Some Things Last a Long Time
The most insignificant things can derail my days now. This afternoon I was reminded of the smell of a bar of soap I once had, and how it smelled so strongly of lavender that you could almost taste it. And I thought of how the steam from the shower always carried the scent of it down the hallway and through our apartment. How our tub had claw feet. There was a stained glass window in the shower. You brought your parents’ old couch with you, and all the ugly ties you’d collected from garage sales.
We were terrible roommates. You made fun of me for wearing what you referred to as “bat guano” on my eyelashes. I made you bring back your new kitten. You told me my favorite candle smelled like a urinal cake. I ate all of your pop tarts. You looked through my stuff and found a tape under my bed of me singing embarrassing songs to myself. I couldn’t resist trying to paint you into a corner with my incessant questioning. You went back home every weekend for a year.
Thank God our friendship somehow survived. Ten years later and you’re still the first person I want to call when something happens. Maybe you always will be.
I sometimes catch myself imagining how some future event will play out, when suddenly I realize that you won’t be in it. You won’t be here to perform my wedding. (Or to laugh at the notion that I might someday have a wedding.) You won’t set foot in my new house. You won’t be around to make me feel like the most amazing, most hilarious and smartest girl you’d ever met. You’ll never surprise me with another out of print record. You won’t ever run in to buy another pack of smokes while I’m putting gas in the car. You’ll never send me another misspelled email. I won’t ever again hear your ringtone on my phone.
I am lucky and honored beyond measure to have been your friend. No one put up with my shit the way you did. No one dared me to open my heart like you did. No one loved me as unconditionally, or as generously. No one else made me feel so understood. You were the bravest person I have ever known, and the kindest. The gentlest. The sweetest. The best.
Really, the best.
You had a gift for finding beauty in the mundane, in the marginalized, and for showing other people how to see it, too. You stretched my capacity for understanding what it really means to love someone. You were always doing that. Even now, you are doing that.
I miss you all the time.
RDE — 11/5/1978 - 12/27/2009
“We have missed him in the sunshine, in the storm, in the twilight, ever since.”
— Paul Auster
