Today is Summer’s birthday. She would be 34.
I’ve been writing all day. Even logged into dumbass Facebook for a post. But I don’t have a definitive word. Maybe that’s a good thing. More records, more plays, more chapters of the work-in-progress memoir.
I was so blessed to spend every birthday of hers, once I knew her, with her. The first in Boston, when she was doing Stoppard’s Rock n Roll. She loved that job and the cast and the (double) role. There was snow and Obama had just won. I cooked dinner and baked a cake and kept things warm in the oven (on low) in the cozy little apartment The Huntington had settled her into. I saw the show that night for like the 9th time. We’d sneaked into a dressing room (not hers!) earlier, made out and then had a nap (!) Cheeky. She grabbed my first iPhone out of my hands and put herself in as the inaugural contact simply under that name “Cheeky”. She signed off most emails with that, “Your Redhead” or simply “Always”. That girl. That irrepressible, irreplaceable girl…
Meanwhile, yeah - Boston 2008. We came home to the hissing radiators, warmed up. I gave her dinner and her present and we watched some Colbert (her fav) on my old (then new) MacBook. We made love and she curled up asleep with me, her sweet little head on my chest, one hand in mine, the other clutching, um, other stuff, her pretty little feet curled around my ankles.
To find her (she always said that she found me!) was the miracle of my life. It changed me. Her loss - from fatal traumatic brain injury after an accidental fall - has changed me, too.
I went to a Choral Evensong tonight in midtown at St Thomas. If you go early, you see the choir wander in for a quick spot-rehearsal. I got there early. So early that I saw an etching in the stone there that I had never been close enough to witness. I posted this a minute ago. It read “Grief is the price we pay for Love”. The attribution is Queen Elizabeth II. Fuck… Yeah. I guess, that couldn’t be too much more damn resonant.
There’s a fuckload more to say. But that’s just my job. That’s my life without Summer. To bear witness. I’ll be posting a link again to the double-record because that’s what I got just now.
Meantime, my little sweetheart, my best friend, my true love, my little gingersnap, my treasure, my love, my life, my everything - Happy Birthday. I love you forever. And I will see you on the Other Side in the Beautiful New Place very soon.
I’ve been writing all day. Even logged into dumbass Facebook for a post. But I don’t have a definitive word. Maybe that’s a good thing. More records, more plays, more chapters of the work-in-progress memoir.
I was so blessed to spend every birthday of hers, once I knew her, with her. The first in Boston, when she was doing Stoppard’s Rock n Roll. She loved that job and the cast and the (double) role. There was snow and Obama had just won. I cooked dinner and baked a cake and kept things warm in the oven (on low) in the cozy little apartment The Huntington had settled her into. I saw the show that night for like the 9th time. We’d sneaked into a dressing room (not hers!) earlier, made out and then had a nap (!) Cheeky. She grabbed my first iPhone out of my hands and put herself in as the inaugural contact simply under that name “Cheeky”. She signed off most emails with that, “Your Redhead” or simply “Always”. That girl. That irrepressible, irreplaceable girl…
Meanwhile, yeah - Boston 2008. We came home to the hissing radiators, warmed up. I gave her dinner and her present and we watched some Colbert (her fav) on my old (then new) MacBook. We made love and she curled up asleep with me, her sweet little head on my chest, one hand in mine, the other clutching, um, other stuff, her pretty little feet curled around my ankles.
To find her (she always said that she found me!) was the miracle of my life. It changed me. Her loss - from fatal traumatic brain injury after an accidental fall - has changed me, too.
I went to a Choral Evensong tonight in midtown at St Thomas. If you go early, you see the choir wander in for a quick spot-rehearsal. I got there early. So early that I saw an etching in the stone there that I had never been close enough to witness. I posted this a minute ago. It read “Grief is the price we pay for Love”. The attribution is Queen Elizabeth II. Fuck… Yeah. I guess, that couldn’t be too much more damn resonant.
There’s a fuckload more to say. But that’s just my job. That’s my life without Summer. To bear witness. I’ll be posting a link again to the double-record because that’s what I got just now.
Meantime, my little sweetheart, my best friend, my true love, my little gingersnap, my treasure, my love, my life, my everything - Happy Birthday. I love you forever. And I will see you on the Other Side in the Beautiful New Place very soon.
