Dear, Sabine--
Amy Winehouse's "Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow?" just came on and, of course, I'm immediately in your flat in Peuderhausen as you lie in your hospital bed in the living room. Gaby's there, and one or two of the ladies from Lithuania. The candles are glowing, each of the tiny wooden angel candle holders your mother collected are lit, the windowsills alight with them. The lyrics now say, "Will You Still Be Here Tomorrow," and you are, if not in this dimension, than in some other, if only if it's in my heart and mind as I wish with every cell of my body that I could hold you and talk to you again.I can't do the former, but I can do the latter.
This is so similar to how we corresponded for years, speaking as we did then into our little cassette tape recorders, sharing the details of our days most nights before a bed, a ten-year conversation that started in single cassettes sent to one another across the ocean and then to packages of four or six cassettes at a time. I've never had a closer friend, because something inhibiting disappears when sharing like this, over time and space, in our most intimate moments when alone and reflecting on the most important aspects of our inner and outer worlds.
The things we loved. The parents who raised us, who lived and who each died in the time when knew each other. In fact, I think it was the death of, first, my father, and four years later my mother during those years we worked together in our DC lawfirm, that first drew us so close together. And then, in the latter end of our cassettes, your agony as you watched your beloved father die, and then drew closer to your mother, with whom you'd always had a problematic relationship, had to move from your childhood home into a retirement place where she did thrive for some time but then died with you in the bed beside her.
And your love affair with a little baby you'd come to rock and bottle-feed in the Lithuanian orphanage where you did this with so many others but, especially, this one, who was always and then officially became your daughter, the child whose name means "Life" who, just a few days before you left this dimension, whatever it is, and moved on to the next, whatever that is, first knew that you were leaving us. But you'd arranged for her to stay in the loving family she'd always known, and from the photos I've seen she's grown into a thriving, lovely young woman who looks so much like you it's uncanny.
Amy Winehouse's "Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow?" just came on and, of course, I'm immediately in your flat in Peuderhausen as you lie in your hospital bed in the living room. Gaby's there, and one or two of the ladies from Lithuania. The candles are glowing, each of the tiny wooden angel candle holders your mother collected are lit, the windowsills alight with them. The lyrics now say, "Will You Still Be Here Tomorrow," and you are, if not in this dimension, than in some other, if only if it's in my heart and mind as I wish with every cell of my body that I could hold you and talk to you again.I can't do the former, but I can do the latter.
This is so similar to how we corresponded for years, speaking as we did then into our little cassette tape recorders, sharing the details of our days most nights before a bed, a ten-year conversation that started in single cassettes sent to one another across the ocean and then to packages of four or six cassettes at a time. I've never had a closer friend, because something inhibiting disappears when sharing like this, over time and space, in our most intimate moments when alone and reflecting on the most important aspects of our inner and outer worlds.
The things we loved. The parents who raised us, who lived and who each died in the time when knew each other. In fact, I think it was the death of, first, my father, and four years later my mother during those years we worked together in our DC lawfirm, that first drew us so close together. And then, in the latter end of our cassettes, your agony as you watched your beloved father die, and then drew closer to your mother, with whom you'd always had a problematic relationship, had to move from your childhood home into a retirement place where she did thrive for some time but then died with you in the bed beside her.
And your love affair with a little baby you'd come to rock and bottle-feed in the Lithuanian orphanage where you did this with so many others but, especially, this one, who was always and then officially became your daughter, the child whose name means "Life" who, just a few days before you left this dimension, whatever it is, and moved on to the next, whatever that is, first knew that you were leaving us. But you'd arranged for her to stay in the loving family she'd always known, and from the photos I've seen she's grown into a thriving, lovely young woman who looks so much like you it's uncanny.
