What a gift it is, you think to yourself after the melee has quieted down. To live everywhere, to belong in any corner, to feel at home on any horizon. You see no more pride in the Stockholm inlet than the American Wild West, and it thrills you to realize. A whole life struggling with the either/or only to realize it's about the and/also.
Two weeks ago you were driving down English country road with a car full of dogs. One week ago you were alighting on medieval island shores. And here you are, staring at hundred-year-old rooftops in sunlight, squeezing more summer out of each step down the streets. I look at apartment listings and room shares, I look at country houses and sitting gigs, it's August and the world is still all opportunity. She writes to say life is a bitch and you haven't enough words to explain how wrong she is.
We talked about you the other night, after the evening had gone dark and the children went to bed. Remembered your bright laugh and the darkness of your last few days. Remembered how we all walked out of that spring changed. I've never forgotten to be grateful for the lessons you taught me.
Have never forgotten that staying alive
is the only reason I've done all these things that I've
done.
And I wouldn't want to live
without them.
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