friendship

“People come and go in your life but they never leave your dreams.  Once they are in your subconscious, they are immortal.” – Patricia Hampl

I’m full of thought today.  Memories have been swamping me, leaving me feeling a little breathless.  I’m not sure what has triggered them all, but I know that these days in March always leave me a little sad.  I lost people dear to me over a span of days in subsequent Marches some years ago, and the anniversary of those losses has never gone away.  Does it ever? Can you ever get through an anniversary without thinking about it? I doubt it.

My dreams have also been filled with old, old friends, some of whom I haven’t seen in at least a decade.  Why are they all stopping here now?  Why are they so fully with me that I want to ring them up to make sure their voices sound the same?  Echoes and memories and 17-year-old versions of us are giving me shivers up and down my back as I let them in.  They are so close I can almost smell them.

Big stuff must be surfacing.

In 2006 I wrote a poem about a friend who we lost one March a lifetime ago.  It has been one of the voices in my head so I need to put it here. I ask you again ~ do anniversaries ever get easier?

For M ~

When you died
we were twenty.
Two souls –
three days apart.
Salt and pepper
light and dark
girl and boy.

It doesn’t get easier –

It gets harder
because some days
I don’t think of you at all
and then when I do
I remember.

Where is the line?
The one that you crossed.
The one between
sadness and darkness?
Why couldn’t you see
the way back?

I miss you.

There is a hole inside of me
where you used to be
It is surrounded by questions
that you can’t answer.

You’ve missed a lot
you know.
I’ve danced alone at two weddings
and you’re an uncle now.
I’m an aunt, too.
Or do you know that already?

Please
come back.
Explain it all to me.

Two souls.
Three days apart.
One will be twenty forever
and one never will be again.

xoox