November 3, 2005

Dear Gabriella,

I've wanted to write you a letter for the last month or so, but it has seemed 
harder to do with each passing day.  You're very much on my mind, and this 
morning even more so because last night (or, actually, early this morning) I 
had a dream about you.  In it you were very much yourself, that is thickheaded 
and controlling, but also there were bits of you that I never knew before.  For 
instance, you and I were having sex.  While that would have been really unusual 
for us, it wasn't just the action of having sex that made it weird but that you 
wanted it to go on and on (if you can call a little over an hour on and on!).  

Gabriella, I didn't sit down here to write you a letter about a dream that I 
had about you last night.  No, I wanted to talk to you about my girlfriend, 
Valerie.  You have met her before, and I'm glad for that.  I know that I talked 
to you about her, but you never met her in a "friendly" environment (that is, 
outside of the hospital).  Remember when Dominic was born that we both wished 
that my father had had the chance to meet Dominic before he died?  In a way, I 
wish that it had been that way with Valerie and you: I wish that you two had 
met properly.  She only knows you from when you were stuck in a hospital bed.

There is one time in particular that I recall meeting Valerie at UNMH.  It was 
evening time and she was on call (if I remember properly).  We decided to meet 
at the Subway restaurant that is downstairs (the place that I got tired of 
eating at within the first week that you were in the hospital!).  I was 
supposed to meet Valerie in your room at 7pm.  When I was walking toward your 
room I heard the phone ringing from within, so I ran in there quickly to answer 
it thinking that it might be her.  Well, it wasn't, it was just somebody 
looking for a patient that was no longer was there.  You were awake when I got 
in there and watching me run frantically into the room to answer the phone was 
just a hysterical sight for you.  You were laughing SO damn hard!  This was 
about a week before you were transferred over to the nursing home.  I've never 
thought about this before, but in reflection, that is the last time that I saw 
you laugh.

While I waited for Valerie I read to you for about five or ten minutes.  When 
she came into the room I "introduced" the two of you.  At the time I was still 
calling Valerie, by her shortened name of Val.  I introduced the two of you, 
but you remembered her.  Thinking about it now, there is no doubt that you were 
introduced to her as "Dr. Carrejo."  That's a strange thought for me.  So, 
Gabriella, even though you never met her properly I'm glad that you at least 
know who it is I'm talking about.  She has become very important to me very 
quickly and there is no one in my life, not Rachel, not anyone, with whom I'm 
able to really express myself like I could with you.  I can share pretty-much 
everything with Valerie that I could share with you, but it's not the same (and 
I'm glad for that).  We had our quirks, and I'm learning in many ways, now, 
that they were really more than just quirks, but even with these dings you were 
my best friend.

Despite our weird and often (shall we be blunt?) fucked up relationship you and 
I could always talk.  Damn!  Even when we were very angry with each other we 
always talked.  Sometimes it was through clenched teeth, but we were able to 
communicate.  We were able to be open.  When I look back, and this is 
especially after talking to Valerie about our "open" relationship, I see that 
it was the openness of communication that meant so much to me.  Toward the end 
of your life, just months before you died, you closed a part of yourself up to 
me.  I'm talking, in particular, about your witchcraft and your talking to the 
dead.  If it wasn't for the very brief journal entries that you left then I 
wouldn't know about this part of your life at all.  I did know about the 
witchcraft, but you gave me no details about it; that was a completely 
different part of your life from Dominic and me.

I do wish that you were here right now.  Not as my wife, not as Dominic's 
mother, but, as my friend.  I want the person that I could always open-up to; 
that I could share anything with.  I want you, Gabriella, because you know the 
history of us, but more so, you know the history of me, of the person that I 
am.  This history goes a long way.  When you died you swallowed up twelve years 
of my life.  Those years didn't disappear (I know that), I still have them in 
my mind and in my heart, but those twelve years always went a long way to 
speaking in the present.  You could relate to what I was talking about because 
you understood me.  You understood me because of the good times, the hell, and 
just the plain times that we'd succeeded in passing through.  Valerie asked me 
the other day if we would have stayed together if we didn't have Dominic.  
Well, certainly not.  You and I both knew that.  We knew that for years and 
years.  Shit.  We may not even have passed through our second year together.  
But we did have Dominic.  And we did pass through our second year together.

I'm going to pause here a moment and change the subject.  Dominic just left for 
school.  He called out to me, "Bye, Dad."  It reminded me of when he would call 
out to us both.  Dominic would say to you, "Bye, Mom" before or after he said 
good-bye to me.  As long as you were awake it was always said as a pair.  It 
was bye to both of us.  Now, the pair has been broken; he only says half of 
those words.  It makes me sad Gabriella.  It makes me very sad.

