. I have some brownies in the oven. I remember texting you once to say that I was feeling rather sad and you asked if you could come over and bring me some chocolate. You asked if I was that kind of sad. Was I chocolate-could-make-it-better kind of sad. The truth is chocolate does make things a little bit better but what always makes a difference, what always solves anything and everything, is you.

Even when I'm so sad and shaking with grief and loneliness, the thought of you and the mindfulness that brings you as close as I can get to you for now until that day when I may be with you in Forever, it's worth it. Somehow even the pain is better than not. Never Be Ashamed to Cry for That Girl.

I'm breathing slowly and deeply as I type this, my darling. I'll try my best to try my best this week again, my little sweetheart. And I long for you to take me the second heaven will allow. I will listen. "I am here, I am with you. I have called: do you hear me?" Yes, my sweetheart. Never stop calling to me. Please. Please, never stop.

Return

I'm getting dressed for a run, little sweetheart, listening to Lanterns On The Lake, and I just thought of a dream I had a while ago and I wondered if I'd ever told you about it. In the dream we were in the kitchen at your parents house and your brother Jesse - who I never got to meet because he passed just less than a year before I met you - was there and so were your mom and dad and a few other people and then you arrived. I'm not sure how. You might have even materialized. But there you were. And I rushed to you and gathered you in my arms and cried and cried and cried and held you so very tightly that Jesse, who I'd only just met, began to tease me a little. But then everyone was so kind because they understood. And Jesse and your mom and you yourself spoke quiet and kindly and smiled at me and said it was okay, it was okay now, you would never be apart from me again, it was okay to let go of you for a minute, you would be right here with me, with us all. And everything would be okay, little sweetheart. Life - the beautiful life we had would be made one again. And we would always have each other. Forever.

Meeting place

Little sweetheart, an online friend, a dear one from Poland, who lost her true love just two years before your tragic passing but who has such strong faith that we will all be together again in the Forever, wrote me something beautiful today and I want to share it. She read that I had that little star named for you, my darling, and she said this:

"It all means something, She knows the surprise you made for Her. I bet THIS will  be the place you two meet :*

not now, one day, but the venue is settled." 

I love that, don't you, little sweetheart? That you know. That it is a surprise - a sweet one, I hope - to you. And that that is the place where we will meet, where I will fly to when I die and you will be waiting to collect me. Oh, little sweetheart, I can hardly wait!!

The Brightest Star in My Sky...

I had a star named for you today, little sweetheart, for your 36 and 1/2 birthday! Don't know where it is yet (they're sending a map with the certificate) but the lady at the International Star Registry said it's a good one! Love you forever. 

Signs

What were all the signs today you sent me my sweetheart, in rapid succession? It was during my run this afternoon. That number 27 keeps coming up. And Geneva, which is an old one. I think I'm going to die on the 27th of the month sometime. What if I was in Switzerland on a 27th? That would do the trick. I think if your saying that we have 10 years is somehow still right, I should be dead year after next. That suits me just fine. I was thinking about the rest of the year and all I need to get done - Electric Hymnal this month, Double Exposures in the early fall, a live Of Love on your birthday in November, the first printing/first volume of our memoir for Christmas. Then a year or two to tour and then die. And as I was finishing, the number 150 came up, which I think means the first 150 pages. And then a bus door opened as I went by. I think that was meant to tell me that you will come for me as soon as I finish, I just need to do all this. The signs, little sweetheart. Make sure I see and remember them all.

Our Music

Little sweetheart, the new Radiohead record is coming out on Sunday. I've heard the first two tracks and the second of them especially is very good. It was one of the first things we discovered we both liked, wasn't it, my darling. And they were from Oxford, where you went to school. Even came into the pub one time you told me, and you didn't recognize them and asked someone. "hey, what's their deal?". Ha! Remember how "In Rainbows" had just come out when we first met? That seemed to be a thing - albums that came out by bands we liked and in a few years and it seemed it was time for the next album. 2011 was like that. It seemed time for a new Low album and a new DCfC album. And a new Radiohead album. And "King of Limbs" came out like that, in those last weeks while you and I were in rehearsals in 2011 - how I first heard about it and texted you and downloaded it while you were driving home and we listened to it together. It was so beautiful and epic and sad and came to be very much associated with that time, then, of your tragic passing, because I had it on in the car driving everywhere, doing everything, aching for you. You once told me - I remember this so clearly, we were driving on Judah on our way to Adronico's, listening to "Narrow Stairs" - you were talking about what should be played at your funereal and that you wanted me to speak (you were so unafraid to talk about these kind of things) and I said that I could never listen to our music again if you were to die before me. And you reached over smiling and held my hand and told me to listen and to remember you. And I cried and cried and cried. And tried to keep driving. And you were right there at my side holding my hand in yours and there was no need to cry yet. Not really. I miss you so. I'll try to listen to this all this weekend when it comes out, my little sweetheart. And if it's true that records come out when they're supposed to, that they mark some kind of invisible demarcation line in our life and times, I'll hope, I'll be praying, that it means I'm only getting ever closer to you and that day when we will be reunited, never to ever part again. With all my love, Summer. With all my love forever.