It only seems right. After all she's gone now. What's left? A body that soon will be ashes? Memories that eventually fade? It only seems right. I should write something down. It is all that is left of her here. Words and phrases. Sketches and scenes of her life, recorded in black and white. Letters, characters, some punctuation throughout.
She is waking up in another world and I wonder if it is what she expected. Did it solve her problems? Are there people there she can turn to? I wonder if the regret was immediate. I wonder if the feeling is overwhelming.
It's been years since I've seen or spoken with her. The break was clean and complete. Before that we worked together day in and day out for about five years. It is a little sad that we spend more waking hours with co-workers than we do with family & friends. I suppose work is more lucrative than love. But it means, at least on a professional level, that you can get very close to those you work with.
I was always surprised that I never bumped into her at least. We lived in the same neighborhood. I thought our paths would have crossed more than just the single time I saw her at an antique jewelry show and she wouldn't talk to me. Of course I didn't approach her either. I didn't know what to say. I was forced to take a side when she left and I think she assumed I would take hers, that I would stick up for her, that I would prefer to leave rather than work there without her. Somehow I was stuck in the middle of the whole mess. I wanted to just stay safe on the sidelines. But there I was. And that was the end of that.
In the years since, I would hear snippets of her comings and goings in and around the small world of the Miami jewelry industry. Most of them, unfortunately, were negative little snippets. (Remember, I was on the opposite team). She was always very talented yet she obviously came up short. Can't say exactly what it was. She liked being in control. This much is evident in the way she chose to go. When you like to be in control though, you have to know how to yield to those things outside of your control.
It's all sad. She was always very nice to our young family. She lavished Kiara with gifts, like a massive pink stuffed dog from FAO Schwartz. That dog wasn't the only way she left her mark on our house. At one point she lived in the same building as us and when she moved we bought and were given a number of objects that served as a constant reminder of her: a table, a television, a couch, a glass shelf, a set of dishes. All of those are now gone. Slowly, one by one, they too dropped out of our life.
The most lasting reminder will probably always be a photo of her and our family taken at the Bellagio in Las Vegas. She had just treated us to breakfast at the Paris Casino. Somehow the downloading of this photo to our computer coincided with the advent of iPhoto. Meaning this picture had the honor of being the very first photo in our library. Since then, every time we have ever imported pictures, and scrolled through them, we knew we had reached the end when the library would loop back to this first picture. Which means that we have viewed this picture (though inadvertently) more frequently than any other picture in our entire library. She hated having her picture taken. This is one of only two pictures I have ever seen of her.
What the picture can't tell us is what transpired in the years since. How did she get from point A in that photo at the Bellagio to point B. . . She was only 31 years old when she lit the charcoal grill, sealed the room, took the sleeping pills and let the carbon monoxide do the rest. There are a million details that I'm leaving out. Leaving out because I do not know them. Leaving them out because I will never know them. Leaving them out because even if I knew them I can't say that I would ever truly understand them. Trying to understand other human beings is a complicated and risky thing.
She is waking up in another world now. She left behind a little mess. A little mess that I suppose she felt incapable of cleaning up. I wonder if she is finding any peace now?