I wish that there were a way for you to actually read this.  Maybe I could post 
it in the mail and send it to you.  Ah, but that wouldn't work.  Surly sending 
it via email to glowhar@ether.com may work better.  It would make me feel 
better if you did read this.  Like always, I wouldn't expect a response back 
from you.  I don't think that you ever wrote a reply to one of my letters.  If 
there was something that needed to be said, then we just talked about it after 
you read the letter.  But I do wish that we could talk, and I do wish that you, 
my best friend, were still alive.  Your advice wasn't always good, but that 
didn't matter.  It was the talking.  It was the sharing of ideas that made you 
so special to me.  It's for this reason now that I'm writing you this letter.  
I'm writing to you about what (in this case, who) is important to me.  I'm just 
airing my ideas to you.  I'm writing as if you can hear me, as if you can give 
me feedback.

When I first began this letter a short while ago, while Dominic was getting 
ready in the kitchen, I started crying.  He heard me sobbing (I wasn't trying 
to be silent about it) and so he came into this back room and asked me what was 
wrong, but then he knew right away for the salutation was still clearly on the 
computer screen.  I'm writing a letter to you, and the thoughts of you not 
being able to read it just break my heart.  Your death broke my heart, but the 
fact that your still gone, that you're never coming back and that I can be here 
without you just crushes my like a stone.  I do my very best not to think about 
you everyday.  No, that isn't true.  I don't try not to think about you (for I 
don't mind that-- I like to think about you).  I try not to dwell on you, or 
more rightly so, I try not to have my thoughts linger for too very long on us, 
or who we were together.  Your death is sad and terrible, but it's that fact 
that you're not still alive that bothers me so.  Your death was just a moment; 
I've been through that time.  It's not the act of you dying that gets to me so, 
it's that your not here now.  Sure, the two things are related.  Without you 
dying you would still be here, but I don't think of it that way.  I suppose I 
try to think of you as someplace else.  Since I can't put faith in an 
afterlife, since I don't have compound evidence that people can exist in any 
other form except our flesh and blood bodies, then in order for me to think of 
you as still having an existence after death I have to trick myself into 
believing that you are just away on some long vacation or that instead of me 
moving out of the house you've left.  The trouble with this frame of thought 
(other than the total idiocy of it!) is that if either of those things were 
true then it would mean that I could see you eventually.  I'd be able to talk 
to you again.  I'd be able to hold you again.  I'd be able to be silly with you 
again.  You'd laugh at my stupid jokes.  You'd roll your eyes at how dumb I can 
be.  In short, you'd come home and we could be one dysfunctional family again.  
But no, you've gone ahead and died and I'm doing my very best to live through 
this.  I'm doing all that I can to be strong without you.  Damn, how I am 
envious right now of people with faith in a better place for those who die.  
Oh, Gabriella, you don't know how many fucking times people have told me that 
you're in a better place now.

Wherever it is that you are, just ashen fragments lying in my closet ready to 
be spread, or in some spiritual world looking over my shoulder (or finding 
something better to do!) I am writing this letter to you because I want to 
share with you somebody that has become very important to me: I want you to 
know about Valerie.

Ah, Valerie.  My sweet girl.  Gabriella, I'm not sure how I've managed to fall 
in with somebody so utterly awesome, but I feel very lucky for it.  Short of 
getting endorsement from my own father, there is probably only one man that I 
really would like a nod of approval from, and that is Uncle Tony.  Wouldn't you 
know it, he met her in September and he liked her.  Though he'll never know it, 
that meant so very much to me.  I don't need to date Valerie on anyone's 
authority, but to know that someone so close to my father gives his support, 
even if only by saying that she's a "nice girl" is wonderful.

Then of course there is you.  I can never get approval from you.  I don't 
suppose that I would have actually gotten it anyway.  In my mind, I can't 
imagine Valerie ever kissing me as a married man, let alone dating me.  But, if 
that HAD happened, then I'm certain that you wouldn't have given your approval.  
You would have been jealous.  You would have thought that she was trying to 
steal me away from you.  So, what I'm saying now is that I want you to 
remember, because I have to sometimes remember this too, that Valerie isn't 
trying to steal me away from you or away from my family.  Stating the obvious 
here, you have died and I can't get you back.  And, being cruel a bit, I guess 
that even if she were trying to steal me away from you while you were alive it 
wouldn't have been a bad thing; she would have just been trying to protect me 
and make me happy.  She's a fantastic person and I have yet to find a negative 
thing about her.  Surely there are things that I will find that bother me, 
there have to be, but she isn't unkind: she's a very good person.

Adam