I struggled with whether or not to post this; I still am, honestly, because it is very raw in every sense. This is something I wrote a year-minus-two-weeks-ago, holed up in an AirBNB in Rome, about losing my good friend Jaymee and the bizarreness of having the best and worst time of your life simultaneously. I did not look at it ever again until a few days ago. It wasn’t written to share with anyone, only because I needed to put thoughts down at the time. Any editing has been very minimal.
The last section I wrote yesterday.
CRYING IN EUROPE (postcards from italy)
1. The first time is on the first day. I land at Heathrow only to find out the express train isn’t running because of the snowstorm and the tube is beyond fucked. I nearly cry out of frustration and jet lag exhaustion but I don’t. I end up emerging from Shepherd’s Bush Market half a mile from the hotel and have to drag my suitcase through blustery snow that whips me so hard in the face it makes tears leak out of the corners of my eyes.
2. The second time is the next morning, five minutes after I first find out you’re dead. I guess the first five minutes are a mix of me just having woken up, an hour before my alarm, still on New York time as I scroll idly through my phone messages only to see it blowing up with the news; and maybe shock can be used as an excuse, even though we all knew it was coming.
3. Over the Hilton London Kensington breakfast buffet for Hilton Honors Members. I’m telling Barry how I was supposed to see you before it happened. My voice cracks and eyes overflow with tears, and I’m apologizing and Barry is being so kind about it even though I can tell he’s not really sure what to do or say, which is okay because I don’t know either. It occurs to me later that in all the years we’ve known each other, this is the first time I’ve ever cried in front of him.
You said you were terminal, and released to home hospice care, and I told you I would fly to California if you wanted and read you mean celebrity blog comment sections, like how I did for you when you visited me in Brooklyn (I’ll never forget how we laughed until we cried like middle schoolers at a sleepover). I followed your lead in trying to blunt reality with a joke because that’s what you always did. The last thing you posted on any social media was a repost of our Facebook “Friendaversary”, saying how you were due for another one of my dramatic readings. I was going to buy a plane ticket when I got back from this trip. I was supposed to be there.
4. The first cigarette I smoke.
5. And the second, all while thinking about how terrible a person I am for smoking because you hated it and hated having cancer and hated that I would do something that could make me sick. You wanted me to stop, and if this were a movie I’d quit on the spot. But it isn’t and so instead I stand chain-smoking and hating myself.
6. In the shower.
7. We go see the Hamilton matinee hours after we find out, and it’s the cruelest twist of fate, experiencing this thing you loved so deeply and brought into my life and that we shared together. You’re the reason I saw it with everyone else at the matinee Obama attended. I lost the lottery, the lone one of all of us without a way in, and I was feeling a little sorry for myself and about to leave. I went to say goodbye to you, and immediately you pulled your Jaymee magic and got me a ticket at the literal last minute. And it really did feel like magic.
When you first saw it at the Public, I tried the lottery and lost, and I joked for you to go on without me, to die a million happy deaths. You said if I were being mugged and you were the only one who could save me, you’d still make me wait until after the show. I know if I skipped it you’d literally come back to life and kick my ass. But that doesn’t seem like a bad deal. I’d never see Hamilton again, I’d burn all of my playbills, even the one from the off-Broadway run I got signed by the original cast at the stage door. I’d tear the donut bag in half, the one we joked about being good luck, the one I had Lin-Manuel Miranda autograph. I’d do all of that if it gave me five more minutes with you.
I keep my shit together more or less until the second act. When Hamilton pleads to Washington with Why do we have to say goodbye?, I start crying and don’t stop until curtain call.
8. Right before I left on this trip, I threw together a playlist for my phone. The last song I added was Eva Cassidy’s cover of “Fields of Gold”, thinking it’d be pretty background soundtrack for train rides through lush, rolling Italian countryside. A year ago I went down one of my weird little Internet research rabbit holes and read all about Eva, her melanoma, how she died and her last performance, and wondered why there hadn’t been a movie made about that particular beautiful tragedy. After Hamilton I tell Barry I feel better, like it was an emotional release, but then the next afternoon we go to a pastry café and they play a jazz standard cover of “Fields of Gold” over the speakers and my chest seizes.
