Seriously, thanks, a lot!

Thanks, a lot, for having access to every thing modern medicine and alternative medicine have to give but not succeeding in making it work for you. All I can think is that you must have drunk an awful lot of coffee, as you somehow got yourself a coffee shop for twenty years, one you hung onto with both hands, come hell or highwater. What do I know, though? The ex-best friend, who was deemed unfit to let to stay indoors, in your house, when you left the country. The betrayal, woman, woman corpse. I have no one to talk to about this. No one cares about the feelings of the ex-best friend when someone dies at forty-nine of cancer she told no one about for four years, until about three days before she passed.

Oh, and, by the way, a special thanks, many thanks, thanks a lot, for haunting my dreams for eighteen months, when I had already accepted your decision to break up with me as best friends. Fighting it hurt too much so I just accepted that I might see you Downtown sometimes but that was about it. You knew what I did, I wasn’t hard to find and you chose not to. So, in a way, you died for me long before you died. Were you calling out to me, via my dreams, my friend of poetry and bread with butter? Was I supposed to know that you needed me? That you were dying?

No, I told the Satan of old friendships to get behind me. I moved on and finally, finally, you were in my dreams no more. I was so glad. Turns out, you were battling demons and needed support and all the true friendship that we had shared, way back when, should have moved me to pick up the phone and call you, but, in the interest of not doing the same thing over and over, I listened to you. I respected your choice to leave me alone in this life, not three miles from your home, though you had sworn an everlasting allegiance to me when it meant the most, when it was just between you and me.

I remember you wailing, coming into the hallway of our dorm in college, your whole comforter wrapped around/dragging behind you. There was not one female on that floor that knew what to do with a Southern, white woman who had fallen in love with a Muslim, only to be told by his family, that, no matter how much she loved him, they would never accept a marriage and the Muslim in question had no choice but to accept his family’s decision. He broke up with her and the fact that she had shared a love with him that was never sexual but had shaken her to her core, that she had offered him all she had and to be told she wasn’t enough, she would never be good enough, was more than she could handle. She had heard that all her life.

But we were in college, where we called the shots- all the fun, none of the responsibilities of adulthood. We were not who our families told us we were. We got to decide if we were moved by poetry or dating outside our religion, if we were hopeless alcoholics or just dedicated artists. I stepped up to the plate and told her that, Muslim or not, he was a guy. He was someone she had loved and lost. Go take a shower and we will get coffee, I told her. That night, she repaid me by urging me to write my first poem. She awoke the observer in me, the witness who allowed my parents to be who they were but, at the same time, let me be me. I just accepted words which gave themselves to me and continued to, my whole life.

But that poetry night you claimed you started? I was at the first one, co-host before you even had your place. If I had had my place, they likely would have asked me. My place? You wouldn’t know about my place because you cruelly left me off you list of ‘Places In This City We Like’ on your place’s bulletin board, even though I was open for three years and was a mile from you. You made yourself crystal clear and I accepted your ire with equitable criticism, finally giving into acceptance. For whatever reason, you thought it was funny to promise me to be near me, as my truest friend, for my whole life, then live your life near to mine, judging me from afar or for whatever reason, you never told me. I was just told…nothing. Just silence.

We used to joke that our friendship was so deep that it existed beyond us, that even when we were mad at each other, our friendship had a life of its own, beyond our selfish wants. I tried so hard to hold onto you over the years, but you spent a long time letting me know I was not of your ilk, would never be good enough to even be around you and yours and that you were one hundred percent fine and dandy, without me in your life. Fine, I finally accepted, I can take a hint.

Then you die. You go and die and I wonder if I could’ve saved you. I wonder if that really was you in my dreams as I firmly believe everyone in your dreams is you. But was it you? Why didn’t you never call? Why did you go on with out me? Why did I let you break my heart, then watch you parade your rejection of me around town for twenty years till you die, at forty-nine? Death, the ultimate poem, huh? I can’t call your grieving family, your grieving partner, your friends, no one. I am alone in your death and wanted to say, again, thanks, a lot.

For all you gave me, though, all the love and friendship I needed at the time, life lessons I didn’t want to learn, a love of poetry and literacy and stick shifts, believing in ourselves regardless if those closest to us didn’t understand us anymore, thanks, a lot. I helped you find that courage and for real, Mary, thanks, a lot, for the good times. Lotion head.