The 25th Friday

Dear Phoenix on the WEb,

I am home tonight early from work so I am here at the time you were shot 25 Fridays ago. I look at your photo on my dresser/altar and what I remember in my body is what I have come to name "The Life that was you and I." The relationship: the eye contact, the inadvertent leaning against, the reaching down and feeling your ear in my hand when our we walk side by side, the feeling of you racing around the corner when I call you and your weight into my arms and against my legs as I lean down to greet you, the leaping of all four of your paws in the air when I arrive home, the love beamed back and forth, back and forth between us, no matter what.

Someone at work this week was recalling the time her father dropped dead right in front of her. They tried to revive him at the hospital and while she waited, she prayed to Jesus for one of two things to happen: first, she prayed that he would be healed, and if not that, she prayed for the strength to bear it. When she told me, I wanted to just weep right along with her. Her father died twenty years ago and she said that she still feels broken by it. I cannot believe how we go on on with such seemingly normal lives after this kind of loss. How do we do it?????? How do we have the strength to bear??? And this from women who live in a relatively peaceful, very privileged life? I can only imagine how it is for women in places and situations far less privileged than mine where the violence persists day after day. HOW DO WE DO IT? HOW HAVE WE DONE IT OVER MILLENNIA??It's astounding. I don't understand it really.

So, here I am 25 Fridays later, changed in ways that are noticeable and changed in ways inside that no one will ever really understand, including myself. And Phoenix...your body is gone, forever. Buried in my back yard, probably decomposed beyond recognition now. Your Spirit...well, it's somewhere...occasionally makes appearances through particular songs, periodic dreams, a sense of you sleeping in my room (or is that just really strong wishing?), synchronistic sitings of deer, heron and fox, and through this palatable Love I call "The Life that was You and I." I don't know much about death, really. I know something more about life because of death. Maybe that's all we will ever really know until we go ourselves.

Living the Life that is me forever missing my beloved Phoenix,
Melissa