9. Friday night we’re supposed to meet up with Jen for dinner before she flies back to Philly. I’m sick to my stomach in the cab ride over to her hotel, and when we get to her room I drop my purse and hug her and don’t let go. That thing happens where I’m trying not to cry and it makes me cry harder and I can feel Jen crying too. We sit and Jen and Danielle talk about their travels and the whole time I feel on the verge of throwing up. Finally I say we need to talk about you, about what we’re going to do. Jen says June told her sometimes in Filipino culture they ask for donations for the family instead of flowers, so she’s not sure what’s preferred. I don’t know why I was expecting Jen to have more information, something to make me feel better, but nothing she tells me does. I take one of the Ativans my mom gave me for the plane ride because I can’t calm down. You said they gave you Ativan at the end. You said it helped. It helps me too.
I excuse myself from their room and get lost in the dimly lit maze of their hotel, until finally I find a side exit to the courtyard, and I light a cigarette and text my mom, who happens to be around. I try calling, but this stupid SIM card I got won’t let me connect to the US, so I wait until I’m back at the hotel and Barry is out at his show. The instructions to dial out don’t tell me the overseas rates, but I call my mom anyway, and spend twenty minutes on the phone with her sobbing like a child.
When we check out of the hotel, I’ll find out the call cost me over a hundred pounds, which probably with the obscene exchange rates approximates to three hundred dollars. I rationalize that’s what I would have paid out of pocket for an emergency therapy session anyway.
10. I find your aunt on Facebook and ask her what the family wants done. An hour later she messages me back to say flowers would be lovely. Your mother is beside herself with grief, she says. You were her best friend, she says.
It feels better to be doing something, to feel productive, so I make it my mission to organize the flowers for your memorial. The whole next day between sightseeing at Kensington Palace I’m looking up florists in San Mateo, figuring out who wants to contribute, making sure everyone is included. Bridget agrees to place the order. It’s midnight my time when I run downstairs for a smoke. Bridget and I are trading texts, trying to figure out what to write on the card. I’m not a writer, she says. You should do it, she says. I start crying because I don’t know how I’m supposed to do this. When I go to head back into the hotel, a British girl with blue hair sees me wiping at my eyes. She calls me love and asks if I’m okay. I’ve been in New York too long; my own public meltdowns don’t even embarrass me anymore. I’ve forgotten that the rest of the world doesn’t politely ignore you when you’re losing your shit on the sidewalk. I know how I must look, crying messily in my pajamas, walking around like an open wound just bleeding over everything.
I try to stop the tears long enough to assure her I’m fine, really, and when I stumble out the words that a friend of mine just passed away, she grabs me in a hug before the words finish getting out. She’s so nice that it makes me cry even more and I let her convince me to take the free cigarette she offers. She tells me she’s here with her gay husband and I joke through tears that I’m here with mine too. We stand and talk about Camden Market and the magic of New York at Christmastime, and when she’s satisfied I’m not a suicide risk she adds me as a friend on Facebook.
11. Things feel different in Venice. I start to feel like maybe I’ve hit the bottom of this, it’s only up from here, and even as I’m thinking it I know it’s delusional. I had the same feeling when my dad died, and I learned then that grief is not linear. There can be moments where it’s all temporarily bearable, only for a fresh wave of pain to knock you flat on your ass a minute later.
But for most of Venice I feel lighter, like the darkest clouds of the storm have passed. We get lost in the labyrinth of alleyways and eventually I duck into a Murano glass shop. Back in January when I went to Fort Myers, I took an Uber from the airport, and for the first time ever I had a woman driver. During the drive to the beach somehow the subject of this trip came up. I mentioned I’d be in Venice, and she told me how her day job was at an art gallery. They made jewelry from Murano glass, a Venetian technique. She made me promise to seek it out when I went.
