Garden of Eden

Dear Eden,

We used to be so close we could finish each other’s sentences. I’d look at your face and I knew what you were thinking already. It’s such a cliche, but it was so organic - the way you rearranged your limbs to fit perfectly into mine. I miss that. I miss having someone know me so deep to my core.

Dear Eden,

Do you remember how we met? I was new to the neighborhood, and you lived two doors down from me, and the hooker on the corner came and tried to talk to me. I was still a kid - I mean, not legally, but - I’d never met a hooker before, in my whole life, and now here was one, and I didn’t know what to say, or do, but you just walked up all confident and said something to her, and then we talked for two hours before I had to go pack away my groceries. My ice cream was all melted and my chicken was spoiled but somehow, it didn’t matter. It’s so rare to find someone with the same sense of humor as you. It’s so incredibly rare to find someone beautiful and smart and with the same sense of humor as you.

Dear Eden,

Do you remember how we used to buy a pizza with double cheese and sit in the parking lots of fancy steakhouses, criticizing all the rich people as they walked in and out? A poor man’s sport, I guess. I miss that. I miss how easy it used to be.

Dear Eden,

I hope you remember The First Time, I really hope you do. I know, a lot has happened since then, but I don’t think that a bad ending has to ruin the beautiful beginning. Just because we don’t sit in parking lots anymore doesn’t mean we have to forget all the magical things we stumbled into.

We went to the bar, a bunch of us. Andrei was there, if you remember, and Amanda, and Logan, and his girlfriend of the week, and Gemma was there right after her boyfriend broke up with her, and she was crying. And we were already best friends by that point so no one found it weird when I complimented you, but I remember thinking that you looked radiant under the neon lights, that you deserved better than the pulsing of a cheap bar disco ball. And we took tequila shots, like there was no tomorrow (another cliche), and we danced and devoured chips and margaritas in that way that only twenty-somethings can, with careless abandon and an utter lack of restraint.

And then Amanda came up to me and said, “You know Eden wants to sleep with you, right?” And I just stared at her, because how would she know, and then it turned out that when you got drunk your tongue got pretty loose. And about two cocktails and forty five minutes later, we were in your apartment, two doors down from mine, lights off. And I kissed you, and you shivered, and that’s when I Knew. I knew that you were going to be fundamental to my life. I knew that I would never untangle myself from you, even when we both tried so hard to.

Dear Eden,

Oh, I know you hate cliches, but I think they’re cliches for a reason. You think they’re overused, but I think, it’s just that everyone relates to the same enormous feelings, and they don’t have a good way to express it. “And they all lived happily ever after” you hated that one.

“That’s so boring,” you said. “There’s no passion in happily ever after.”

I guess I shouldn’t have been surprised that your favorite book was Anna Karenina.

Dear Eden,

Two months into the relationship, we went to hang out with my friend who was a train conductor, and he let us sit up front and watch him work and even drive a little bit. He asked if we planned on getting married, typical stupid immature guy stuff. And I said “god no” because I didn’t want to make it all pressurised and awkward, and then I realised that I had made it awful and awkward instead. But you gave me this little look, and it felt like, even if I suffer from chronic foot-in-mouth-disease, you know what I mean. You understand me.

You know, a lot of friends have asked me what my type is, and I never knew what to say to them, because I don’t really know. Or, I didn’t really know. After I met you, I started wondering what the difference was. Because I’d been with models before, real professional models with angular cheekbones and anorexia, and I’d never felt this way before. And that was when I realised my type wasn’t physical. My type is philosophers. My type is girls who get drunk at 2am on homemade gin and tonics, wearing a soft red cotton dress, and ask why we can’t stop staring at the sky and the ocean, whether it’s this insatiable hunger for more that has gotten us so far as a species. Time flies when you’re having fun, right? Another cliche, but here I am, sitting on the porch, recalling the way we used to go on walks where we’d get lost on purpose, because we were too old to need safety but too young to crave it.

Dear Eden,

You gave love so freely. That’s why I knew you’d make a good mother. Because you forgave my mother, even after all those passive aggressive phone calls, and you made friends so easily, and you gave affection like it was nothing. It was so, so natural for you to just bring someone home, a new friend. Even after we got married, and moved into the two bedroom condo apartment, sometimes I would come home from work and you’d be making tea for a single mother of three who you’d bonded with in the supermarket dairy aisle. “Without a care in the world” that was how you behaved, all the time.

