a letter to you one year later
Hi you,
I woke up this morning from a dream where you and I were lying together, entwined as if we couldn’t get close enough. As if I was trying to crawl into your skin so I could keep you close to me always. So I’d never have to say goodbye again. Snaxx was scratching at the door, so I got up and fed her that expensive food she eats. Waffle sat at a safe distance and will eat when she’s ready. I poured some coffee and came back to sit in bed. I’ve been doing variations on this routine for a year. Sometimes these small tasks keep me afloat. I know the cats need me. I know I need to get out of bed. Sometimes these small tasks are a reminder of just how small my life feels without you.
Today, I feel empty. I’ve been surviving this existence for a year and there’s a hollowness to it that’s hard to describe. A year ago today, I became someone else. I lost a half of myself, the cooler and more charismatic half of myself. The half that knew things I didn’t and could make a friend out of a stranger. The half that people wanted to be near because damn it felt good to be around. I lost you, my better half. Things I loved before I don’t care about now. Things I didn’t care about I think about everyday. I told a few people when you first died that I was afraid to change anything about myself because if by some miracle I woke up one day and you were lying next to me, to explain anything about myself to you would be excruciating. Try as I did to stay the same, your loss created a new person out of me and has defined who I am in so many ways. Most days I wish it had been me. I know you wouldn’t have chosen what you went through for me and I wouldn’t want you to go through what I’m going through now, but having to live the rest of my life without you seems impossibly difficult. I don’t know who I am without you but I’ve been trying to get to know her for a whole year.
At times this year has moved with astonishing swiftness and at others it’s moved with painful sluggishness. If I’m being honest, it’s been a lot of blackout sadness that I don’t remember. When you first got sick, I never thought we’d get to the place we did a year ago today. I refused to believe it was all real and I’m sorry for that. I know you knew I was scared and I think you intentionally didn’t talk about the prospect of my future without you. I regret not having those conversations with you. I’m sorry if I made you feel like you couldn’t process these things with me. I think I was desperately trying to wake up from the hell we’d found ourselves in and I know now I never will. I wanted to see you smile and I wanted more memories, more laughs, more time.
Shortly after losing you, Darron told me about the book The Year of Magical Thinking. It started popping up everywhere, so I bought it. I never ended up finishing it, mostly because I didn’t see a lot of myself in her apart from the dead husband bit, but what I did feel was the sense that grief can make out of nonsense. It’s been completely feasible to me that you would show up one day. I’ve thought about it a lot actually and there are people I (only half) joked to “What would you do if he just walked through that door right now?” There’s a part early on in the book where Didion refuses to get rid of her husband’s shoes because she says he’ll need them when he comes back. I didn’t get rid of one pair of your shoes. The green Reeboks are actually on the shoe rack right now because I asked Nate if he’d like them. His feet are a little too big for them and I’m sorry if he stretches them out (he is too). It makes me smile to walk in and put my shoes next to yours.
I got a pamphlet in the mail from Kaiser bereavement services thanking me for allowing them to help me during this time. Help, according to them, was sending me pamphlets full of platitudes for the whole year since you’ve been gone. Help, as you were well aware, has very little to do with intention, but I think they may not know that. Let me know how I can help, people have told me. I wonder if they know, like you did, that I won’t ever let them know. I wonder if they know now that help, for a person who won’t ask for it, means just doing whatever it is they feel compelled to do. I guess what I want is for them to know me as intimately as you did. I want them to value my opinion and my feelings the way you did. I want them, in short, to not be them, but to be you, and I want you to be here. I want that more than I’ve ever wanted anything in my life and I’m having a hard time accepting that the thing I want the most isn’t possible.
