Letter to K

Dear K,

Today, it has been seven years since you died. For the past two years we have missed this anniversary. I have remembered it afterwards and kept it to myself. The Other Harf tells me it was the same for him.

This is grief turning into memories. This is the bold colour of your presence in our lives fading. Not disappearing, just fading.

I think the reason this year I've remembered this anniversary is because I've been going through old emails over the past couple of weeks and came across several from July, 2003. I'd requested your friends to send me anecdotes, memories of you, the year after your death. They were funny, sad, poignant, and it was as though you were right there, standing behind me, chuckling away, reading them over my shoulder. Yes, it was totally weird how you used to lay your trousers flat on the floor with all the wrinkles smoothed out when you crashed on the couch overnight! And as for your appalling Faux French? Hey, at least *I* understood you, mange tout, c'est vous plais.

Now when I think of you, it is because my eyes catch the framed picture on the wall of the study. Miss 8.10 and I were creating it on the lounge floor of 3 Kenwood Gardens when that phonecall came. It reminds me that was what we were doing before 9.30am on the 21st of July, 2002, before you left.

I sometimes remember your funeral. How the sky was so vividly blue that day. And how the Other Harf threw his beautiful eulogy onto your grave. How it felt like I was crying from my very depths of my soul.

Sometimes I think of you, when I sit on our verandah. You are beside me, smoking your 20th ciggie for the day and drinking your fourth cup of tea. Sometimes I think of you when we're at the beach when Miss 8.10 and I are collecting shells; you loved to beachcomb too.

I wonder if you would have packed up your life in the UK and emigrated here. I wonder how much laughter I have missed out on.

But most of all I think, oh how I wish you were still here.

Fi
x

5 And the People said:

By Jo on July 22, 2009 6:00 PM

Ok Fi, you have me crying now!

By Rob

on July 24, 2009 5:05 AM

Lovely tribute, Fi. One of my childhood friends passed a few weeks ago. Wish I could have said something as nice as this.

By jen on July 24, 2009 4:35 PM

*sniff*

I was looking for pics on Tuesday; remember when I put up that website with all of those pictures? Right before the funeral? I can't find them, and it was killing me that I couldn't find them. But, every time I look at the maori carving in my living room, I think of him, because he was with me in Auckland in the shop when I bought it, and the sales clerk thought we were married.

He's always just around the corner, in the next room.

{{{hugs}}}

By Fi

on July 25, 2009 7:30 PM

Hey you. I was wondering if you still had those photos. They might be in my emails? I'll look.

I remember that day...you couldn't chose which one you wanted, and he was at your side the whole time. No wonder the sale clerk though you were married.

Hugs to ya xxxxx

By Amy on August 4, 2009 11:56 AM

This is beautiful.

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