where is he?

Dear Kate,

When I saw your photos on FB earlier today I thought how beautiful and nymph-like you looked, and how you also looked a little bit like a child. I love you. Thank you for your words, I want to hear more of how you are doing and what is going on in your world (internally and externally). Emphasis on the internal.

France is wonderful. I am taken out of myself and placed in a different language where things don't carry the same weight as they do in English. But where I also have friends who understand and support me as you and my other friends do.

I have felt calm, but deeply saddened. I don't know if I am numb or healing. I feel as if I should be rent in two, but I am more whole than usual. I feel no fear of death. Which is something I always feared, I had panic attacks, but now that he is dead. This person who meant so much to me, who was my Virgil, my mystic, my laughter in the dark, now that he is gone, how can I fear where he is now? That is ludicrous. It's strange because we didn't even see eachother very often and hadn't spent more thn a few days at a time together, but we were so very close. Like you and me. Which is why I so wanted you to meet him.

I feel like I have to imagine absorbing his confidence and his love and carry my life in my hands and walk forward unafraid. I wish I could be close to you and see you each day, that would make me happy and maybe one day that will be so.

At the same time I have also realized that this life, for me, cannot be about finding that one person to share my life with--again if he can die, this person I connected with so deeply--it is not possible that life's end is love of one other person. Do you know what I mean? I am a bit discombobulated right now. But I felt I had to write these things to you. Did you feel a calm at any point after your dad died? I felt when I saw Babur, and touched his face, that he was dead, but that it wasn't him. I felt no solace because he was not there. Where is he then? He would most likely say "there is no such thing as place I am everywhere and nowhere, and you know that is not the right question."

Should I accept this calm or is this just denial? What should I do?


In other news I don't know if I told you, but I was accepted at Goucher after my interview on Friday. THe day before he died. I found out monday that day after I learned he had died. I wish I could believe or not believe that that had any kind of specific meaning. Instead I am stuck in between unsure, but moving forward. I decided to accept goucher, as there are horses and I wouldn't have to move far away from my mom. For at least one more year.

That's all for now. I have to go eat. I love you.