Last Day of the Year

Little sweetheart, it’s the very last day of 2018. It’s New Year’s Eve.

I think I’ve never had much use for the holiday. Maybe when I was a little boy, when the excitement of staying up until midnight - and fading, falling asleep and being carried off to bed well before - was a thing. I don’t think you and I ever had an New Year’s Eve together.

What I do remember was talking to you on New Year’s Eve. Talking to you on the phone - me here in NYC, you in SF - and making plans for the New Year. In 2008 it was about me coming there, possibly forever. In 2010, it was you telling me you were at a party with Danya but that you’d just booked a flight here - like excused yourself into the bedroom, gotten on your Air Book and bought a ticket. That you’d be here next week.

It still feels so close to me, my little sweetheart, that feeling that you’re only a plane ride away. Maybe you’re even closer than that, now. Maybe you’re far closer than I can imagine and all I have to is to listen quietly for your presence. All I have to do is as you would have me and sometime, sometime very soon, we’ll be together again and forever.

As this year draws to a close little sweetheart, this year when I got hit by a car and actually died for ten minutes before coming back to life, let it be a thing that I hold dear - you. To remember and honor and be like you. To do our work, speak our truth, say our prayer and finally, when called, fly to you.

With all my love on this last day, which is also the first, the first of the next. And you. You. Forever.