The Permanent Connection

Little sweetheart, remember the refrigerator, here? It’s the same one that was in operation from the day I arrived decades ago. An ancient warhorse, I’m guessing it has probably been here since the Kennedy Administration. It’s the kind where you have to defrost the freezer regularly. If you don’t it becomes like an igloo and you can only shove a thing or two into the tunnel of space between walls of icy tundra.

Last year, it seemed to be on its last legs, and the landlord sent a repairman over here who took one listen to it and pronounced it a blown condenser, un-fixable because trusty don’t even make parts for it anymore. That was a year ago. I don’t like to make trouble, so I sat on it for another four seasons until now when even at full blast, it wasn’t keeping things cool. To my astonishment the landlord agreed to replace it and they brought a new one over here earlier yesterday.

Every time I would defrost the old one. I would take everything out, placing all the most perishable stuff in a cooler and filling it with a five pound bag of ice from the deli, to keep cold until the arduous operation was completed a few hours later.

At the back of the fridge on the top shelf is a collection of things of yours, little sweetheart, from your last time here, that I’ve saved all these years. Some crisps, some sweets and a favorite soda, salad dressing, some barley from a recipe I made especially for you. Each time I defrosted, I would carefully save them all, transferring them to a little box and then putting them back after everything was defrosted and cleaned. Yesterday, I did that again, and returned them to the brand new fridge.

The front of the old one also had many pictures of you - including one of you at a fridge (at my mom’s, wrapped in a blue towel post-shower and looking for a yogurt)  - and some other mementos, a ticket from the Leonard Cohen show you took me to in Oakland for my birthday and the receipt from our trip to the spa in Calistoga, on yours. I carefully removed them and this morning put them all back on the front of the new one.

Some things change but others are forever. Isn’t that right, little sweetheart? 

In A Wonderful Dream!

In a wonderful dream last night you were with me again, little sweetheart!

We were in SF and going around places together. You had little errands to run and were were stopping by places meeting up with people briefly who you had to check in with, have a word or two. I was so overjoyed to be with you and finally understanding that even though it seems like we die, we don’t really - we’re always and eternal and just have to find our way back to that, back to one another. I told you, my heart racing with emotion, how broken I had been when you passed, when you fell. How I stood every day in the ICU holding your hand praying for a miracle and waiting for you, giving you all my love. I told you now I understood better because of what had happened to me myself when my own heart stopped for ten minutes.

Life and death are not what we think they are until we really know and now I was so grateful just to be with you. I was worried about things from before. I didn’t want to make mistakes or let my ego ever get in the way, to be jealous or do anything that would be in even mild disagreement ever again. I just wanted to treasure and be with you. Always.

One of the places we stopped was to talk to a guy, he was sitting at a production table or some kind of desk maybe, at work, and you were talking to him about an apartment. I thought maybe it was the idea of trying to find me a place near you, near your old apartment in the Sunset but what you actually wanted and told me was something new - you wanted to buy a house that we could live in together. Also, this guy had something to do with theatrical venue or something. He was going to help us put on a play for you to be in, one of my plays, I think.

Mostly what I remember of the dream though, little sweetheart, is just the feeling it gave me. It was so real being with you, back at your side. It was absolutely exhilarating. My heart really was racing,. And it was such proof positive that nothing else in my life could ever compare to that feeling of being with you and belonging. Just magic. You are. My love, my true love. My miracle. Forever.

In That Place You Will Take Me

There is a place, my little sweetheart, in the well of my chest, that is unlike any other. However the center of thought may be the brain or the governance of bloodflow the heart, this special place is the center of existence. If there is a portal between this world and the next - and I both firmly believe and fervently pray that there is - this is its gateway, its nexus, its physical manifestation. The shock of love sparks there, its tremors felt most keenly. The ache of loss resides most devastatingly there. I didn’t need illustrations to tell me this but I remember seeing one once. A diagram from some tract showing the soul leaving the body, its mystical vapor rising from exactly that place. When you held me in your arms, my little sweetheart, and I would weep with inarticulate joy to have been found by you, you would gently stroke that exact place, that well of being in my chest and quietly call me your treasure. Over and over you would say it to calm me: “my treasure, my treasure, my treasure…” . For months after your tragic passing I kept a knife beside my bed. I imagined constructing a vice with blocks of wood to hold it in place so that I might impale myself on its blade right at that very place where you consoled me and now I ached and wished to drain the life from myself to end the pain and hope my soul to exit its cage and fly to you. One of your dearest childhood friends was still in touch with me in those days - most all have fled, she’s not to be singled out, she’s not alone, that distinction falls to me ... - and knowing not specifically of this but in tune enough to suspect I might take my own life, told me that if I did so I “would never find” you. Those words, that thought stopped me in my tracks. I asked her soon after if her thoughts of this came rooted in religious belief. And they didn’t. She couldn’t really articulate anything of the kind. But even unmoored from faith, the thought took hold with me and strengthened, illuminated my own. I mustn’t take my life, I must let you come to take it for me, and to take me with you. Even as I type these words, I feel that stirring in my chest, in that place where you soothed me. I know when I do fly to you it will be from that departure point. And when I call to you it is from there most deeply too. You visit me through its open door, a door you yourself pried and propped open with the boundless great gift of your love. Please linger there, stay with me a while today, won’t you, my little sweetheart? Please. Please, don’t go too far away…

Love. You. Forever.

Noted

Little sweetheart, when I was looking for that St. Barbara medal the other day I found a little something else. Tucked into an old address book (remember address books?), was a note I'd made, shortly after we met and you told me, of your birthday. I have so many things to say about our birthdays together - yours and mine. So much. An entire lengthy chapter. Count on it. But meantime, as I sign off for the night - this. Remember November. November 13th. Love you forever, my little sweetheart.

Searching while shut-in...

So, little sweetheart, I have to tell you about something that happened on Monday. I had an accident. A kind of breathtaking and inexplicable wipeout while on my morning run along the Hudson, tripping and flying and landing hard on my head. It was very dramatic and bloody and nothing was broken or required stitches but I got pretty badly banged up and I'm all bandaged about my face. Gah! So, quite a story there and I'll get to telling you about it soon.

But just now, as I'm housebound, I set out to find something. I'd had a cursory look for it when Kris was here but I decided as I'm staying inside hiding my banged up face from the wider world, I'd have a proper rummage. 

Did I ever tell you this? 

My mom's best friend bought a pendant at the mission in Santa Barbara for me on the day I was born and gave it to her. When I was spending extended time living in NorCal after you and I met, my mom, who had been keeping it safely stowed somewhere and never even told me about it, sent it out there to me. I packed it away somewhere safely myself. But I was thinking that it's about time I wore it around my neck now along with my emergency dog tag (that has your mom and dad as contact), the key to Miller Drive your mom put on a piece of yarn for me, and the little silver pendent that my London friend made for me that says "Our Oneness Can Never Be Erased". 

I just found it. The pretty little pendent is of St Barbara herself. I wonder if you've met her yet on your travels, my little sprite...