I knew her when...

...the time for this has come and gone like the railway stations. You won't say "If I'd known that then. Would not run. Would have stayed. Would have been okay." - One Line Drawing

I remember the first time you asked me if I loved you. You said "Don't say it unless you're ready. Don't say it unless you're ready to tattoo it on your heart and not take it back." You said with that finality that I've never heard from you since then, but which I remember with such unreal clarity that I often imagine it was a dream. I told you I loved you that night. I meant it that night, and I've meant it since.

I never had girlish notions of love. If anything, I was a realist to a fault. I prided myself on telling my heartbroken friends that your true love, the love of your life, that that person may not be who you ended up with. I told them it wasn't always for the worse, that sometimes it was what had to happen to bring us where we are supposed to end up.

I would take it all back now if I could. Every word, every breath, every thought. I never meant it. I couldn't have known what I meant.

Even when I fought against loving you I failed.

Now everything is cheapened, and yet I don't regret it. I, afterall, am of the school of "better to have loved and lost" - but how could I have known how it would feel?

God, now I feel so foolish. Still, I can't say how on earth I would have managed to do it differently had I the chance.

I have loved you since that night with more than I thought I ever had to give. And that love has been at the expense of so much else. But I've only known one other love that has compared, and I lost it. So yes, I'm grasping, and I've been grasping, arms outstretched, reaching out to hold onto something - and I've never known what:

A promise of a future. A promise of not sleeping alone. A promise of everything I'd dreamt of. A promise of an ending that I'd watched onscreen so many times, or at least the promise of a shot at it. But I feel robbed of that shot because you lack the ability to alter your own circumstance.

You changed everything for me. You made what meant something to me meaningless. You made the meaningless the only things that mattered.

Fix it.

What Sarah Said

When the Death Cab for Cutie album 'Plans' was released, I listened to one track on repeat. The first time I heard it, I was utterly unnerved. It seemed too overwhelming to think that everything I'd thought and felt about the most difficult thing I've ever been through could have been captured in someone else's words. But it had been. Perhaps it wasn't just the words, but more the attachment of those words to a name. Her name. I'm not sure I'd said it, outloud, just her name, since it happened.

Death is a funny thing. Grief even funnier. In the span of just a few days you go from knowing how your world exists, and who's in it, to having no idea how to put one foot in front of the other. No idea how to make yourself presentable. No idea how to re-remember all your history without someone so you don't have to feel that emptiness over and over again. No idea how to respond to "I'm so sorry for your loss." No idea how the rest of the world just...moves on...when yours has stopped.

And it's never real while it's happening, losing someone. It can't be. If it were, we wouldn't be able to take it. So we stare at our feet, stare out the window, stare at the nametag on the Doctor's white coat as he speaks, stare anywhere but the eyes of another human being.

I don't believe I've engaged with all this, really, since it happened. And the news of Natasha Richardson's death brought it all flooding to the surface. Perhaps I'm just writing this down for myself. Perhaps someone will read it and it will make just one moment a little easier for them, a moment that for me was devastating, crippling. The truth is, the very best we can hope for in life is a set of people to share it with who make us laugh, love, and live for the moment. Second to that, we have to make all our plans with the understanding that each one which comes to fruition is a gift, and not something we own.

Lyrics to 'What Sarah Said' below.



What Sarah Said

And it came to me then that every plan is a tiny prayer to father time
As I stared at my shoes in the ICU that reeked of piss and 409
And I rationed my breaths as I said to myself that I'd already taken too much today
As each descending peak on the LCD took you a little farther away from me
Away from me

Amongst the vending machines and year-old magazines in a place where we only say goodbye
It stung like a violent wind that our memories depend on a faulty camera in our minds
But I knew that you were a truth I would rather lose than to have never lain beside at all
And I looked around at all the eyes on the ground as the TV entertained itself

'Cause there's no comfort in the waiting room
Just nervous pacers bracing for bad news
And then the nurse comes round and everyone will lift their heads
But I'm thinking of what Sarah said that "Love is watching someone die"

So who's gonna watch you die?

Come back and find me.

"I want you between me and the feeling I get when I miss you
But everything here is telling me I should be fine
So why is it so, above as below,
That I'm missing you every time

I got used to you whispering things to me into the evening
We followed the sun and its colours and left this world
It seems to me that I'm definitely
Hearing the best that I've heard

So throw me a rope to hold me in place
Show me a clock for counting my days down
Cause everything's easier when you're beside me
Come back and find me
Cause I feel alone

And whenever you go it's like holding my breath underwater
I have to admit that I kind of like it when I do
Oh but I've got to be unconditionally
Unafraid of my days without you

So throw me a rope to hold me in place
Show me a clock for counting my days down
Cause everything's easier when you're beside me
Come back and find me
Whenever I'm falling you're always behind me
Come back and find me
Cause everything's easier when you're beside me
Come back and find me
Cause I feel alone"

Throw Me a Rope
KT Tunstall

This is my new favorite. Perfect.