So when we had kids, your love overflowed. It spilled into family movie nights and homemade brownies and day trips you took the kids on, lemonade on the beach in January, everyone wearing winter coats, laughing at the absurdity of it all. Four kids, and we raised them all to be functional adults and mostly happy. I knew you would be a good mother, and you knew it, and you were so good at loving people that it couldn't have gone any other way.

Dear Eden,

Those are all the good memories, all the happy bright starts to the magic we made. I don’t want to downplay the fights - some of them were truly spectacular. You were indecisive, but sensitive, a difficult combination. Easy to upset, but hard to negotiate with. We broke quite a few porcelain dishes in our first few years of marriage.

Eden, I could always feel you pull away when I got closer. Something like a wild animal. When I met you I figured it was a game, that you would change, that you would learn to not fear my love. I guess there was a hidden part of you that you were never willing to expose to the light of day, even to me, your life partner. Sometimes the distance between us increased, sometimes it decreased, sometimes it was almost gone - but that’s just the word. Almost. I shared every thought with you. Ever piece of information I had, every idea, every inspiration, every consideration. And I know, I know for a fact, that there were things you never said to me. Like there were things you couldn’t forgive yourself for, and so you didn’t think I could ever forgive you, either.

Dear Eden,

I know we’re old now. My bones ache, and your joints creak, like the old rocking chair your mom had in her house in Gloucester, the one you loved so much. And I have grey hair now, and you have a wrinkly mind, all filled up to the brim with a chaotic swirl of memories and accidents and games and accomplishments. You remember Doug, the stupid dog we babysat for a week for your friend, but I show you pictures of your son’s wedding and you stare so blankly I fear your eyeballs might roll right out of their sockets.

Eden, I know forever love is unrealistic. I know it’s not like the movies, with happy endings and golden sunsets. I’m not expecting that. But I did expect you to tell me that you were forgetting things. That you’d lost your car keys for the third time that day. That you didn’t remember how to get home from the grocery store. I know that there’s nothing we can do about it, that we can’t stop it or even slow it. But Eden, we didn’t have to spend our last good years fighting. We could've gone on more vacations. I would’ve called the kids, scattered across the world, and brought them home for more meals. We would’ve taken trips to France and Italy and Madagascar.

Dear Eden,

I miss you, but I miss the old you. I miss looking at you and knowing, instantly, what you’re thinking. I miss gravitating towards you at a party, slowly, without even noticing, just realising once we’re holding hands again, without thinking. I hate thinking this way, but I actually like the current version of you better than the version from a couple years ago. A couple years ago, we were yelling and hating and it actually occurred to me, more than once, that separation might not be the worst idea. I hated the way we turned on each other. This current version of you, it’s docile. I know it’s the sedatives, but you seem to be happier, softer, and we sure as hell fight less. The kids are here all the time. Sometimes, when we’re all sitting in the dining room, and the sun is filtering in, and you’re lucid and talking and reminiscing, I can forget about the clinical sterility of the care home, and it feels just like it used to be. Just like the way it was supposed to be, us holding hands and growing old together.

But sometimes, you blank out. Your eyes gloss over, and your fingers tremble, and I am so, so scared. I am scared that I have seen the last time you remember my name and my face, and that you are going to die without being able to say a proper goodbye. Eden, there was a time when I used to be your everything, and you used to be mine. I would cut myself with a knife in the kitchen at home, and halfway across London in your office, you would feel the shift. With you, earth was heaven, and a day without you was hell. We were best friends, we were lovers, we were hopelessly intertwined. And now? You’re a stranger. I don’t recognise the emptiness in your face. I don’t recognise the slack muscles that line the mouth that used to smile. But Eden, the problem really isn’t that you’re a stranger now. I think the problem is that you became a stranger once you realised what was going on, and you decided not to share it. You became a stranger the instant you decided that your privacy, or your honor, or whatever else it was, was so fucking important that you couldn’t share with the person who was suppsoed to be your other half.

Dear Eden,

The doctors say that you’ll never be conscious again. I know I’ve written a million letters to you, read them out loud as you stared at me with a sort of glossy curiosity, and that you won’t react to this one either, but Eden, I hope you know I’ll always love you. I loved you from the first explosive moment. I love you even now as the life force fades from your frail figure. I love everything about you, even the wilderness that you so stubbornly insisted on keeping, even though it drove me further and further away. I guess that was your fatal flaw. And I guess mine was worshipping you instead of listening to you. And I will always love you, and I know deep down you will always love me, but this is it babe. We’ve been kicked out of the garden.

Forever Love,

Adam