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Hello again Lena.
I still think about what you might have said if you had been able to speak.
As I held your small hand in both my own, as tightly as I dared when you felt so fragile in my palms. When your silver eyes met mine, wet, glossy, and you licked your lips and tried to talk, but couldn’t. I watched your chest rise and drop with so much effort. I watched you swallow each breath like they were mouthfuls of sand, and you strained your throat so hard the veins pressed against your skin.
I watched your face fall. You looked so miserable when you realized you couldn’t speak. But maybe that was only because you saw how sad it made me.
I still think about the face I made when I realized you’d have no final words.
It must have been a terrible sight for you. I wish I could have smiled for you as you passed. I know how much you loved to see me smile. Every single day I wish I could have done that for you one last time. I should have sent you on with my love, not my pain. It’s my greatest regret.
So once again, I’m sorry.
Sixty-six years and a hundred days. You spent nearly your entire life with me, and I’m so grateful for all you shared with me. With you at my side, every day was a dream. You were my sun. You made me glad to be born. Your idle chatter and that beautiful laugh of yours. Your lips to kiss and your hand to hold. Our children to tell stories to and play with in the yard, to watch grow up and have children of their own. I see traces of you in all of them. Rei has your eyes. Lilia has your voice. Sieg has your spirit.
I still remember what you told me.
When Ernst passed on, the first of our friends to go since the end of the war, his death struck me so much worse than death ever had before. You watched me cry when they closed his casket and you held my hand when it started to shake, and I said that I wished no would ever die. I was so tired of carrying memories by then, Lena. Even knowing I had hundreds with me already, the thought of taking on one more seemed impossible.
And you told me that it was only because our lives would end that we could consider them precious.
I still think about that every single day.
It was such a cruel truth to me back then. It still is, because the time we had together is my greatest treasure. I don’t hate many things. In some ways I could never feel hatred like most people do, but I truly do hate the thought that having more time with you would have made each moment less precious.
Because it’s all I wish for, Lena. I want to see you again. I want to hold you again. I want to walk with you again with the setting sun at our backs and flowers at our feet, and I want to listen as you laugh. I don’t want to believe that if I could have done these things forever, then they would mean less to me.
And yet I know you were right.
You proved it with your wordless voice.
—
Hello again Lena.
I said goodbye to Raiden today.
His wife said it was a painless death. He went to sleep in his own bed, in his own home, and simply never woke up again. It was a good death. A better one than any of us could have hoped for when we were growing up in the 86th district. Out of all of us, he deserved it the most: to be the first to go, to not be left behind. Anju, Kurena, Theo and I were there for his funeral, and we told stories of him for his children and grandchildren.
I’m sorry for him. He was the kindest out of all of us, and he deserved it, but I know it’s not what he would have wanted. Being the first to go means he can’t be there for the rest of us. He would have wanted to sit us down, one by one, whoever was left, and remind us of what we still had.
And I’d tell him he didn’t have to do that anymore, because we’re more than adults at our age, with no need for a mother-hen to keep us from falling apart. And of course he wouldn’t listen to me, because he never did when it came to these things. He’d get emotional and disguise it with a whole lot of shouting, and Anju would have to step in to keep peace, provided she hadn’t been the one to go.
But of course, since he was the first, that will never happen.
It’s not too bad though, and we definitely don’t need him to comfort us. We’ve all dealt with death many times over by now, so none of us are broken about his passing. Certainly not split into pieces all in need of Spearhead’s mother to glue us whole again.
I wonder if he knows that. If he’s gone to some place where he can see us from above, like some religions say. If he has, I bet he feels a little useless right now. Raiden always did need someone to take care of. He was a busybody like that.
It hurts.
I miss him.
—
Hello again Lena.
Today is my eightieth birthday. It’s been fourteen years since we said goodbye, and not a day has passed that I haven’t thought about you. I went to that cafe you loved a little while ago, the one with the old-fashioned wooden sign and the kids’ drawings hung up all over the walls, and the croissants sprinkled with way too much powdered sugar. I ordered one and split it in half.
I told myself it was because a whole croissant would have been too sweet. But really, I was thinking of you, and of how nice it would be if you were here to eat the other half with me. Even better if you could have taken my half off my hands too, because I took two bites and had to push it all aside. I’m really not a fan of sweets, as you know.
Vika once told me that your mind is like the wilderness your thoughts navigate through. A wilderness with many different kinds of terrain all corresponding to your feelings; joy like soft grass, loneliness like a bitter tundra, pain like sheer mountains. He said your thoughts carve trails as they move through the same places. That the more you think the same thoughts and feel the same feelings, the firmer those trails become. The pathways get easier and easier to navigate, until those thoughts and feelings become effortless, and you default to them the same way your heart defaults to beating, and your lungs to breathing.
He told me that because he wanted me to think new thoughts. Carve new trails. Because he knew how much I think about you every single day. How much I miss you. He said I should move on, if not in love then at least in life. Can you believe the irony of that? Vika of all people giving me advice on my emotions. He grew a lot since we first met him, didn’t he?
Maybe he was right. I probably would be more joyful if I thought about you less. But I prefer it like this. I’m not unhappy, and that’s enough for me. And I like thinking about you. It’s carved a trail, but not a bad one. I didn’t feel pain when I wished that you could have eaten the other half of that croissant for me. Even when I remember those final words you never got to say, it doesn’t hurt. Not anymore.
I go through pleasant places when I think of you. It’s like walking alone on a long footpath by the sea. It makes me lonely and sad, but the memories we shared are the gentle sound of waves breaking on the shore. The words you said to me, the truths you showed me like no one else could, have become the singing wind across the sand.
You said that life could only be precious because it ended. And you were right, as always. If you had not gone on ahead of me, I would never have made a trail like this. I wouldn’t have had the need to. And without a clear path for them to tread down day after day, these memories I hold and these thoughts I think and these feelings I feel, so many of them would have slipped from me and been forgotten. I would never have been able to realize exactly how much they mean to me. How much you mean to me.
Most of our friends have gone on ahead now. I carry their memories the same way I carry yours. Just like I always have. Theo’s still around. He’s too stubborn to die, or at least that’s what he tells me, so I’ll probably be going first. I think he’s okay with that. He said he’s waiting for us all to croak so he can draw us in the most embarrassing pictures imaginable, and since we’ll be dead, we won’t be able to do anything about it. Personally, I think he’s bluffing. He’s probably gonna make something so terribly sappy he’d never be able to live it down if any of us got a chance to see it.
I love you, Lena.
I know that came out of nowhere. I just felt like saying it.
I hope I see you again.