The List.

1. I like typewriters, a LOT. I like the look of them, the sound of them, the way it feels to read something written on a typewriter. Go on, admit it. It feels different. No matter what it says.

2. Obsessed with red wine. White's just not the same. I am always perfectly happy to give an inch of vanity for that warm feeling and, preferably, smokey taste.

3. I love to stroll. The stroll is a lost art, people simply go for walks, and it's nowhere near as rewarding.

4. I sincerely enjoy the first sunburn of the year. You know the one I mean, when it's the first day of Spring that's warm enough to venture out minus protective cover. At the end of the day you feel that twinge, and your cheeks and shoulders are barely kissed with pink. It's easy to miss, but it's thrilling if you pay attention.

5. Cobblestone streets are romantic. I don't even mind acknowledging that my car's alignment is compromised. (What are we doing on cobblestone streets in cars, anyway?)

6. Hands down, I prefer boys with dark hair and light eyes. (I'm aware I should probably change the 5th word of this sentence to "men" at this point in my life, but why grow up, right?)

7. I don't enjoy seeing a movie at the theater unless I've got popcorn or Raisinets. Both are ideal. And note that I say Raisinets, and not "chocolate covered raisins" - sometimes brand names really matter.

8. I've never actually learned how to play chess.

9. I have an odd fixation with kitchen counters, probably because of their extreme versatility. Think about this. Marble (or imitation marble) preferred.

10. The first song I remember knowing the words to is the one that goes "I like that old time rock-n-roll. That kinda music just soothes the soul". This is mostly due to the fact that, to this day, I have an oddly vivid memory of my father playing dashboard drums to this song in his blue Chevy S-10 pickup truck.

11. I don't have a favorite movie. Moreover, I believe that no true lover of film has an actual favorite. With a gun to the back of my head, however, I am a rational person: I'd pick Braveheart. (See next.)

12. The film industry had just as big (if not much, much bigger) a part in my upbringing as any of my caretakers. I'm serious. As a child, my father took me to the cinema and we'd see two or three films in a row. And during the week, it was "5 movies, 5 nights, $5" from the local Video Hut. And then, of course, there is the time he checked me out of school to see the opening date matinee of Braveheart. I was 10.

13. I want a sailboat. Repeat: I WANT A SAILBOAT. This may be irrational. I don't care. I'll say it one more time: I WANT A SAILBOAT. (Always have.)

14. If I could pick a voice to narrate my life, it would be Morgan Freeman's. If, however, I could pick an understudy, it may very well be Liam Neeson.

15. I'm Irish, mostly. A bit of English was thrown in to increase my appreciation of Earl Grey tea.

16. I dropped piano lessons after a couple of years: one of my largest regrets. So, someday, when I am all grown up, I intend to by a grand piano and begin again.

17. I enjoy lying in bed awake for hours. Secret: sometimes I set my alarm for much earlier than need be because of this. I enjoy lying there. Also, when I'm really happy, I have a very difficult time sleeping.

18. I want to work in Africa.

19. I believe in happily ever after AND happy right now. Period. (See next.)

20. I like fairytales for adults: Stardust, Penelope and, well, Grey's Anatomy.

21. I want to drive a restored old American muscle car.

22. I LOVE war movies. It's silly really. They almost always end badly. But I'm hooked. Old, new, love story or not.

23. I have very little interest in seeking out new relationships. The most meaningful ones in my life have always found me.

24. I fell in love at 19, and it occurred to me in that moment that this would either be the one I married or would change my life forever. I was right.

25. "Any experiment of interest in life will be carried out at your own expense. Mark it well."

The Title Track.

There is some debate as to whether or not an album should begin with the title track. I believe it depends on the track.

So, in this case, we'll go ahead and start with this:

"I'LL WAIT FOR YOU. COME BACK. The words were not meaningless, but they didn't touch him now. It was clear enough - one person waiting for another was like an arithmetical sum, and just as empty of emotion. Waiting. Simply one person doing nothing, over time, while another approached. Waiting was a heavy word. He felt it pressing down, heavy as a greatcoat... She was waiting, yes, but then what? He tried to make her voice say the words, but it was his own he heard, just below the tread of his heart. He could not even form her face. He forced his thoughts toward the new situation, the one that was supposed to make him happy. The intricacies were lost to him, the urgency had died... But what was guilt these days? It was cheap. Everyone was guilty, and no one was."