My feelings vacillate between sadness and anger and I’ve gotten really good at hiding it. This month has been bad. I remember two years ago this month we were planning our 8th wedding anniversary. We talked about getting remarried a lot and it was always let’s wait until year 10. This month last year, I wasn’t sure we’d see see 10, but I was sure we’d see 9. I’m glad I got to propose to you and I’m glad we made plans but I’m angry we didn’t get to see those plans through. I’m angry I didn’t get to see you get old the way we talked about. I’m angry that science failed you and that your body couldn’t fix itself. We’re told that the human vessel is so resilient, but if I’ve learned anything through this, it’s that’s the cruelest lie ever told. Our bodies are fragile and our time is short and plans fall through.
I ran two half marathons this year, one on each coast, and I thought about how, in 2020, you were so excited that I asked you to make me a burger after I ran 10 miles for the first time. I thought about how I’m doing things now that I talked about but didn’t do when you were alive and I feel a lot of guilt about that. I feel guilty that I moved back to New York because I know you never really wanted to leave. I feel guilty for the traveling I’ve done and the people I’ve met and the delicious meals I’ve had and every time I’ve laughed and every day that I’ve woken up and you haven’t. I feel all this knowing damn well that the only true betrayal to you would be to not keep going. Nate told me me once that he knows that you would rather have never met me than allow your absence to ruin my life. While I know that’s true, it’s impossible for your death to affect me any other way because your presence fixed so much about my life. I was able to breathe the biggest sigh of relief when I met you because I didn’t need to pretend to me anything other than exactly who I was. Never had I met someone who celebrated me so fully. You knew what I needed before I did. You, Evan Scheller, saved my life. I know you told me that I saved yours and I’ll never get over the guilt of not being able to do it a second time.
It’s implausible to me that the world kept spinning amid all of this. As I write that, I know exactly what you’d say to that. Well, the world doesn’t revolve around you or me, Leah. And it doesn’t. You knew well that you and I were simply pieces of a whole but to me, you and I were the whole. Without you, I don’t think I’m nearly as interesting. I don’t know what to say and I don’t know what the hell I’m doing. Liz described grief so well: it’s like I’m an astronaut who’s been untethered from my ship. You were my ship. You were my home. You were the very center of my world. I know how very not-feminist that may sound, but it’s true. I know you’d disagree with me if you were still here, but you’d be wrong.
I’m not me without you and the proof is in the unanswered texts, the very polite hypothetical plans, the slow distancing all around me. At times I feel like my existence is repulsive to people because it represents sadness. My presence seems to be a painful reminder of what they’ve lost, but what they don’t seem to understand is that their loss doesn’t stare them in the face the way mine does. Yes, everyone lost you, but no one as much as I did. I try to think about what you might say about these people, but it doesn’t seem to make it any easier to swallow that people just don’t want to be around me. You knew better than anyone that I’m not the most approachable person at times, but I think you’d be surprised to know that your death has at times changed that in me, so to see a response like this stings. My sadness is too big, too loud, too present for some people. What hurts more, however, is that a lot of people lied to you. The ones who said I wouldn’t do this alone, who claimed to be family, who told you they’d never walk away. I hope you can find peace in the fact that I’m learning how to do those things for myself little by little each day and only because you showed me how.
I’ve found a lot of solace in books in the past year. I’ve found that writers all have a certain amount of grief (at least the ones I’m drawn to). Ruminations on their grief have helped me make sense of my own when no one around wants to talk about it. After you talked to Dr. Abdallah last year on the phone from the ER and you decided to stop treatment, you told me “you’re going to write a book about this all one day,” and I took that as an order. That’s why I write. I write to get it out. I write to talk about what happened to you, to us. I write to talk to you. I write because whenever I would tell you I had, you smiled. I write to keep you alive because it can’t possibly be true you’re really gone.
