I had begun to live as if my friend was indestructible.
I mean, I knew she wasn't. Even in the moments -- though more like because of the moments -- when she should not, according to the medical world, have made it. In the past almost decade, there have been so many of these. So many that I kind of felt not that she would never die but that she could live through anything. And she did. Again and again. She made it through stuff that I can't even find words for. I began to live without the fear that she might die. We'd made plans to spend this summer, literally, in each other's backyards, talking, eating, thinking, connecting, growing closer and closer. I feel more than a little lost, more than a little unsure.
In the last year or so of her life, she had begun to speak of what she had learned from me. I never really got the chance to fully describe what I learned from her. So, hey girl! If you've got internet wherever you are...
As the years stretch out, I know that I will remember different things and see different things; I know I will feel your presence in my life in different ways. But right now, I remember most what you taught me about reclaiming, returning and living.
You taught me that you almost never come back the same and that you can still be all you hope and wish to be. You showed me that you almost never return to where you were, but that you can love and still be loved. I believed it for you -- with your life who wouldn't have? Now, though, I have to live it for myself. With everything that happened, you did come back different. And I did have to adjust to those differences. But as much as the changes altered how and the contexts in which we could relate, they seemed not to change our relating.
As our bodies changed, our topics of conversation changed; how we proceeded through the arc of ideas changed; where we paused; how we heard and responded to each other; the things we prioritized; our values and even our language changed. And yet. We remained. We lived at different ends of the country; we rarely used phones; we emailed infrequently. And yet. We grew stronger.
You understood the impossibility of "recovery." Not in the sense of getting well. You did get well. And you became ill. You got "well," but you didn't necessarily "recover." As I reflect on your life, I think of the utter uselessness of our concept of -- no, our very belief -- in recovery.
Literally, "recover" is more of a getting back, a taking ownership of. But today, as I think about you, I see "recover" as a desire to hide the open, gaping wound, to "re-cover" it because allowing such things to show is not acceptable. I think about how open you were about your various disabilities -- smile. I still don't understand your choice of "handicapped" as the word to describe your identity. I believe you were showing me that covering again and again can only complicate my ability to move and live. Hiding helps no one; I saw you live so freely. Society want us to "recover," "to go back to where we were," "to move on and through" -- to close our gaping wounds, not live them. Even when, for the medical world, you were "well," you understood there was no going back. You knew that this was nothing to be covered. Your blog; your writing; your pictures... All this because covering was not you. (Did you actually hide in or behind your openness? Shyly, I wonder?)
I'm not trying to minimize your pain; I know there were bad times -- times when your daily pain level or feeling about all the changes that had happened to you were too much. I just want to thank you for the clarity and integrity of your living. Yes. For the moment, that's it. Today, I am most aware of the clarity and integrity of your living.
I'm rambling. I should go. But, you know? Heyyy.... Stay in touch -- if and when you can.
