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Dear Heather,
I think about you all the time.
The collage you made for me is on my bathroom mirror, which I inevitably see several times a day. I think about the Great Wall of China and how you will never see it, but maybe I will.
The picture of us by the fountain in Sion, on the card that you gave me, is on the shelf in my kitchen near the door to my apartment. On the back of it you had written about how "one day, long from now, you will bring these words (& other things here) out, when we or I have become just a photograph in your mind, and, for a second at least, I will be set free & memories put back into motion, freed from the freeze of time. At least for a moment."
You gave that card to me when we graduated from high school-- seven years ago, almost exactly-- along with a copy of your valedictorian address, which I had asked you for. The address was all about memories, too. You were always interested in memories.
On that same shelf, further at the back, is a framed picture of our group of four, taken by your mom at your cottage. You painted the frame blue and wrote on it in silver: Simple Smiles of Summer ~2002~. It's the bad one of the two your mom took; you are kind of grimacing in it. You gave the two copies of the good one to Phil and Joey, and promised me you would make two more copies for us, but you hadn't had time yet. Every time you visited me you would see that picture and say, "Oh! I still haven't given you the good copy! I really have to do that! I look so bad in this one!"
On my way to and from work every day I pass the churchyard where we sat and ate lunch the last time I saw you; the Lebanese restaurant where we bought our respective shish taouk and falafel and joked about how you had supposedly eaten your last shish taouk the day before but were now proving that nothing is ever definitively over. I took a picture of you eating The Shish Taouk of the Future That Proves That Life Goes On, as we called it. Ironically, the last picture of you I will ever take. You are kind of grimacing in it.
After we ate you walked me to the corner across from my office and we hugged goodbye in front of La Belle Province (how very Quebecois of us) and the last thing you said was, "Next time we live in the same city we have to spend more time together." Then I went back to work, and you went off to live the last five days of your life.
I see reminders of you hundreds more places throughout the day. Every other song I hear makes me think of you. Anytime anything remotely interesting happens I remember that I can't email you to tell you about it, as I would have. Because I knew you would be interested. You were interested in everything. You made everything more interesting.
The last email I sent you was of my mailing address, so that you could send me the promised postcards from every town you drove through on your big cross-Canada road trip. I wrote, simply, "I am listening to Light Enough to Travel and thinking of you." You never replied, but I assume that you got it. That would make it the last contact we ever had. When I found out you had been killed, I was fixated on this postcard I would never receive. No one I told really understood the significance, but underneath what I was really thinking was, "How can I live vicariously through you if you are not alive?" How can I live if you are not alive?
I still don't know. I still can't imagine, let alone accept it.
Sometimes when I go to the bathroom, I don't turn on the light, so that I don't have to see the collage. I avert my eyes from the pictures and walk quickly past the places full of your memory. I fast forward to the next song. Because I can't bare to think about you. This way. In the past tense. So melodramatically, with the "last times" for this, that and everything. Every memory suddenly one million times more precious now that there will never be more. I don't call people back, because I don't want to have to talk to them about you this way, or hear them talk about you this way.
I know how much you loved the idea of memories, but I hope you would understand how I feel, just a little. You would probably disapprove of the way I am avoiding remembering you, but I wanted to explain that I am not ready yet.
I don't want you to be just a memory.
I will love you so so much always,
Laura
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