My friend passed away…

…

Hi. I’m writing you from the first front porch — the one where I started my substack journey. I hear birds, the occasional car on the road, a crow, an incessant twee of insects.

A person has gone from this world. A person who I care about. I will never hear her laugh or complain again. In this moment, though I am not religious, I think of souls, how her soul has a certain feel — joyful, defiant, hopeful, increasingly tired in these last days — and how I won’t feel that again. Not in this plane, anyway. And I imagine us reuniting in “heaven” which I imagine to be a meadow where your loved ones rush toward you with open arms, and I see why these concepts come up now, in the wake of her passing.

Because I’d rather think: I’ll feel you again. Hug you again. See you smile as you say something witty. Await that reuniting — and here my mind goes to cliches too — where we are restored to the people we were in our youth, you are restored what illness took from you and I get to talk to you again. I’d rather imagine what you’d say to me, at the end of my life, years later, than contend with the hole I feel in my heart. (And here, the tears come up).

I wonder where you are now, what you are doing. I imagine you picking out a fabulous jeweled dress from an expansive heaven closet, going to a party of writers and artists and witty, passionate people (oh here, the tears, of imagining you so happy). You would have a good time. You would impress them. They would be lucky to have you.

I wish you peace. I wish you fanciful snacks. I wish you were with me.

With you in your lovings and grievings, small and large, as I know you are with me,

Joy