The Last Christmas

some things linger anyway

December 15, 2019 was ten days before Christmas and it was the last time we ever spoke. Here’s the last thing you ever said to me:

Seriously dont ever contact me again

2 years, 3 months, and 22 days before this we met. It was August. Our law school professor was famous. Well, famous among legal snobs. Not really famous.

Seriously dont ever contact me again

1 year, 3 months, and 2 days later, you would be dead.

How many times did I try to reach you in that year?

A handful. 5 unanswered texts. One on Christmas. Merry Christmas. In February. Do you still hate me?

One unanswered email. It’s long; I won’t reproduce it here. There’s one standout piece:

I hope this doesn't make you angry or cause you anguish. I'm scared of doing that, and I am really sorry if it does. I've basically written a form of this shitty email probably 50 times and deleted it. Maybe, hey hopefully, it will make you feel some kind of superiority or something even because you still take up space in my head. Maybe it will mean nothing, or not much. I have no idea. I just hope you're doing well and that everything is going well in your life. There was a time when there was a lot of mutual love between us and while I know there are a ton of reasons for you to dislike me, I just want you to know that for whatever it is worth (probably nothing, I know) I hope you are good and happy.

There’s one draft, that I never sent. Exactly 100 days before you died:

Hope you are well. I would like to meet up for coffee if you’re at all interested. If not that’s disappointing but understandable.

One 6 months after you died. I miss you so much.

I don’t harbor illusions about where I stood with you. But I guess there was part of me that hoped that, one day, you’d forgive me. Or reach out and let me know you still loved me, or cared for me, or didn’t want me to die.

What was the crime? What did I do? I know people are wondering. I don’t think it really matters much, but sure, I’ll tell you. We broke up in 2019. We had dated for a year. She had found out that I started dating and was pissed. I had broken her heart. Is it the crime of the century? No. Is it understandable? Sure. I have been hot and cold with people my entire life.

I take my share of blame. But this isn’t about blame. It’s about being here now.

Because now it’s not being a blocked number, or an unanswered email. It’s unequivocally permanent, and has been for almost 4 years now.

I recall New Year’s in 2018. We were at your parent’s house. They always threw great parties. I brought my good friend. He was so surprised you were rich. “She doesn’t seem rich.” That’s a compliment. Before we left my apartment, you looked at me with your doe eyes. “You’re my boyfriend,” you said authoritatively. I rolled my eyes. “You are my boyfriend,” you repeated, insisting.

“Say IT.”

I laughed at you. “Yes, ok.”

You liked doing everything with a gun to people’s heads. You were the boss. I pretended to not like that you were that way.

There were problems. Of course there were. How could there not be? But I don’t recall the problems. Your laugh. I remember how you snorted. Your tendency to cackle at your own jokes. You really got a kick out of yourself. I can’t hear your laugh anymore. I have to pull out my phone to a video of you laughing about something stupid to remember it. I hold it close like it is a sacred text. The coffee mug you bought me, a sacred totem. The lucky socks I never wear, that sit in my desk drawer.

I scroll and scroll and scroll. The text conversation goes back and back and back. All this documented, like a map of our life together. But it’s also torturous. Seeing what we fought over. Realizing where it all ended up.

Happy X-Mas Bug. December 25, 2018.

Are we still happy there?

I have rolled over the circumstances of us and our lives for the last several years. I have come to a few conclusions:

1. I loved you deeply

2. You loved me deeply

3. Life is impossibly short

4. Life is long

5. I miss my friend

But there’s something else I’ve learned, too. Christmas has always been more than one thing—it’s memory, it’s presence, it’s loneliness, and it’s togetherness. It’s a time when everything feels like it’s happening all at once.

I put on A Charlie Brown Christmas last night. You called me Charlie Brown.

Charlie Brown: Lucy, my trouble is Christmas. I just don’t understand it. Instead of feeling happy, I feel sort of let down.

Lucy: What seems to be your trouble?

Lucy: You need involvement. You need to get involved in some real Christmas project. How would you like to be the director of our Christmas play?

Charlie Brown: Me? You want me to be the director of the Christmas play?

Lucy: Sure Charlie Brown, we need a director. You need involvement.

Maybe Lucy’s right. Maybe the remedy for the ache isn’t avoiding it but stepping into something bigger, even if it’s imperfect. Maybe it’s laughing with a friend, sitting through a chaotic dinner, or finding a quiet moment to watch people walk by on the snowless sidewalk. I try to be part of something, even if it’s just this: writing to you, remembering you, letting the world feel bigger than the hole you left behind.

Is that the hope?

There’s one more part to the story that I’m not sure you will believe; I hardly believe it myself. It’s the part that made me believe in something else outside this place. A dream I had.

I found myself on a strange and deserted plane. It was something like a prairie, but surrounded by flat dirt. There was a house. White. Fresh paint. The door was ajar, a screen shut. I walked up. It was a waiting room, like something for a dentist’s office. There you were. Huh. What are you doing here? What am I doing here? I called your name. You looked at me.

It was five thirty in the morning. I hadn’t spoken to you in just over a year. The last time I had reached out was 9 months ago. I messaged you on WhatsApp. I don’t know if you’ll get this but can we please talk. It’s important.

Reflecting back, the most jarring part of the dream all these years later was how nervous you were. That in the dream you were pregnant. I don’t know what that means. I would later learn that to some it is symbolic of rebirth, new life.

I would learn, 12 hours later, that very evening you had died in your apartment.

This remains the strangest and most jarring occurrence of my life. I have nothing else to add other than it is the only thing I have ever experienced that has ever made me even consider something beyond this world. I wonder if that is also a small hope that one day I will get the opportunity to see you again.

Your memorial service was nice. You remember we used to joke about those? Everybody comes out of the woodwork, you said. Now it’s me coming out of the woodwork. Isn’t that sort of funny? Who is entitled to grief, anyhow?

Would we ever have reconciled? I don’t know. I wasn’t obsessive about it while you were alive, but I thought about you. I stayed away—I thought I’d caused you enough grief. I missed you, maybe more than I admitted to myself. I felt an invisible thread to you, like maybe you missed me too. But the damage was done. With you really gone, I missed you even more. For me, it felt like the final judgment. Take your lumps, dickhead. I’m left with empty hands and a big space inside where you used to live.

Yesterday I saw this photo of someone’s dog on Google maps. They captioned it Somewhere on google earth my childhood dog is 7 years old and still lying in her favorite spot.

It’s comforting, isn’t it? To imagine something frozen in time, untouched by the years. But we aren’t so lucky. We fade, we fray, and even the laughter of people we love becomes something we have to conjure with effort.

Are we still laughing in your house on New Year’s Eve?

Where are the people you love? It’s the last Christmas.