To Find You

I went up to Davis today, little sweetheart…

Is Davis north of here, actually? I have to think about that for a moment. It may be south. That would be fitting, tho’. You were forever calling things “up” or “down” exactly opposite of their direction north to south. It was one of those things, like dates and numbers, that just didn’t compute for you. Charmingly so. It makes me so very fond and sad to think of it now. Like most things, I suppose, honestly.

I drove up (or down or over or whatever it is) ostensibly to deliver copies of Sometimes in Dreams to KDVS. Gabe, the station’s Music Director, has office hours on Thursday and I wanted to get it to him and a couple of the DJ’s who liked and programmed Dream Together last year.

I stopped at the house first, planning to walk over. I often linger at the house. I remember so keenly the many wonderful times you and I spent there lovingly, gloriously on our own. The amazing birthday cupcakes you made for me one year and the DCfC show we went to that evening and then returning cuddled on the couch in our pjs. All the times together in the garden and walking around downtown hand in hand visiting little shops or having lunch or dinner and getting a movie to take home and watch curled up together. Waking in your pretty canopy bed, entwined and in the deepest love I’ve ever known. It was an oasis and ours.

Today, my little sweetheart, something just didn’t feel right at all. I felt like a stranger there and far far too far from you and the love that saved and change me. I didn’t linger. I couldn’t have been there more than a few minutes. I packed up, locked the door behind me and walked to campus.

And when I came back, I just got in the car and drove to the Nugget Market and bought flowers to take to the place where the Angel honors your memory.

I know you aren’t there, darling. Not tethered in the least, You simply alight to confirm me. And I felt that you did as it was there finally that I lingered, letting the daylight go out around me and the night come on before kissing your stone and telling you how very much I love you. I lay all the way down across the marble there and listen and talk quietly to you. And cry and cry and cry.

Honestly, little sweetheart, I found myself in despair as I wept and something made me say that “people are so mean”. I’m not sure where that hurt came from but I felt and articulated it and somehow unburdened it talking to you. I sometimes feel, as I sometimes did in life, that people are trying to take you away from me and I said that too, “they won’t let me have you.”

But I know better because you told me yourself that others don’t matter. You told me, in the words of one of the songs we so loved, that my love would be safe with you. I remember, can still feel, how you crawled into my lap and quieted me, kissed away my tears and said over and over “I promise. I promise!”.

I need only quiet myself, listen, remember, do my work, do our work. And you will be with me. Here and in just a little while, forever. Help me to know, my darling. I need you more than ever. With all my love.