Your flesh

I find that sometimes all I can think about is the fact that your flesh no longer exists. That your flesh was burned and scattered over one of the most beautiful sites of river and waterfalls and trees and rocks that I have ever seen, and that you had seen shortly before you died. Your ashes flew back at us with the wind, mostly onto your beautiful mother's worn face, and it swirled around us with the waterfall-wind, over our dejected and terrified and lost and loving and beautiful heads. Because you exist for me in so many more ways than you did when you were alive, as it sometimes goes. But you are not here, not in this world like we are; worrying about ridiculous things, reacting to each other in ridiculous ways. Even the best of us are doing this! I know you know what I mean, or you would if you were alive. Erica said Elmo today for the third time with me. She also said Erica for the first time. What pathetic victory I feel with every advancement. She's very passionate about Elmo. She threw a tantrum when I excitedly held up Ratatouille tonight as a plea for the stillness I needed to make a quick dinner. Elmo or Bob the Builder, it seems, were the only ones worthy of her attention (and what attention! What smiles, what squeals of joy!). She has a lot of words that only I, her daddy, and (apparently) my new boyfriend can understand. And probably Gerry and Sylvie and my parents. We all know when she's saying thank you or mommy but the words are just not quite the same as when we say them. I know this from waiting on kids; their mothers translating everything with ease as I lifted my eyebrows and fake-smiled into their gorgeous little alien faces. Now that I'm in love again I'm thinking of you more. Well, since me and Colin split up I've been thinking about you more. I've been spending a lot more time alone, processing everything as much as my head-space and time allows. What a relief (!!!), to finally be processing. I have everything, Eric, everything I need, everything I've always wanted but didn't know I wanted (such as Erica, and vibrant, consistent love that blooms and blossoms and rushes through me and fills me every other moment). This is so weird: You and Erica and Erich Fromm (author of "The Art of Loving", the most translated and best-selling book ever written on love that hardly anyone ever heard of) have taught me almost everything I know about love, about how to do it, what it means, and how it's the most important thing we have and can do in this one and only (and yes, short) life that we are so, so fucking lucky to be in. I often think about the last time you hugged me, the last time I saw you. It was at the bar I work in; it was our going away party. We were newly married, me and the love of my life (or I should say, Colin, who I was sure at the time was the love of my life), we were moving to Prague. I fancied us as some important variation of F. Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald. The dysfunctional, passionate, so-talented literary couple of New York City's 1920s. Here's a great Zelda quote: "I don't want to live, I want to love first, and live incidentally". I wanted to print their pictures on our invitations but Colin would have been intensely embarrassed about that sort of narcissistic and decadent statement. Anyway, you hugged me there so tight and long (that I was uncomfortable, as I was not nearly as evolved then) and you turned to Colin and you said "take good care of her" so heartfelt-edly. My myspace blog of the time flashed before me. I had one when I was depressed and drinking in my pajamas (starting in the early evening. I had rules.) in the smallest apartment I had ever seen in Manhattan with a dog and a cat and a boyfriend who took up a lot of space (without literally taking up any space). You know that ex-boyfriend. You visited him in the hospital. You were so good, Eric. So good (WTF???!!!!). You were the only person commenting on most of of my posts. They were 'book reviews' that were more me raving about books that I loved and why, which had nothing to do with why most people would have loved (or hated) those books. You kept asking to see my writing and I simultaneously hated you and loved you for it. Eric, you were literally one of very few people who cared, at that time, about me and my writing. Anyway I knew you loved me deeply then but I didn't have the intelligence and time to think about how I could love you, and myself, and humanity more deeply. About how I could become more like you. This pure soul who was just working (on yourself) and living in the moment and just loving and practically skipping your way through your last beautiful days. If I had paid any attention at the time to the extreme importance of my learning how to love myself, I would have avoided a lot of turmoil and misery and hardship (and also some very beautiful, dysfunctional love). Well, I literally have no regrets and have never had them, as everything seems to happen as it's supposed to and, more importantly, Erica would not be here if I had become sane earlier-on. Yes indeed, thank god for my own passionate dysfunction during our Prague adventure. I want to go on forever but I am truly waning. I love you.