Long distance communication

When I look back on that time, I wish I could say that I knew she was happy. Truth is, I'm pretty convinced she was miserable, but all I could do was listen. I rarely wrote back, and when I did, I wrote about what I was doing, not in response to her. To me, the written word solidified thoughts and feelings in a way I wasn't willing to commit to. There were opportunities to guide and comfort her and all I did was listen. All these years later I still have pangs of guilt when I think of my silence.

During those three years she was traveling first throughout the United States, and later the world at large. From time to time I would receive messages from her, an e-mail here a letter there. She moved, that much was evident from the curious origin of some of her letters: Tumbes, Equador and Nagpur, India coming to mind.

She never told me much about what she was doing in each of these places. She only told me that she was safe and was keeping her eyes open for where to go next. Her tone was almost always vague, so much so that it drove me crazy when I tried to settle on an interpretation. But settling on an interpretation was part of my nature, I desired to resolve some of the conflict of what I read. It was through these letters that I understood she was unhappy.

Looking at the bundle of letters on the whole, her tone of discontent stands out. I read this from the passages she included in every letter. Passages from a host of books about death, love lost, pain, misery, and missed opportunity. Each passage seemed hand picked to make a point. That is what I was left to interpret. It was the single biggest piece of evidence I had to work with when trying to understand what she was going through.

Her final letter ended with this passage:

What had she been expecting, while she fiddled with the buttons on her dress, while she shifted the purse on her shoulder and tried not to unbalance her Macy's hat? A mess, un toyo certainly, but not a husband looking nearly destroyed, who shuffled like an old man, whose eyes shone with the sort of fear that is not easily shed. It was worse than she, in all her apocalyptic fervor had imagined. It was the Fall.

Junot Díaz, The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao

The gifts we are given

When he was four he asked, “Why are those dogs fighting with each other?”
And his mother replied, “Because they made the choice to.”

When he was a teenager he asked, “Will his humiliation ever end?”
And his older brother replied, “If you want it to, you have to make some changes.”

When he was in his late twenties he asked, “Will you marry me?”
And his girlfriend smiled and kissed him.

When he and his wife had their first child he asked, “Will I do this better than my parents?”
And his wife said, “Remember to keep asking that question and you will.”

When he was raising his child he asked, “Can I do this forever?”
And his father replied, “One day your role will change. The time when that happens will be the choice of your daughter.”

When he was at the end of his career he asked, “Is this the right time to retire?”
And something outside of him gave him an answer.

When he was an old man he asked, “Am I able to keep living alone?”
And his children replied, “Dad, you know what we think. The decision is left to you.”

When he was dying he asked, “Did I ask enough questions; were they at the right time?”
And there was no answer.

Epilogue of a Departure

“I feel sick.”

That was the way a friend of mine described her shock. During those first few days she felt disoriented, her sign posts of life had been removed. She knew where she wanted to go but had no sense of how to get there. She said her stomach felt hollowed out, scraped to the edge of her skin. It was a debilitating sickness, one that challenged her professional goals and purpose.

Yes, I thought, I would qualify that as sickness.

What was she so sick about you ask? She had lost her friend. Not in a life or death sort of way, but in the manner that most people lose a friend when they move to a new city or change jobs. A permanent disconnect from their shared daily interactions; hard to ignore. Her friend was the glue that gave her work verve and support. She said that her friend made the sum of the parts of her professional life greater than the whole.

In the following months I saw her creep back towards acknowledgment and acceptance. It was slow, and I often didn't know how to help other than providing an open heart and mind. She accepted the change and found comfort in the fact that she had the honor of knowing, even for a brief time, such an influential person. She would often tell me that her friend became an important role model in life. I saw her emulate that model as time went on, doing good things for the people around her, and I could tell she was forever greatful to her friend's example.

It was late in autumn when we had our last long conversation about her friend leaving. This conversation served as a kind of epilogue, as I think she had finally found her peace. She had invited me to a pleasant dinner at a quiet little restaurant on Wabash Ave. Late in the dinner, I asked her if she had heard from her friend. She looked lost in her thoughts, long enough that I thought she had not heard my question at all. When she finally replied she said she hadn't heard anything from her in a little while. Then she took a sip of water, taking in and crushing a piece of ice. However, she continued, she knew her friend was doing good things in her new role. Being that positive role model for others. She finished crushing the piece of ice and added, that woman, she was one of a kind.

We didn't know any different

She would hold the picture that depicted her early years in a way that she barely remembered. The back of the card read Carla - age 6 - Easter 2009. She was cute as can be, dressed in a small bunny costume, carrying a basket of multicolored plastic eggs.

Those were the days that her mother worked three jobs and she spent much of her time at the family restaurant. Those days that she was under the care of her loving but much too busy grandmother. Running from table to table, seating new customers, ringing up bills, managing the kitchen staff, and dealing with angry customers, her grandmother did what she could to make sure that Carla was engaged with something.

Her grandmother would give her random tasks to complete. On this day, dressed in pink and white fur, she quietly sat in a corner of the restaurant. That corner she remembered as being a world unto itself, but upon returning as an adult, saw it as a wobbly little stool next to a broken wooden shelf. She sat quietly completing her task, putting individual chocolate pieces inside of colored Easter eggs. As customers left she would offer them an egg. A shy child, she would lift up the basket towards them, but not say a word, offering merely through gesture. Quiet, obedient, part of a loving world that could not afford to give her time; this was her 6 year old experience.

She would look at the picture now, tears running down her face as a flood of memories came rushing back. She sympathized with the little girl, dressed in that little Easter bunny suit, as the woman she is now, and it broke her heart. How much things had changed since those days of a quiet simplicity. And that was the realization that led her to a new beginning.