Today marks a year since I lost my best friend, Pam. I can’t believe it’s been so long. I can’t believe it’s gone so fast. I can’t believe I’ve made it 12 months without blabbing on the phone with her and laughing until my diaphragm rips in two. She held and helped me after my husband’s suicide. She talked me through moments of profound loneliness and aching doubt and crashing, crushing guilt. She told me that good things would happen, they would. That I’d find love again, I would.
After she died, I did. And I couldn’t call her up and tell her. I still can’t. Her absence felt like a rupture in the cosmic order of things. It still does. Several times a week, my brain howls at me to JUST PHONE PAM, and I explain to my brain that sorry, she’s unreachable, but the damn thing doesn’t ever listen. Instead it howls again, DIDN’T YOU HEAR ME? I SAID JUST PHONE PAM! And I can’t it shut it up. So I talk to her anyway, telling her about all the crazy joys and heady milestones that have come my way since her death.
I wonder what’s been happening at her end, these days. I wonder if she’s looking down at us, tracking everyone’s movements, whispering little directives to help us all along. Could be. Could also be she’s reading a book or singing a hymn or kicking a soccer ball around Somewhere Up There. Or doling out a few words of counsel to someone in her gentle, calm, comprehending way, which always felt less like advice than some humbly revealed wisdom of the ages. Or unleashing that high-pitched madhouse giggle of hers. Or smiling that beautiful, face-consuming smile, which spread the width of her cheeks and squinched up her eyes to slivered crescent moons. I used to wonder how she saw out of them. I used to wonder how she managed to see so deeply into me. How she saw so deeply into everyone.
I know she’s not far away; I believe that. I know she’s still Pam, only more so, and that we’re still friends; I believe that, too. To borrow a phrase from another dear friend, Toni, who lost too many sons: Pam is my permanent gift, just as everyone I love, in this life and in that one, is a permanent gift. And so she’ll remain, no matter the years that slip past in her absence, no matter the phone calls that fail between here and there. I’ll never stop talking to her. That’s part of the gift. For that, and for her, I’ll always be grateful.
Figuring. Shit. Out. 
Oh Amy, are you going to get feedback on this one! I can’t remember if you’ve been at St. V.’s long enough to remember Jim Masso, a wonderful tenor, organist & pianist. I miss his voice every single day. And it’s been 22 years! One place he worked, he’d call me every day, just to say hello, At another job, he couldn’t call as often, but that was OK. I still miss the sound of his voice, both his laugh and his beautiful singing voice. So, I understand very much what you mean. And I suspect so do quite a lot of people. I picture Jim, & choke up every time I sing the line “At the door there to greet us, martyrs angels, and saints, AND OUR FAMILY AND LOVED ONES, EVERY ONE FREED FROM THEIR CHAINS.” This, of course from “We Shall Rise Again”. It’s a real comfort, however I still want just to pick up the phone and talk to him. He was/is a real gift to me, for about 12 short years. Thanks for sharing your thoughts.
Thanks, Amy. Reading your post helped me appreciate the gift.
Amy–This is so beautiful, so real and true. Death ends a life but not a relationship. I talk to my brothers all the time, sometimes I say, “Tell me what you see!” and sometimes, like when we were little, I still want to say, “Take me with you.”
With you