I
don’t remember the last thing you said to me.
That
feels strange to admit, like it means I wasn’t paying attention, but I was. I
was always paying attention to you. To the way your voice softened when you
called my name, to the quiet rhythm of your breath when you fell asleep on the
couch, to the hum of the kitchen when you were there, making me your famous labneh
spread or stirring a pot of coffee, like
time itself bent gently to your presence.
But
I don’t remember your last words, and that hurts. Maybe you said goodbye. Maybe
you said nothing at all.
Grief
is quiet. Not the loud kind you see in movies, no dramatic cries, no
thunderstorm funerals. Just silence. Just the long hours of a morning that
doesn’t feel quite right. The smell of your white headscarf still hanging in
the closet. The sound of a clock ticking too loudly in your empty room. The
echo of your wheelchair, pushed neatly in.
Sometimes,
I think I see you. In the woman who walks past me at the market with the same
silver streak in her hair. In the way the light falls on the floor at exactly 9:00
a.m., the hour you always start your mate gatherings. In my own hands, which
are starting to look more like yours.
You
never told me how to do this. How to live in a world that doesn’t include you.
You taught me how to sew, how to speak kindly to strangers, how to avoid making
a washed-out mate, but you never taught me how to keep going after someone you
love becomes only memory.
Sufjan
Stevens asked, “Did you get enough love, my little dove?”
And
I think of you.
Of
how you sat beside me when I was sick, humming wordless tunes.
Of
how you waited for me outside as I came back from school.
Of
how you said nothing when I cried, just opened your arms, and I ran into them.
So,
yes. I think I did get enough love. Maybe that’s what makes it so hard to let
go.
People
say that time heals. But I don’t want to be healed if it means forgetting. I
don’t want to wake up one day and not ache when I remember you. Because this
ache, this slow, soft ache, is the closest thing I have to you now.
There
is no Fourth of July here. But still, when the sky lights up with noise, I look
up, and I think of you. I imagine you are somewhere warm, somewhere quiet,
somewhere safe. Maybe in a garden where the mate is always warm and the lilies
never wilt. Maybe in a dream I haven’t had yet. Maybe here, still, in the
pauses between my sentences.
Will
I see you again?
I
don’t know. But if I do, if somewhere, in some kind of beyond, you wait for me, I hope I’ll remember your voice.
And
I hope you’ll still be wearing that soft black cardigan. The one that smelled like
rosemary, rain, and home.
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