Dear Anne,
I miss you. I won't ever wish you back to the life on earth that was endlessly painful for you, but I miss you. You were the dark, conscientious, quiet in our church. Sensitive and delicate, your heart stretched out to the congregation tenderly in prayer and in music. After my mother died, you came to see me with watery eyes: "I loved your mother. I'm sure going to miss her." You meant it. Not that other people didn't, but you really meant it. You understood sorrow. I appreciated that.
When you were first hospitalized and diagnosed with bi-polar disorder, you asked me to come visit you. I was quite surprised- both that you had been diagnosed with bi-polar, and that of all the people you knew you would want a girl in her 20s who only knew you from seeing you briefly for a few minutes each week at church to be your only permitted visitor. So I came. You told me a lot about your life; all kinds of struggles I would have never guessed at. You felt emotionally neglected by your husband, rejected by most of your family, abandoned by your more chipper church friends. You had experienced a miscarriage and were never able to have children of your own. You had silently struggled with an addiction to alcohol for many years, an addiction which began as an attempt to self-medicate your depression. Your rapidly failing health was slowly robbing you of the small pleasures in life: your ability to write, to play the organ, to go for solitary walks outside, to drive to warmer places. Your house had never been finished properly and seemed to have nurtured a rather disturbing amount of black mould that I suspect had a lot to do with your poor health, but your husband's pride would not allow any inspectors to check it or contractors to fix it. The constant flourescent lighting in the hospital was bothering you- you had a hard time sleeping there. You had only one glove, and there was a blizzard that week, making it difficult for you to go for even the short 1/2 hour evening walk with your husband that had become customary during your relatively long stay at the hospital. I bought you a new pair I hoped you would like, but they were the wrong size. I wanted to surprise you, but given that I was buying the gloves on sale, it probably would have been wiser to ask you what size your hands were beforehand. I bought you another pair in the size I thought you told me was correct (I'm horrible at remembering numbers), but I never ended up giving them to you because I was afraid I'd gotten it wrong again.
When you were released, I asked a few times if I could come visit you, or take you out for tea. Each time you said you weren't up to having visitors just yet. I gave up asking. And after our second, rather bizarre phone conversation while you were in a prolonged manic state, I admit I gave up calling as well. I kept hoping your husband would take you back to the hospital, but he just kept saying you didn't want to go, and that was that. I regret not coming to see you. You must have felt very lonely.
My dad called on Saturday to tell me that you'd passed away. Like your illness, no mention of it was ever made in the church; maybe your husband's same secrecy shrouding you. My dad only found out because he'd just been asked by your husband to be a pal-bearer. Evidently that was because dad was one of very few men in the church who could both remember who you were and still walk... I suppose we are rather lacking in longer-standing middle-aged church members... I almost cried at work when I discovered that there was simply no way for me to leave my desk to come attend your funeral on Monday. Maybe it's just as well. My cynical self suspects it would have been a superfluous memorial of you. Not that it matters to you now, but I strongly suspect your husband suffers from an avoidant attachment style- when he described how you died he was chuckling about it like it was some sort of amusing anecdote of a mildly funny incident at work, even though it must have been quite horrifying. Defense mechanism? I'm thinking so. Sigh. I would have liked to hear stories from when you were younger, though. Small, fragile, understated, and hidden; were you always like a sparrow? That is not a judgement. Sparrows are my favourite bird. Perhaps a more accurate question would be, were you always like a sparrow in a bird cage, isolated from your host?*. (*A group of sparrows is called a host).
You're gone now, to a place that is always light. And happily, that won't bother you a bit, because it isn't flourescent and your body no longer needs sleep. And although I believe God is creative enough to come up with a way to keep snow in heaven, I suspect a place that is constantly filled with the light and warmth of God's presence is a sort of tropical place, so you won't be needing gloves anymore either. In fact, the first image that came to mind after I heard that you had passed away was of you and my mom enjoying icy Pina Coladas in parfait glasses at a wrought-iron table in a lush garden near an exceptionally blue river of life. You had wide-brimmed white lace hats like the kind my mom wore to her wedding, and you were chatting amiably together, enjoying the sunshine, and looking down with love on the world you had left. You looked happy, with none of the shadows in your eyes I always observed while you were alive here. There is no sorrow in heaven. I hope there's still inner tubing. If there is, I hope you're laughing gleefully as you fly through the waves behind some insane boat driver that looks like a robe-wearing elf (upon my word, is that Jesus?!).
Love,
Faye.
