letters to spencer

Spencer, I took a nap this afternoon and dreamed that they found a way to save you. It was that doctor who hated you — he told us. I was so relieved. I called my landlord and said I would rent that apartment above mine after all. Then it went backward: your eyes when you crossed over, your unconscious breathing, scenes from the days in the hospital when I tried to talk with you about all the possibilities of your new life: birds, machines, Campral. Neither of us had heard of this drug and felt a bit betrayed. But then I woke up and you were still dead.

The other day I dreamed of a lizard crawling across my bedroom ceiling. I watched it until it disappeared.

What have I been doing? Yesterday I didn’t cry, but I did the day before, and I’m crying right now. I’ve been trying to keep Dad busy. He is so confused and so angry. Sometimes I can’t stand to listen to him. Sometimes I don’t want to think about anything but him. I make tasks.

I’ve been talking with our friends a lot — your friends mainly, and a new one who never met you (she has been wonderful), but also your oldest friend. I found his information on a screenshot you sent me when he reached out to reconnect with you this winter. (I have your phone, and I guess I could go to the store and unlock it, look at your call log, but I won’t. I will guard your privacy in death.) But there was an iCloud email account that he messaged you from, so I wrote and asked him to give me a call. He said he always felt a special connection with you. I believed him. He felt guilty for cutting you off all those years ago and kept explaining himself until he believed I forgave him. It was the first time in a long time that I’ve felt like your little sister. We talked for what felt like a long time, I don’t know. It was weirdly intimate, like falling in love, but not. I asked him to please call me again.

I can feel already that I’m different now. Maybe now I’m the type of person who falls in love with strangers on the phone. I talk about my feelings. I talk about you. I’ve been letting people in. I was telling our friend T.A. that, having lost the other pole of my dyad, I feel torn open. Surges of feelings and words come flowing out of me. Other times I am almost unable to speak. (“How are you doing today?” Uh… bad.) I feel radioactive, like when I go out for a walk everyone can see me glowing unnaturally, like E.T.

I can feel that people are afraid of me. It probably is scary to talk to someone in my condition, though some scared for me, but others are actually just afraid to ask if you even liked them or not. I’m only telling the people you actually liked. And I tell them that you had been getting better, that it wasn’t their fault. It makes us all feel better. In return they tell me stories. Watching you do a crossword at Tivoli General. Reading The Recognitions with you. Crashing a stolen golf cart. I told C.H. and S.A. and J.C. please not to call. I don’t know whether I treated E. the way you’d want me to, the way she deserved, or if there was a difference. In my defense, you did spring her on me.

Oh, I forgot to tell you: you don’t qualify to be an organ donor. This is not actually because your liver and your lungs and your kidneys failed, but because of your amateur tattoos: a triangle, a heart, a greyhound dog.