The shop has all kinds of figurines, and in the back corner I discover these thimble-sized cows. Cows were your thing. Not just thing—borderline obsession. I still don’t know what it is about them you loved so much, but you did. When I was in Amsterdam I passed by an actual Cow Museum, snapped a photo of the storefront and sent it to you. You couldn’t believe I didn’t go inside. Now I’m here in Venice, looking at these little cows and thinking of you, and of course I have to get them. I scoop four of them into my palm and go to the cashier and whatever part of my heart that’s been healing over gets ripped open raw again. My throat burns too much for me to manage anything more than a cursory grazie as I watch him bundle them delicately in bubble wrap. It almost feels selfish to hurt this much, when there are people in this world who loved you longer and harder and better than I did. But I do.
12. In Florence Barry and I split up for the day. He runs off to the Duomo while I visit the Ambrogio market, the one the owner of our B&B tells me is for locals. I pick up random ingredients for my mother, whose burgeoning interest in the culinary arts still baffles me considering I subsisted on almost nothing but microwave dinners as a child, and two sweaters for myself.
I’m back at our apartment-sized suite, arranging the packaged pasta and sun-dried tomatoes on the wooden table for an Instagram photo when I click some random button that takes me to my inbox.
There’s only one message in there and I realize it’s from you, from over two years ago. I click to see it’s a video taken in Marie’s Crisis. Some pitch perfect soprano sings bars from an unrecognizable show tune at the piano, and then you turn the camera to yourself, bobbing your head along with a coy smile. I can’t believe it. I click out accidentally and have to Google for instructions on how to find it again. The video is only fifteen seconds but I watch it ten times in a row and then put my head down on the table and cry until it hurts.
13. Bucket list items have a greater sense of urgency now than they used to. At the last minute I find a woman who agrees to take me to a horse farm in Tuscany. She meets me at the Piazza Cavalleggeri behind one of Florence’s countless gorgeous ancient basilicas and takes me to meet her business partner so he can drive. He’s an old guy who speaks zero English, and it becomes evident when he climbs into the driver’s seat that he has Tourette’s. Every ten seconds his tic makes him jerk the steering wheel so the whole car swerves. We lurch our way up narrow roads that wind up huge hills, endless greenery on all sides, the woman chattering happily about vineyards and olive trees as I brace myself in the backseat, positive the guy is going to tic us right into oncoming traffic and certain death. It rains on the way there, and the woman worries it’ll be too wet to ride, but sure enough we arrive and the sky clears up just long enough for me and two other American girls to go for an hour-long trek. It’s been ten years since I’ve been on a horse, and I’m nervous about it, but the second I’m in the saddle everything comes back to me. We ride through steep hills, surrounded by the kind of scenery that’s beyond picturesque. It’s so gorgeous it doesn’t look real, like an oil painting. For the first time in days I feel a weightless kind of happiness. I know as it’s happening that this is something I will remember for the rest of my life.
When the woman drops me back off in Florence, I trip over myself thanking her profusely, holding back tears because I don’t want to explain that that was maybe the most beautiful experience of my life and I’m so grateful that for three hours the Jaymee is dead, Jaymee is dead, Jaymee is dead track stopped spinning in my head.
14. Rome is a welcome change of pace. I like big, bustling, metropolitan cities; they make me feel comfortable. Safe. Even just through glimpses out the taxi window I can see Rome is bursting at the seams, vibrant and colorful and a startling clash of ancient and modern. Our driver asks where we’re from and I say New York. He laughs and tells us he doesn’t like America, but he likes New York.
On a tour of the Vatican museums, our guide shares all the juicy stories of how Raphael and Michelangelo loathed each other, and the illicit love between Antinous and Hadrian, and we marvel at the frescos on every wall and the breathtaking scope of the Sistine Chapel and the inside of St. Peter’s basilica.
I was skeptical as I always am of anything to do with organized religion, but you liked the new Pope. You thought he was progressive, refreshing. You’d joke all the time about your “Jesus problems”, how you struggled to reconcile your Catholicism with your personal politics.
Afterward Barry scurries off to scale the bell tower. I ask our guide if there’s anywhere in the basilica to light candles, like how you can do in St. Patrick’s. She tells me it’s not allowed—it’s too much of a hazard, especially after a crazy man declared himself the second coming of Jesus and attacked Michelangelo’s Pietà with a hammer, chipping off fifteen pieces in the mayhem, including Mary’s nose.
Instead of waiting for Barry outside in the square I retreat back into St. Peter’s, to the closed off chapel. The guard asks me if I will be praying. It forces me to confront what I’m really planning to do, and after a heartbeat of hesitation I stutter out a yes, slip through the parted curtains to the pews. I’ve never prayed in my life; I have no idea how to do it. I look to see how others around me kneel and try to imitate the stance, hands folded in front of me, knees against the padded rest. It all feels clumsy and awkward until suddenly it doesn’t. Suddenly I’m just crying. I watch my thick tears plop onto concrete and absently wonder how many people before me have spilled salt on these floors. Probably a lot.
I don’t know how to pray. In my head I’m just screaming please forgive me, and I don’t know if I’m saying it to God or to you. I guess I know now what Catholic guilt feels like.
I should’ve been there. I should’ve brought Schmackary’s cookies and the good luck donut bag and flown out to California and seen you. Why didn’t you tell me how bad it was? Why did you have to make your yes a joke? (A quip about doctor’s orders, it comes as no surprise you embraced the gallows humor.) Why couldn’t you be earnest? Why couldn’t just say I need you right now, I don’t have much time, please be here? Did you even know? Because I swear I didn’t. I thought I could wait. I thought you had more time. None of it fucking matters because I can’t forgive myself, not ever.
…And that’s it. That’s where I stopped writing. I didn’t cry on European soil again after that. Not because the last cry was cathartic or healing; it wasn’t. The healing would come later, long after my plane touched down again in New York. It happened in ways I can’t explain, slowly, until one day the thought of you didn’t automatically bring me to the brink of tears or knock the wind from me like a sucker punch to the gut, where the tenderness of loving memory ran parallel with the heartbreak rather than being subsumed by it. Eventually the day came where I could think of you and how you were and what we shared, not only of the ways I failed you. A year later and I still think of those too, sometimes. And there are still tears, sometimes.
I feel like I always had this idea that you go through The Worst Thing and life just evens out after that. My Worst Thing happened when I was in my teenage years and I was supposed to be in the clear afterwards. But life doesn’t work that way. There’s no plateau, no neat ever after. And every so often we break in ways where yes, you can scrape the pieces together and carry on, but you’re never made whole again. You’re never the person you used to be. You become a new version of yourself, mismatched and full of jagged lines, and you find a way to forge ahead.
In the immediate soul-crushing wake of the 2016 election, someone created a Subway Therapy project in the tunnel of the 14th Avenue station that stretches from Sixth to Seventh. I went to see it then, a modern day marvel: the long tiled wall papered with thousands of bright post-its, each full of encouragement and commiseration from fellow grief-sick New Yorkers. The sight was a life preserver in the sea of misery I’d floated in that entire week. I was not alone in the feeling, however singularly devastating it felt.
Countless others have been here. I am not the only one to have shed my tears on ancient chapel floors, unable to imagine I would ever feel okay again. Experts painstakingly restored the Pietà after the attack, but if you were to find your way behind the bulletproof glass and touch the Virgin Mary’s cheek, you would still feel hairline traces of their work, a difference of texture; if you were to peer close enough, you would see the faint lines on marble that belie its pristine repair. It was broken once. It could not be remade exactly as it was. It’s no less a masterpiece.
That day in the 14th Street station, I peeled off a blank post-it and wrote out an Abraham Lincoln quote I’d read once: Perfect relief is not possible, except with time. You cannot now realize that you will ever feel better… And yet this is a mistake. You are sure to be happy again.
Time buffers out the rough edges. It is the only thing that does.
#project hail mary
