Saddest News Is Always Late:
I read an e-mail from Vietnamnurse, written 10/17/03, only late Tuesday past -- sent to an e-mail address I no longer use, but at least, sent and received and very much appreciated, Vietnamnurse's consideration and thinking of me and sending me this news, however sad it is, that Jane is gone.
Jane was my e-mail friend, my confidant, someone I cared very much for, shared with, relied upon, came to love over the year+ we corresponded.
We talked through and keyboard laughed about the overheats in ABZ, the hurtful things even, the random and cruel, we shared other random, private space and time in our e-mails and discussed without reservation some of our individual, and then mutual wonders and mysteries and causes. She wrote premonitory comments about a man I was nearly in relationship with, out of the blue, clear sky, kept me from falling, kept me from a wrong path, a flight plan she sensed would be bad.
I wrote to her in July and asked if we could get together on my planned trip to Manhattan for late August but didn't receive a response, which was odd, given our frequent and ongoing e-mailed conversations. "She's busy with her family," I thought, and let it go.
I wondered why the silence. I wrote to her -- 09/17/03 -- and again only a few weeks ago, after an ongoing sense of disquiet, urgency even, an intuitive concern about Jane/Mamajuana that I couldn't readily identify. I asked her how she was, and would she write.
Then, the message from Vietnamnurse, just the day before yesterday. All this time, Jane was gone. I didn't know.
But, I did, apparently. Know intuitively, that things were now different in the world, that my friend had moved on, and I sensed something acutely that I was familiar with from times past, but was afraid of: a void.
I designed an icon for her to use in her beginning at another site, LiveJournal.com -- her unused LJ sits bare and remains there, an empty slate, her many e-mails to me, earlier, saved and cherished, the icon, a heart with her user I.D. initial, "c" for the LJ user I.D., "
ceramell," a red heart set against a flaming, floral, deeper red background, the initial white, for valor -- unaware that she had any heart condition or ever even felt badly, "a gift to get her started," I wrote.
For Mamajuana, dear, sweet, darling, good and sincere.
Dear friend, fly well. Where once was void, now is friend.
