The sun setting behind the mountain was fitting. It was over, for now. I readjusted my sunglasses; the beggars didn’t need to see a grown foreigner with tears in his eyes.
I walked a block to the restaurant that had been a favorite. I remembered the first time with you and your boyfriend. As a wavering vegetarian you tried the barbecued chicken. We drank cold draft beer and laughed about a life you were just beginning, one I had lived for half a year.
I ordered a double and drank to your mother, whom I had never met, but whose passing had tattooed your tears onto my flesh. She was worth a double of Irish. The pair of you must have been two in a million.
The second drink was to you: Your past in my new country, and the laughter we had shared inside the office and at outside cafes. The third was to your present and the trial that lay ahead. The fourth was to a new future and the cavalcade of successes you deserved.
The fifth drink, in a new bar, was to your impish smile, now on a ferry to the airport, headed home. The sixth was self-indulgent, a little something to kill the dead feeling inside.
The seventh was to re-hydrate, to reload my tear ducts. I hadn’t cried, really cried, in recent memory. It felt like we were breaking up, I told you, there was no other way to describe the feeling, like part of me had been amputated. We were breaking up, lovers of a profession, not each other.
Irish was once a crutch. I am no longer lame, but that day it whispered like a long-lost lover. When one good friend leaves another is needed, temporarily.
The eighth drink was from a bottle I bought in a corner store. I drank to loss, yours and mine. I drank to the good fight we fought, hand in hand. Comrades. Colleagues. Co-habitants of the Middle Kingdom.
What power you have, to reduce a bitter man to tears, a man who loved you platonically as he has few. It is that power that will see you through the pain, and heal those around you.
The setting sun rose the next morning. The world had not ended as I felt it would. I saw you in the faces you taught. You were not gone. My glass was empty, and the tears had been wiped away.
I share your pain, my friend. We are family. The piece of me I felt was missing is with you. I will never be far away.
Farewell, for now.
October 25th, 2007 at 6:26 am
This was excellent Steve. Kind of different for you, isn’t it?
October 25th, 2007 at 7:27 am
A tad, Wanda.
October 25th, 2007 at 11:26 am
I hate to give you some generic comment because this one is worth more than that but I’m afraid that “Wonderful” is all I’ve got in my tonight.
October 25th, 2007 at 11:34 am
My sympathies. I’ll talk to you elsewhere real soon.
October 26th, 2007 at 3:12 am
Although I don’t know who or what this is about, I do. You’ve written in a way that we can all feel and identify with. As we read your words, we can insert the person or place or cause that we have lost, the one that has taken a piece of us with them. As I read through this, I found the tears coming that I thought I would never allow to come again.
To say that this is good, or wonderful, or fantastic, or any other superlative, would be inadequate. The best I can think of saying at the moment is that you made me feel a part of the multitude that has ever felt this way, a part of humankind. If an artist can make me cry, they have my undying respect. You did. You do.
October 26th, 2007 at 9:08 am
I thought this was beautiful. My tears were ready to flow in camaraderie with yours.
October 26th, 2007 at 7:08 pm
anything pogomcl is most likely to me– what incredible writing. start selling travel articles. if you can package 5 travel articles, submit some photo work to travel-images.com for stockphotos if you wish. It’s tough work I think, but you’re tough. have 3agents now lined up and working around the clock. check pogo,coffee and me for a list of stockphoto sites if you are thinking of that. eventually I may start stickling up a blog for writing links, but not yet. too tired. no people without model releases unless a crowd… be careful on this. you’ve done some of the best stuff I’ve ever seen and Gather was no place for a person with such class.
October 26th, 2007 at 11:22 pm
Interesting thing, most moving or thought provoking posts are often difficult to comment on.
Case in point.
October 27th, 2007 at 12:31 pm
I don’t know whether to say I’m sorry for your grief at parting, or envious of your feeling so deeply.
October 28th, 2007 at 12:24 am
I’m in a weird pre-Halloween mood and I realized that pathetic fallacy sounds a little bit like phallic prophesy. Ha!
October 28th, 2007 at 1:46 am
Wow. I can only kind of relate, as the person who left my profession for what turned out to be better things only lived in the next town, and I was eventually reunited with her.
October 28th, 2007 at 9:01 am
Lovely tribute.
October 28th, 2007 at 6:22 pm
It’s been a few days and I’m in better shape. Strange how the pain of another can create personal pain. Such is life.