TO: Pamela
SUBJECT: continuing the conversation
Thanksgiving Day 2024
Dear Pamela,
I looked for your email this morning. Every morning for years now I have looked forward to your email from the day before -- the last one from you sent at 4:37 on Tuesday afternoon. Did you ever see my response – my wish for you to know joy this Thanksgiving, my sending much love – sent at 6 AM the next morning, the morning you left this earth? The bulk of it was full of mundanities. How differently might I have written it had I known it would be the last you would see. Our ongoing call and response email conversation -- now without response forever. . . .
This morning I still need to write to you who has held my deepest joys and sorrows of how my dear friend died yesterday morning --of how I wailed when I got Bill’s text, of how I couldn’t even talk through my sobs and screams to reassure David my grief was not about Paul, of how I collapsed to the floor, pounded it, cursed the day, threw the phone that brought the horrific news of your passing. The immensity of my grief has surprised me – though I don’t know why. How often did we say to each other we could not imagine life without the other? I no longer have to imagine. I am forced to live it.
Yet it is still unimaginable to me that you are gone. You are everywhere here – in the dozens of cards you’ve sent -- on my dresser, and tables, and fireplace mantle; your many gifts of dragonflies – the metal one on my dresser, the copper and birchbark ones on the wall, the one on the cup I hold drinking your tea, the one at the bottom of the bowl holding the Thanksgiving chocolates, the bag that has carried bundles. You are present in all the books you have given me -- on the bookshelves in my room and office and living room and sitting beside my bed. So often at Christmases we would give each other the same books and smile. Our minds traveled in the same direction.
I’m dismayed that I have no photos of us together. For the past several months I’ve been intending to take one. I always thought there would be more time. And then there wasn’t.
But I have words, so many words. Words in the cards you have given me over the years, in your lengthy and detailed responses to my blog posts, in the one thousand email threads passed back and forth between us over the past several years. I’ve saved them all. They were too precious ever to delete.
Ours was a friendship of words -- how we both loved words, their poetry, their capacity to communicate, convey, confound, console, comfort. How I looked forward to your words every day. In the years when my sister began slipping away from me, you filled the void – being the one to whom I now turned with wonderful or upsetting news, those things that begged to be shared with one whom was always eager to receive it – to celebrate with me, to mourn, to support, to affirm, to be a listening ear; the one to whom I’d send the latest photos of Marty or of a particularly beautiful sunrise, or a recording of Paul’s service, or the link to a podcast I knew you’d enjoy.
For years I have entrusted my daily thoughts, worries, joys, activities, hopes, and the occasional dream to your tender care, always knowing your response would be a mirror, reflecting me back to myself, yourself reflecting on all I had written – giving witness and testimony, always with the deepest of care and affirmation. As Adrienne Rich wrote in the poem we both loved -- “Phantasia for Elvira Shatayev” – I have never seen/my own forces so taken up and shared/and given back. Yes, this – the immensity, the intensity, the profound reciprocity of our sharing.
A friendship of words, yes, but also of deep affection and concrete acts of care – of food given and shared, of flowers sent, of your careful editing of my manuscripts, of our encouraging each other to bring forth our writing into books – how I wish you had finally written yours, of gifts exchanged. You loved giving gifts more than anyone I have ever known, and did it with such thought and care, down to the wrapping paper.
In the beginning, our hearts had brought us together. I’d given you a copy of my Journey of the Heart when I learned of your own heart troubles. An invitation to share a meal soon followed – the first of many. I still remember that first real conversation when we began to know each other and the surprise we felt in finding someone with whom we shared such similar interests, ideas, books, authors. I basked in your brilliance – the questions you asked, the insights you shared, the provocative thoughts – you challenged me to think more deeply, entertain different perspectives, explore a thought widely. You made me better. How I will miss your intellect – your stunning mind. You were brilliant till the end.
You were the unexpected gift of my older age. How often did we say that to each other? Our lives already so full of good and long-lived friendships, we did not expect or need another so late in our lives. Yet what a blessed surprise that there was this one more – and this one of such rare sympathy of minds.
As a gift to you for your birthday last year, I wrote a post on friendship, and it was with you in mind that I wrote these words:
It is a rare gift – to have one’s words received, given back, with care and understanding; for someone to ask, “How are you?” and want to know; to ask “How can I help?” and then respond; to ask in order to know more deeply; to answer with the fullest measure of one’s honesty and be responded to in kind; to know there is someone to whom one can turn in tragedy, knowing they will mourn with you, or in excited joy, knowing they will celebrate your joys with you with a full and generous heart. I have been blessed in my life to have known all of these. I hope I have given in full measure in return.
You assured me that I had.
In the past four years of Covid isolation, our friendship only deepened. Because you were as careful as I, you were the one friend with whom I could visit indoors unmasked. We were unmasked with each other -- honest, vulnerable, open, sharing the deepest truths of our lives – such a rare gift, this intimacy of souls.
We spoke of death and dying often. We were both so against it. Despite the tragedies, the hardships of a body slowly deprived of its capacities, the despondency and dread of what lies ahead in the next four years, and the cruelties of the world, we craved life. You so wanted to live.
i thank You God for most this amazing
day: for the leaping greenly spirits of trees
and a blue true dream of sky; and for everything
which is natural which is infinite which is yes
These your watchwords -- spoken at your wedding, to be spoken at your memorial, with which you began each day -- you lived that “yes” with every often hard-earned breath. You plumbed life to its very depths. You loved your family and friends with such constancy, intensity, and delight. You knew such joy. You were enchanted with beauty – of words, people, the earth, music, the lake and the full moon rising, the wild waves, the deep blue.
After you died, I looked for you in the first book you gave me, a book you edited – Beloved on the Earth: 150 Poems of Grief and Gratitude. How fitting. In the preface you wrote: “We turn to poems for solace, wisdom, comfort, joy.” You might as well have written that that is how I have turned to and what I have always found in you. You continued, “We wrap ourselves in words – words of mourning and grief, words of mystery, words of gratitude and remembrance. As unique as each life is, so is each death. And yet, in our isolated grief and mourning, we turn to the comfort, the embrace of the words of others.” In my isolated grief, I turn to the comfort of your words, thousands of words, written over days and months and years.
Looking back over our volumes of email exchanges, the subject headings reflect our lives -- “thank you,” “balm,” “despair,” “resilience,” “beautiful day,” “joy in the beholding,” “beginning again,” “wonderful to be with you.” It was indeed so wonderful to be with you. It will be so hard to be without you. Thank you for these years of rare and wonderful friendship.
It is fitting that the subject of our last email thread was “gratitude.” I have been so grateful for you every day. To repeat back to you your own words in the last card you sent to me, I am celebrating our friendship – the ways it is rooted, how it branches out, how it reaches for the sky. What a gift. I am so grateful.
e.e. cummings’ poem continues --i who have died am alive again today. You are alive today in my heart, in my memories -- of all the conversations before the fire with cups of apricot-infused black tea and Lorna Doones, and in all the conversations we have yet to have, at least in my mind. Some of our email subject lines were entitled “continuing the conversation.” We had so much more to say to each other, and in these few days since your death, I have continued to talk with you every day. Sometimes I hear your response. That’s how I imagine it will be now – my continuing the conversation, then listening for your response. I know it will come.
Much love,
Beth
