elizabethlevett

Dec. 9, 2017

Look what I found.

How could you know? How could you not know?

Since you’ve been gone everything has fallen back into it’s respective place. And I have fallen back into mine. Lately I’ve felt a depth of sadness at not being able to sit and talk with you and tell you anything I need to. Between you and I there was an ongoing conversation of over thirty years and through so many changes.

So many times I could barely wait to pick up the conversation again – to look into your face and say it all, but say it well. It isn’t that I felt judged by you, but I couldn’t help wanting to whatever was on my mind with fairness, with kindness, to say it well. Between us there was always, as you used to say, ease. We told each other everything. I remember when you told me you were sick, and when you told me you didn’t want to die and then, later, when you told me that you did. Now I’m sitting here just feeling the knowledge that you’ll never sit across the table from me again.

Someone said maybe I should find a separate journal and use it to write down things I wish I could share with you – as if the conversation could go on. Well here’s the funny thing about how friendship works. A long time ago you and I talked about what an important thing conversation is to both of us. I bought a tiny notebook and gave it to you because you said you wanted to write down bits of dialog you wanted to save and keep. You labeled the front in your flawless script – “Conversation – Dialogue.” (You preserved the “ue” after the “g” of course cause it’s classier that way.) And there’s even a little star. But then you put it away and forgot about it. After clearing out your apartment, I guess this little book found its way into a stack of other things and ended up in one of my bookcases. I didn’t even realize it was there until I wanted to find a suitable book to use just for “talking” with you. And here it is, inexplicably showing itself just when I most need to be with you and talk – just like you – unfailingly present at just the right time, its little sweet label like a prompt for me to sit down, open it up, say it all, whatever it is. And yes, I did put a picture of you inside, sitting on your couch in the sunny, third floor apartment of so many Sunday mornings, smiling at me.

It softens the edges of things for me to think less of how you’re gone now and more about how you were really, really here for all those years. And you knew. How could you not?