This grief doesn’t abide by a schedule. I know there’s a notion that night time is harder, and for a while it was. It was hard lying down in our bed and knowing you wouldn’t be there when I woke up. In our room in LA, I would lie on my side facing the closet, looking into it and imagine that if I looked hard enough, I’d see you there. In a book I’ve read sadness described as “less like a disease to be cured and more like a creature in the room, a wild animal that could be cajoled- with open ears, careful tongue, masses of ice- into a less ferocious version of itself.” In short, it’s always there, it’s just hard to describe because it looks different each time you look at it. It might not make sense, but none of this makes any sense at all. Life, I’ve surmised, after a lot of boots-on-the-ground research, is completely nonsensical. I had a thought this week as I was walking from the subway: life is just all of us walking around separate parts of the world. We go from place to place to pass the time or to make money and every once in a while, those places bring us people that add meaning to the endless walking. You were that person. You are that person. Now that you’re not here, it’s fucking stupid here. You made it all fun. You made it worth it.
I think in past tense most of the time because present tense is uncomfortable and future tense is scary. I like to think about the times that you experienced and the things you saw because the things you didn’t get to aren’t right. I know, however, there’s a lot of life out there you don’t want me to miss out on. I promise I haven’t spent all of the past year wallowing. I did a lot of traveling and saw a lot of things I never imagined I would. I ate a lot of good meals and even tried to cook some myself. I applied to three grad schools and got into all of them and moved across the country to attend an Ivy League school. I say all of this to remind myself there is good in the world, but I also say it to you to thank you. Had you not been in my life, I wouldn’t have more than a modicum of confidence. You taught me that by celebrating me, but also by celebrating you. You lived so authentically, you did the things you wanted to do, and you said no to things that didn’t serve you. You wore crop tops and braided your hair and stick-and-poke tattooed “fuck it,” on your own knees, because, you’re right—fuck it!
Scientifically, I know only the container that was you is no longer around. Your energy, however, the brightest, loudest, spiciest energy I ever experienced, is very much here. It’s inside of me when I tell people I’m a writer because you called me that before I could. It’s in the air every time I hear a Bad Bunny song. It’s in each and every one of your nieces and nephews and it’s so beautiful to see them unconsciously embody all that you were. I’ll never leave them. I will watch them grow up because I know you wanted to so badly. I’ll tell them stories about you and be a haven for them when they want to rebel and go see their crazy Aunt Leah on the coast. I’ll tell your sisters and your parents about the parts of you they didn’t get to know and I’ll listen as they tell me about the parts of you I never knew. I’ll ask my mom to tell me what you might say when I’m too tired to keep going. I will never stop talking about you, thinking about you, living each and every one of my days the way you wanted me to. I can’t promise I’ll always want to keep going, but I’ll do it anyway. I recently watched a John Mulaney interview on David Letterman’s Netflix show. John was talking about his discussion with Lorne Michaels about the loss of John Belushi. “I knew him for seven years and I’ve been talking about him for forty,” Lorne said. That’s you. I knew you for eleven years and I’ll be talking about you for the rest of my life.
I think a lot about what I told you just before you died. Moses had told me a lot of people hang on until they get permission from someone to go. I’d been selfishly not giving you that permission. One, because I didn’t think you needed it from me. Two, because I didn’t want to say goodbye. When you sat up, your eyes open wider than they’d been in several days, and said “I miss you already,” it became obvious to me you were ready to go. I knew you were saying goodbye and I wanted you to know it was okay. I wanted you to hear me say it. There was a lot that I said to you that I wish I could remember, but I know I told you I needed your help once you got where you were going. I know you heard me because I believe you’ve had a hand in all the good I’ve experienced this year. I don’t say that to downplay any of the hard work I’ve put in, but I say it to mean that without you and your constant and unwavering support, I wouldn’t have thought I could do this. I also like to believe you’re rich with power now and wield it when you see fit. I know you see me struggle with loneliness and cry and ask you where you are and I know you’d be here in the flesh in an instant if you could. I can say with confidence I’d do it a thousand times over just to see you again. I’d relive all the pain and tears and I’d probably do things a lot differently just so I could touch your sweet face and hear your voice. I’d never felt a homesickness so deep in my body until I felt the pain of your absence. The pain that was once the euphoria of your presence. I love you forever. I can’t wait to see you again.
Forever and ever,
Birdy
My year of magical thinking, photographically:
