Dear Dianne

In late December, I tried to write again to fall short to the binds of writer's block and life. Yet, now, a month and a half later, here I am. 

 ***

It's been three weeks now since the surgery narrative changed. The message on my phone saying she passed is still clear as day in my mind's eye. Two days ago, I let my iTunes play a random list of songs. That was my bad, knowing good and well that that's rarely a good idea. Joanne came on, and it hit me as I climbed five floors, gasping for air--not from the steep ascension this time--as I struggled, shaking to put the key in my door. It's always something like that, a song out of the blue, to knock the wind and fragile peace right out of you.  

That damned Lady Gaga song connected to us and me, and now it haunts me like a memory you can never fully pack away. I've lived longer with lupus and RA than I did without; that song was written about the loss of someone from lupus, yet in its release, it's more along the lines of losing a friend too soon. Dianne and I knew the story; we found it too sad to bear, and now here we are with her gone and those of us who knew her left behind. 

That morning, I had a history date slip my mind, and while I googled it, normally, I would have sent her a text. Her being an hour behind always laughed and quipped back a non-googled response, even as she sat an hour behind my East Coast time. The natures of friendships, across years running into a decade plus, take natures of design often unpredicted or unplannable by the most calculating intellectual. I stood, holding my phone, crushing down a wave of emotional angst as I remembered--again, there was no Dianne on the other end of the phone.  

We met nearly fourteen years before at a work event. Standing outside the Lousiville Convention Center, timid to talk to a stranger in our lingering adult years, cigarettes invited short banter all week. The following year, I saw her again, off by herself with tight blonde curls, a pink purse, smoking a cigarette, flipping through her Blackberry to look busy and pass the time of awkward adult acknowledgments. I cheered, "I know you from last year!" The nerves broke, and giggles erupted.

She met me while I was doing a bit on something or the other. Riffing on those steps, invoking laughter, was (well, is) my way to deflect anxiety via humor. Making friends as an adult is hard, so very hard. Years passed, we met up, we texted, we called. I had major surgery, lost a second sibling, had a marriage and divorce, moved to an apartment equated to "moving on up" in Manhattan, had my heart break in a manner it never had before, a hospitalization, the isolation and fear of COVID while in NYC and living alone, and the long list of life's fallacies and valleys. Her line of life evolved with the loss of her mother, her own fears of COVID-19, familial triumphs and trials (as we all typically do), the questions of life's reality versus the Instagramable qualities portrayed to us, and more. These were the messages of life via text and phone. In the end, our timeline evolved.  

Texts are frozen on my phone, with memories seeping out at unexpected times. When she told me about cancer, we sat on the phone talking and making inappropriate jokes about how much weight she'd lose post-tumor and the lack of need for her uterus since she had her kids and a third seemed like a bad move of stocks on the market already set in motion. I sent her a Taylor Swift vinyl from a memory of us accidentally catching the outside of a show on her Red tour. The era is more mine, as Speak Now was hers, but we both long giggled about that night. We sat at a window bar facing the Yum Center, drinking KY Bourbon Ale and laughing. Later, we sat across the street, outside the YUM Center's doors, listening to songs below from inside. It was a beautiful, even though humid, early June Kentucky evening. The power of a moment and memory can take you far. 

We never thought a tumor would be wrapped around an artery. We relied on the greater chance of survival and a lesser chance of death at the surgery. Fate had another answer.  

Accidental encounters, moments of sipping Ale 8 while walking and sighing, and happy and complicated moments from the past year tend to pack themselves away while escaping their intentional compartments. We never know how these moments will affect us later, but it is often a shock when life serves them to you again. Now, as I process Dianne's loss, I remember our secrets and conversations. Her laughter at my stories from my years in KY, which, as she liked to remark, are a stark difference from my NYC life and her adoration for her family. Even when they tried her nerves and sense of self, she loved them. That was always undeniable. Her wit and charm, sometimes brutal, brought laughter. Her being my Google date finder, me being her sounding board, and Google finder for facts are bonds that can't be undone.  

Just as a song can take you back, random moments can, too. These days, my phone still shows her as the second or third contact suggested for sharing. I wonder when that will fade, and she'll fade out. She won't fade from my memory, but technology will eventually erase her. That's the reconciling point that I have to reconcile. One day, it will all soften. One day, it won't feel so raw. Until then, it's smaller steps, long breaths while tweaking lectures, pauses as I reach for my phone to send her a funny moment from my morning lecture to quip about how the professor smashed into the podium while pontificating on Robber Barons and capitalism. Her laughter and snark that high school teachers are too tame for will live in my memory just as her comfort and charm shaped a part of me--and me her--as our lives stayed connected coastlines apart.     

Dear Di. Goddamn, this is hard.