Christmas Day 2013

I dreamed about you early this morning, and kissed your forehead and cheek as you cooked mushy pieces of ham in a frying pan for two little boys. Dressed in jammies, they gobbled it  down. We were sitting at a kitchen counter, yellow, the color of of mine but the lightening of your former home.  I had the sense one was toddler Miguel, my grandson and whom you never met but perhaps know anyway, he now nine years old. The other maybe my grandson William, nearly three. Or perhaps your two boys all those years ago when they themselves were younger.  At any rate, you and I clearly together, my lips on your forehead and cheek like baby kisses.

Distance

In a dream you and Madeleine were talking on the phone and I picked up an extension, a 3-way call, you chatting about painting the floor borders of the room in a light bamboo yellow and how happy you were to have your house back and I was telling you how thrilled I was for you, too, except you couldn’t hear me even as I was listening in perfectly.

In real time we had a Hanukkah party at temple last night, services lead by Max, the Elliott’s grandson; he’ll graduate college this year. We bought menorah’s to light. I had yours, and I swear as soon as the candles were lit you appeared, jubilant, behind the candles with that broad, hearty smile of yours, your chocolate almond eyes gleeful.  I cried and cried, hoping no one saw, an allergy or perhaps a sudden cold of which I had neither.

We are celebrating Hanukkah here tonight, Saturday, November 30, and I am with you, now and always.

Together again

Hi Carole, we were with each other last night, I wrote down the dream and now can't find it, yet am sure we were whole and fleshy in dream about the ordinary, so close I could smell you, feel the heat of your body.

Sunset, 2013

Your final goodbye streaming across Key West sky, Oct 21, 2002

Candles lit on my dining room table, our Nana Sophie's table before here.

Then

It was a Sunday, then eleven years ago, October 20, 2002 when word reached me ... in the morning, henceforth no longer an indulgent  universe.

Your sons are driving to Key West now to commemorate you, they together as you and I had been. You'd be proud of them, your boys, as am I.

Life and then not

8:52 AM — October 19, Saturday, eleven years ago, you alive, passing up a garage sale, you and Craig together....

It would be Sunday morning about this time when I learned .... I'd left the phone off the hook because Mother would call all hours of the night ... I was the last find out you died before midnight, October 19.

Distance and its evidence — your words. Days, actions, disbelief — the agony a tide receding not.

1: 53 PM — October 19.  In real time on this day eleven years ago, you and Craig are together, he hasn't yet left for work, you both deliriously happy.

It is that image I hold in a life now without you, your happiness then

along with those in all the years before, 52 of them together you and I.

Years and months and days: time categorized to make sense of.

October 19, 2013

Eleven years ago ....

Thumbprints

Hey Carole, I really did wander over to Trader Joe's without your physicality, thoughts of you as I sauntered. Is smaller than Borders, less enchanting with a warehouse setup and was mobbed, traffic a mess. An announcement came on, saying they were towing cars from Roasters and Toasters.

Roasters, that did it!  You and all the coffee fill-ups when it was closer to your place, moved a few blocks north about the time you died, before or after, who knows? That wouldn't have made a difference although no longer a coffee shoppe now a full deli. Even simple changes without you a heartache: "the energy a survivor sits with, in a dark corner, talking..."

There is a white elephant sale close by here tomorrow, October 19, the day you died eleven years ago. Craig would later tell me there was one in Key West near you, one you'd been looking forward to but decided to pass, not feeling well, telling him just hours before. Oh Carole, had I known, I would  have warned him, zoomed down to Key West, wrapped you in my arms and gotten you to hospital. Craig didn't understand the implications of your missing the tohotchkes, the big finds. My solace is believing you are together in a wondrous space.

Twixt

Hi sweetheart, my dearest sister... a love of my life. The supposedly 'oomphy' grocery, Trader Joe's, is opening where the defunct Borders had been, our favorite hangout no more. I imagine we'd pick up there and can see us walking from my house with one of those farty shopping push carts, driving and parking undoubtedly a clusterfuck, also a waste, exercise and cooling fresh air better.  We'd be best buddies, aging middlers, oogling, laughing like the trundling yentas we poked fun of on Miami Beach; old friends with shopping carts. The Beach of yesteryear, and we'd think, never us!  Well, for all the wrong reasons, it is now not for us — oh Carole,  how I miss your exuberance, your love.

Nearing

Close by Carole, always close by .... touching through tears.

Poetry: Payback’s Bitch

Payback’s Bitch / Crib Crud Vomit and Other Scenarios
By Hope Marcus

Placental Goo. January 3 —

Carole, have changed it a bit, but the essence remains. You'd giggle: hooray! A birthday my dear sister.

Tomorrow, yesterday, without ...

Carole, there isn't a day, a minute or second that you are not with me ...tomorrow... January 3 .... we, these few months, a year apart, minus the air and rivers and breeze.