Dear Alissa – I’m beginning this letter to you in Savannah, Georgia. Sitting on a bench in Forsyth Park beneath a magnificent magnolia tree, Spanish moss dangling down from every branch, I try to find solace in the soft and quiet beauty here, because I miss you and I know I will never see you again. How strange to be in Savannah again and find out that you passed away, in the very place where I only found out you were sick a few months ago. Only a few months. My God, the world is quick and brutal.
I think you would like it here. I can’t remember if you’ve ever been. It’s a clamp on my heart to think we cannot talk about it, to think I cannot ask you anything anymore, because I still have so many questions, and we still had so much to share. And there’s so much that has happened these past few years, and even just these past few months that I need to tell you…
I am thinking back to that day in Cambridge when we first met. Chris had brought me there to meet you, and as you stepped off the bus, not expecting me to be there, I shouted and screamed and ran up to you like a complete maniac. You looked startled when I wanted you to be amused. Skeptical when I wanted you to be instantly embracing. Aloof when I wanted you to be enamored. You were all the things that I was, and from that moment we got on splendidly.
Somehow, even though you were his girlfriend, you became a friend in your own right. We were similar in so many ways, and where most people thought we were too blunt or cold, we each knew that it wasn’t coldness or aloofness – always the opposite. In a world where we would each be perpetually misunderstood – our concern mistaken for criticism, our false carelessness mistaken for apathy, and our self-protection mistaken for cruelty – we had each other. On many a cold Boston evening we would reach out to connect, and it was almost enough.
The world wasn’t always kind to you. It wasn’t always fair. We shared a kinship and a cynicism when it came to that. We’d been hurt enough. But when the right person came along – friend or lover – we would always give in to love. With all that went on in our heads, too often we led with our hearts.
Even after you and Chris went your separate ways, we stayed friends. That’s not an easy thing to do, but we did it, because certain friends are meant to be together. Chris was too kind and sensitive to have a problem with it, and he did his best to stay close to you too. It was easier for me, for us. When things fell apart for you in California, you and your mother and daughter came to Boston to start again. You asked if you could stay with me for a night and of course the answer was yes. I still remember the thud in the middle of the night as Sophia rolled onto the floor and you scrambled to scoop her up and, in a panicked, muffled voice intoned her that it was ok, when all the while she went right on sleeping as if nothing had happened.
I don’t know how you did it – how you started over after all that had happened. I suppose you had no choice, and I hope I never know the terror of that. Yet even if I do, the example you forged will remain locked in my mind, a memory of the strength and survival that the best people can summon at their worst moments. I watched from afar as you and Sophia made your way through the next few years. Who would this child turn out to be? How would she grow into her space in the world? What would she make of her mother’s quirky, sequin-bedecked friend from so long ago?
We talked about these questions on the sporadic visits I made to Boston then. Every few months we would touch base, going out for drinks and dinner at a carefully-selected restaurant – a favorite pastime of ours that no one else quite shared or enjoyed as much as we did.
I think back to one of our first shared dinners at Geoffrey’s, when it was the anchor of the South End, when everything was still tottering between good and bad, when our lives could have gone either way as well. I’m so glad we were there together. Not even my closest friends could understand some of what I was going through in the way that you could. We shared a certain chilled view of the world, having been left wary after one too many bad experiences. And maybe we each did our part to set up such circumstances. I can say that now. I can admit those mistakes. I know you would too. At least I think you would. There is no consolation in not knowing for sure, and so I miss you even more.
On this bench in Savannah, where I type these words into my phone and the world goes foolishly on around me, I think back to last April, when I was in this same city, experiencing this same beauty, and I remember exactly how this sad journey began. I was checking e-mail when I saw your name, and immediately I opened it because you always sent the best messages. This was different from all the rest, and you didn’t sugarcoat your diagnosis. I was out walking and just returning to the hotel when I opened it up and read it. Andy saw my face as I walked into the hotel room and asked what was wrong. I told him the news, then instantly wanted to cry. Even as I had hope in your strength, even as I couldn’t imagine a world without you in it, I went into the bathroom and let the grief pour out of me. Maybe you knew then. But you had a plan, and you had a goal, and you had a daughter who needed you around and you were not going to do anything other than survive. And once again I marveled at how you could do it.
In the later days of fall, as we readied for a return to Savannah, your occasional updates dwindled, and in that silence I felt worry and sadness. I thought about Sophia, and one of the first dinners we shared together in Boston. For a few years you would get a babysitter when we would meet – it was as much a night out for you as it was for me, and since you had been her sole caretaker, I understood (and quite frankly had no objection to an adult dinner between friends). When she was old enough to join in, I inadvertently picked a place that was across the street from a park with a giant jungle gym, and after dinner she climbed and swung and impressed me with how strong and agile she was. You were raising a warrior, and I was happy that she would have the power and grace that you did. She would survive. It was just you and her, and she was getting the skills and the love that she needed to make her own way. Yet again I was amazed and awestruck.
By November it had been several weeks since anyone had heard from you. I arrived in Savannah with Andy and my parents, going through my own emotional stuff, and I had made my way to the river by myself as the sun was just beginning to leave the sky. I remembered a sculpture in the area of a girl waving to the boats. She was waiting for her lover to return and she waved each day at each passing boat but he never came back. He never returned. Still she waved, arm perpetually raised, head held high in perpetual hope. We know what she does not.
Chris texted me and asked if I could talk.
I knew right then that you were gone.
He didn’t need to say much, and what was there left to say? I couldn’t fathom his pain, not for all your shared history and time together. We spoke for a bit, then said goodbye, and I was alone in a strange beautiful place, as the river lapped the shore and evening lapped the edges of the sky. We’d never lost a friend like this.
Walking away from the river, I follow a path that leads to steep stairs. There is a sign warning readers that these are historical steps, and to tread with great care. They are steep and thin and dangerous, and when wet the moss turns slippery. I pause before climbing them, stopping to examine the little ferns that poke out through the crevices and cracks in the ancient stones. This is how life exists and persists in the minutes after I learn you had died. How it could be is beyond my grasp, how it should be goes against every grain of my sadness. The entire wall is splattered with ferns, defying the vertical incline, the inclement and inhospitable environment, yet here they were absurdly insisting on surviving when greater beings went on dying.
Up these treacherous steps I walk, through the squares of Savannah as dusk falls and the light goes out for the day. I find a single camellia bush in bloom – most of the ones I’d seen on the way down had only been in bud, but in a shady side street I find these magnificent blossoms and I inhale their perfume hoping to find some bit of calm, some signal that the world hasn’t gone dark forever. I don’t find it there.
By the time I return to the hotel, there is no more light in the sky. Church bells toll somewhere nearby. A fierce sense of rage suddenly ignites in my heart. I’m mad at myself for not doing more. For not being closer. For not hugging you one more time last Christmas, for not insisting you stay, for not pulling Sophia a little bit tighter to me.
Before I finish writing this letter in Forsyth Park, I pass a wedding party. There are children playing in a jungle gym, like we once watched Sophia doing in the South End. They are shouting with glee and laughing with abandon. Normally it would annoy me, today it just makes me want to cry.
I will put this letter away until I can finish it properly.
I will say goodbye when I am ready to say goodbye.
I will hold you in my heart and pretend that I will see you again at Christmas.
I don’t know what else to do.
