I am more with you
We lost two too many this week, at least. I want to tell you about my friend. Then a poem by Andrea Gibson.
The thing about Cady was living. How she was alive.
How maybe she knew she might not grow old. She lived anyway. Fiercely. She showed up, alive. I'd just moved to New Mexico and had known her only a few weeks when she drove 85 miles to be with me for my 40th birthday, surrounded by women she didn’t know, willingly, lovingly, most gorgeously alive. The way she was.
She was the sort of woman I prayed come into my life. Someone who understood she was on this earth to use her skills skillfully, practice discipline, make up her mind to be and to do, and she did. She worked harder than most, not out of a need to please anyone else or win empty accolades, but to be of service. To make it meticulous. To be who she was. Who didn't waste a moment doubting her gifts, her clarity and focus, who loved efficacy, early nights, bubblegum ice cream, a sensible system, a color-coded spreadsheet.
I listened when she spoke, everything in me responsive, grateful. I love a woman who reminds me what I am, helps me see what I could be.
I said yes to her, easily. Carried her on my back across a puddle once, dancing. We built her child’s high chair. She asked me to help her host a Valentine's Day gathering for the local baddies, it took us one five-minute phone call and two texts to make it miraculous, that night with nine women, singing in the living room, eating mango dipped in chocolate, drinking champagne. She threw petals at my feet, told me to my face she loved me, came over for tea and puzzles. One time at dinner, she said “I have two announcements. One: I’ve decided to wear less make-up. Two: Dylan and I are getting married.”
On Friday morning, July 18, at 6:37am, that sweet man let us know she didn’t make it through the wretched night, the breathless week. I saw her last Saturday— books, beloveds and babies everywhere. Made a plan to make a plan.
And now my beautiful friend is gone from the earth the way I knew her. There are monstrous men breathing this sweet air today, and I don’t know why. I don’t know how much time I have to figure it out. None of us do. I don’t know if it’s good use of my brief time here to try. Most likely, it’s best to live like my friend.
Fiercely, gorgeously. Unafraid.
Here's a poem I read this week that I love.
Love Letter from the Afterlife
My love, I was so wrong. Dying is the opposite of leaving. When I left my body, I did not go away. That portal of light was not a portal to elsewhere, but a portal to here. I am more here than I ever was before. I am more with you than I ever could have imagined. So close you look past me when wondering where I am. It's Ok. I know that to be human is to be farsighted. But feel me now, walking the chambers of your heart, pressing my palms to the soft walls of your living. Why did no one tell us that to die is to be reincarnated in those we love while they are still alive? Ask me the altitude of heaven, and I will answer, "How tall are you?" In my back pocket is a love note with every word you wish you'd said. At night I sit ecstatic at the loom weaving forgiveness into our wordly regrets. All day I listen to the radio of your memories. Yes, I know every secret you thought too dark to tell me, and love you more for everything you feared might make me love you less. When you cry I guide your tears toward the garden of kisses I once planted on your cheek, so you know they are all perennials. Forgive me, for not being able to weep with you. One day you will understand. One day you will know why I read the poetry of your grief to those waiting to be born, and they are all the more excited. There is nothing I want for now that we are so close I open the curtain of your eyelids with my own smile every morning. I wish you could see the beauty your spirit is right now making of your pain, your deep seated fears playing musical chairs, laughing about how real they are not. My love, I want to sing it through the rafters of your bones, Dying is the opposite of leaving. I want to echo it through the corridor of your temples, I am more with you than I ever was before. Do you understand? It was me who beckoned the stranger who caught you in her arms when you forgot not to order for two at the coffee shop. It was me who was up all night gathering sunflowers into your chest the last day you feared you would never again wake up feeling lighthearted. I know it's hard to believe, but I promise it's the truth. I promise one day you will say it too—I can't believe I ever thought I could lose you.
Andrea Gibson
August 13, 1975 - July 14, 2025
Do you understand?
