P. got together with three friends for your shared birthday celebration and they all shared memories. The picture M. sent hurt my heart, your absence practically a presence in the back row, slight smiles touching their lips but not the big beer drinking grins I am used to when seeing all of you pictured together, for all of those years. P. looks the same, the blessing of a hairline that receded early and then hardly at all. How I miss them, how I miss you with them.
I still say your name out loud, every day.
Your music still makes me cry.
Your mom called; R. is selling the farm. I felt a little tug, it is a thread that has run through much of my life, that property. It was named a historic site in the national registry just before you died, something that would have made Grandma M. and your dad so so proud, had they lived to see it.
And though the land and the old wrecked farmhouse will pass out of the family whose name I still carry, it will not pass from your history - the proceeds will support your children, and so be part of the building of their lives, if not a building in their life.
R. is sending me photos of furniture and I will i.d. what will be picked up; all else will be auctioned. And so the ties that bound us continue to untie.
How are you, R.? I asked, once the mundane details of the call were handled. How are V. and V.? Her answer was swift, animated, providing an illusion of all-rightness that probably fools a lot of people.
It’s going to be a year, soon, I venture.
At the sound of my trembling voice she cries too. I wish I could give you a hug, I say.
I realize we occupy a unique space, T. had said to me, a sentiment your ex-girlfriend said to your ex-wife that recurs as she talks to your widow. More proof what a fine man you were, always, to everyone, that we three grieve you together.
We go to see him all the time, she said of your gravesite. Except lately, because of the snow and ice. But soon again.
And you? I ask, and she tells me about a recently widowed neighbor who invited her to join a grief group. But I can’t, she says. I can’t.
I know, I say. I know.