Four years and three months ago one of my best friends was killed in a horrific automobile accident. Martha was one of maybe three people that I could describe as "one of my best" friends. I had known her for more than twenty years. She was 56 when she was killed. I think about her almost every day.
And the strange and good thing is that I think of her, often, as still here! Example: I am reading a book right now called "Hammer Head" about a young 30 year old woman who quits a promising yet dull job as a journalist at a Boston newspaper because it is dull and she feels like she is sinking in the tar pit of that job. (My words there, not hers.) She has a few months without a job and then answers an ad for a carpenter's assistant and even with no experience, she gets the job. The book chronicles her learning curve, her love and hate for the job of lugging heavy stuff, demolitioning rooms, building new ones, of cutting tile, of learning to love wood, and on and on. It's a good read.
As I am reading this book, sitting in my funky back patio (without, YAY, the Roommate Factor) I think to myself "Martha will like this book." Not "Martha would have liked this book." But that she will. I think that and I continue to read. The statement in my mind does not make me pause or make me take it back and rephrase it into the past tense. She will like this book.
Does that happen to other people? Do you who have suddenly lost loved ones acknowledge their presence in that way? In real time, as if they are still here, they are just around the corner of that brick wall, hiding behind that very narrow tree, ready to spring out and surprise you? I do it all the time. I taste something and think "Martha likes this combo of sweet-and-salty" or I watch a TV show or a movie and think "Martha will hate this." Yes, I also say "Martha would have grabbed that yard sale bookcase" and "thank god I don't have to listen to Steve and Martha argue about that political debacle" but most often it is in the present tense.
I was telling a friend of mine, someone who knows Steve slightly (through me) about Martha and her death and I realized that I didn't have the right words to explain anything. I couldn't explain away her awful death, the impact it had on Steve, on me, on her family and I wanted to end that conversation but at the same time I knew it was important, somehow, to put into words the answers to my friend's questions. It made me sad to recount the barest of details about how she died and it made me sad to know that the person hearing it would also be sad. So I wanted to stop talking. And so I did, eventually.
But I think that powerful souls, people who have strong and good and important spirits, somehow live on. Call me crazy, but I firmly believe that some baby born four years and three months ago captured the spirit of Martha, got born at the instant Martha's soul was ready to move on. Thus there is another Martha out there, albeit only four years old. I wish that four year old well, he or she has a huge life ahead, in part because of that amazingly brilliant and strong spirit and I will continue to think about her or him and Martha every day. Martha will like that.
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