When I Am Honest, I Don't Care If You Laugh

He died in the summer. I have never understood why he had to die in the summer. Great literature tells us that things die in the winter...but he never was one for literature. His Shakespeare was a blues harmonica.

"Goodnight, sweet prince......and goodbye, baby, if you call it gone."

I think he must be where he always wanted to be. He had once gone to the mountains of New Mexico to "find himself," so, that's where we took him to leave him.

When we went to the mountains to spread his ashes, I got a little part of them to do myself. I found a stream with wild daisies on the bank and I sifted his ashes through my hands and into the water. I watched as slivers of bone sank to the bottom to be rinsed white.
I told him once that I wanted him forever.
So, I kept the styrofoam cup stained with his ashes.

I sang to him when he was in the coma. I held his hand and I sang to him--like we used to sing on roadtrips--only this time it was not a duet.
"Please, don't talk about me when I'm gone--
Although our friendship ceases from now on
And, darlin, if you can't say anything real nice"

I was so angry with him.

"Maybe it's better not to talk at all, that's my advice."

I once believed that we were put on this earth to live and to learn, and that once we had loved completely and learned to the point of knowing, then the journey was over. Now, I'm not presuming that his love for me was so great there was no place to go--although sometimes it certainly felt that way---but, loving completely? That's the easy part. It's the knowing that's tricky.
Like, suddenly, at age 23, light bulb! and he had it all figured out. He'd had the last thought.

I secretly wished he'd whisper it to me, but enlightenment doesn't allow cheating. So...he knows all the answers and had left me here to ask all the questions.

I still sometimes can't believe he's gone.
Is it foolish to look for particles of him in the stars? Every night I waited and I watched and I waited for some special twinkle to let me know he was there....and I've never seen it.

Star bright, star light-
Hundredth star I've wished on tonight...

I wish for you. On the first star of every evening, I wish that you have found peace.
Whose peace are am I wishing for?
Mine.

Sometimes I can't even remember what he looked like. Not completely. I see his hair sneaking from beneath a baseball cap. I see the flush on his cheek when he'd laughed too long. I see him biting his lip trying to cry when I told him I was going.

Last weekend I was walking down a street in my neighborhood looking for my car and someone behind me was saying, "Miss, miss---the church, the church?" Finally it occurs to me to turn around.
"Is the church on this street?"
"Ummmm....yes, just down there---other side of the bridge."
Then she said something in her heavy Greek accent, which I assumed was a joke, so I did that fake "I don't know what you just said" laugh....then the word funeral registers....then I notice she's dressed all in black....
While I'm berating myself for laughing at her she passes and says "They come to us in our dreams, you know. The dead people."
"Not to me," I spit out. The 12 year old venom in my response surprises me.
She turns.
"Yes, they do. They come to all of us."

I am so afraid that when he died he didn't know that I loved him. I prayed and prayed that he would come to me in a dream so that I could tell him. Every night before sleep I begged him, I begged God, I spoke to muses and fairies and ancestors, but in the morning, when I opened my eyes, all I could see was ruin.

I was flipping through his notebook after his death and found these lines:
"What are you thinking about?
A field of wildflowers on fire.
What are you thinking about?
Why you're still here if I can't do anything right."

He did things right.
You did things right. Please don't believe I was disappointed. I was....I was just going. But never--never did I not love you.

Besides changing everything, I would change one thing. I would have told him that I loved him while the nurse was still in the room instead of waiting until she left.
Then he would know.
It's the knowing that's tricky.

I am so fragmented. There is a pile of dead and a trunk of him and pieces of me in a mountain stream and a twinkle in every other star I see.
And I hear music at the strangest times.