i could tell that t wanted to meet me somewhere before i came home. i thought maybe he was just kind of stir crazy from being inside all day or that maybe he was just trying to be nice because he knew i was sad about summer ending....
but i was wrong.
he wanted to meet me to tell me that our neighbor m had died. i guess he thought i would be scared to see all the police trucks outside the building-- and i probably would have been. my heart would have been racing and i would have pounded up the stairs and banged on the door until t opened it revealing that he was okay.
so he came to meet me, in front of the deli, where he held my hand as i stepped off the bus and told me m had died.
i don't think he expected me to cry-- at least not as much as i did. but like, in that moment i felt m's light go out and there is something very human in that moment-- the moment you reflect on the value of life.
truthfully, i didn't really know m. she sat outside smoking her cigarettes and walking her dog. sometimes she would talk about her illness, other times she would talk about the weather. i remember this one time, she told me to go to coney island to watch the sunrise. i always wanted to do it-- but i never did. maybe i will go sunday morning in her memory.
this one time, when i was sick, i saw her walking out of the vascular center in beth israel. when i told her that i saw her there, she just looked passed me like i never even said it. she didn't want to live in that space. of being sick. and she didn't. at least as much as she could control, anyway.
in the mornings, when i would leave for work, she would always tell me how beautiful i was and i would thank her thinking how nice it was for her to offer that compliment. she would often tell t how lucky he was, as if she knew how easily he forgets.
last month, on my birthday, she told me to go up to her apartment and take a bottle of champagne out of her refrigerator to celebrate. i didn't have the heart to tell her that i don't drink champagne and so that bottle is still sitting on the top shelf-- in honor of m.
she would always invite us over on holidays-- and although we often considered stopping by, we never did. and now it's too late.
that's the thing about life-- you have to live it right now.
i used to think that life was about getting what i wanted and everything that i wanted was something outside myself-- the right job, the right apartment, the right boyfriend, the right dress.......
i used to think that and i couldn't figure out why i was "getting nowhere". and then i realized when you try to fill yourself up with "things" you're always going to feel empty.
now i think life is about feeling good, feeling happy, feeling free, feeling satisfied. when i think about what i want in my life it's this: i want to wake up and feel that light tickling on my skin and glitter in my chest of knowing that the sun is warm and shining. i want to walk through my day and feel the white heat of the summer sun radiating from my soul's core knowing that i'm right where i'm supposed to be. and i want to go to sleep at night feeling the warm blanket of summer air around me, knowing that my breath is going in and out just as natural as the waves....i want to feel as free and uninhibited as the dolphins jumping up and diving back down into the sea.
i wonder what m wanted. i wonder if she felt that her life was a life well lived. i wonder if she was happy. i hope so.
m- now you are eternally free to watch the sunrise every morning in coney island. i wish you well.
in memory of m <3
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