Today there is a memorial service for my dear friend Melinda in Chicago. I won’t be able to attend, but I’ve spent the last few weeks thinking about her and reminiscing about our college days.
She’s been dead for a year now; the anniversary of her death was last week. It’s hard to believe that’s possible. I can still trick myself into believing that she’s just living her life in Chicago, spending time with her sweet husband, Steve, and their cats–and going to work each day as an oncologist, putting her brilliant brain to good use. I don’t want to remember the reality of it all: the diagnosis, the brutal months of treatment, the hope, the despair, the swelling, the agony, the sick fucking way that cancer robbed her of everything. Every last thing.
I walk or drive by our old college apartment almost every day; it’s on my route to work and home. In fact, I still own a house on the same street, so my address isn’t all that different than it was in college. This street is a leafy one that is so beautiful right now–trees ablaze against the blue fall skies. I sometimes look into the windows of our college place and see our ghosts there . . . still doing the things we always did: talking at the kitchen table over mugs of tea; lying on our twin beds, gossiping; sitting under blankets on our green, flowered couch while catching up on episodes of “My So-Called Life.”
I wonder: Does her spirit linger here? Does she whisper through the trees? Float softly to the ground in a blaze of color? I don’t know. I’d like to think she does, but I don’t know. I wish I could believe–could know–for certain, but that seems to require a level of faith and trust that eludes me. She had faith. She believed. I envy her that.
Wherever you are, my dear Melinda: I miss you. I send you my love. The world is not the same place without you in it.