I keep wracking my brain trying to think of something clever to say. I stare at the cursor unforgivingly blinking at the top left corner of my screen and it’s making me increasingly anxious. There is something in me that wants to sound profound. Meaningful. Despair fills corners of my heart, and yet, overwhelmingly, I want to convey some kind of hopeful message. The audience should know the goodness more than anything. The memory should overwhelm the grief, which is what I think.
A mantra lays words over my heart in something of an imprint: She is no longer here, but she is always here. Over and over again this thought occurs to me. No, it plagues me. So many feelings burble up as I obsess over the line dancing on the screen, and yet, I can’t seem to translate even one of them into a word. Several words. A sentiment.
I am choking on the feelings, and this forces me to drink water. The notion is that I will drink enough water that the feelings will be pushed down from where they’ve risen to in my throat to something more solidly in my midsection- a space that is decidedly more comfortable. Hidden, if you will.
I don’t need to tell people who she was, or even who she was to me. It doesn’t matter, not really, because they have their own sense of Ellen. They have all of their own stories. Tales filled with Oreos and stretchy pants and elfin giggles. They could fill journals or certain social media pages with “this one time” sentiments. As could I. As I have.
This is not the time for such things.
Then I thought that I could talk about the void. I could speak to the number of times that I’ve thought to text her and then, realizing I cannot, ended up scrolling through years of text messages. Funny animal memes and selfies and the biggest feelings. Perhaps I could share all the ways in which it feels so staggeringly unfair. Articulate the way in which a year can feel endless and also, outstandingly quick.
I could speak to the way in which I wished I had just a little more time. If I could not have a lot, then I would settle for a little. Just a little more. Perhaps a time where I felt more settled and I could point to a place in my life, a small dart off the timeline, and say: See, I did it, I figured something out and at least that bit has been fixed.
There is no more time though, and nothing much has resolved. If anything, it feels more complicated. There is nothing to report that would provide any real clarity, anyway.
There are stories I could tell, about walking in from an impossible day and taking off the armor I wear all day and replacing it with matching pajamas that were given to me “to remember.” How it is really early, too early for bed, but cold outside, and it felt comforting to just crawl into bed, makeup on my face and coffee remnants sticky on my tongue, Aunt Ellen’s cotton wrapped around my aching body.
She called me baby niece, and I called her Aunt Ellie and most of our exchanges were silly and then, there were also so many that were too intense to catalog. Too heavy to share. Too life changing to allow witnesses to participate.
One Tuesday I started to make a list of things I didn’t want to forget:
- Dark green eyeliner that I said I liked and so, she gave me one out of her purse
- That time she bought tomatoes at Sam’s Club and sent me home with ten or so
- Her stubby little toes
- Trying on each other’s rings
- Hugs that felt too good to end
- Knowing you could never disappoint, which felt like an insurmountable scenario with nearly everyone else
- Holding hands just because
- Your birthdays just a few days apart and knowing that you would call each other and sing, because you had to
So many things. So many more.
The way in which you miss a person and struggle to remember all the things you realize you can’t bear to forget. The way in which you didn’t see the end coming and then, it came, and you wish you could change the way it all happened.
That time that she said she was too tired to talk and you just knew. Because she didn’t do that. And that’s when your heart started to tear. The way that people talk about hearts healing, and you know that’s not how it happens, not really. It’s brutal and life changing and your heart never heals. Ever. You move on, because you have to. You don’t move on, actually, but you continue. Everything just sort of continues. And you realize that the continuation of a thing, of a life, is not an erasure. It’s just a fact to live with- just a thing to accept. And that makes it better and so much worse, too.
I want to reach through the computer screen and lift up the cursor and place it across my upper lip, like a silly mustache and whisper bonjour, comment ça va? Because she would do that, and say bien, et toi you would reply ca va bien and then now, you are just comme ci, comme ça, or perhaps, je ne me sens pas bien.
Mostly because sometimes you are good, and sometimes you are so-so, and then, sometimes you are unwell. The kind of unwell that comes with missing that person who you confided in. Who never judged you. Who loved you with the kind of whole heart that feels magical and reliable and then, gone.
And so then, it’s just what it was before, and is now, and will always be.
Tu me manques, Aunt Ellie.
Happy one year in the land of Fred and Harriet Heller and endless Mallomars.
X
L.
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