The time has come. I need to put these words down. I need to write about you because if I don’t, I will continue to tell your story, our story, over and over and not be done with it. Not that I need to be done, but you know, I need to say goodbye because you will not come back and what could have been will never be. I cannot hope to find someone and expect to have them to be you. Not fair. I can’t afford to think that what could have been with you (and wasn’t) will be with someone else. So now, I must tell the story of you, the story of us. I will not apologize for what I am about to write; I will not try to explain.
We met under funny circumstances. Actually, my mom met you first. I remember having gone for a walk with Viola and her sister’s dog-the three of us, dragging our feet and paws in the July heat. Returning from that walk, under the shade of over-sized umbrellas and the relief of a cool breeze, mom approaches me, with her ever positive attitude that markedly contrasts my pissy mood. She hands me a set of keys, the kind that have the plastic key holder, a sign of temporary housing. She mentions having seen a young guy, who changed his shoes to rollerblades on the stairs. “He looks American,” in her ever-smiling face “when he comes back, you should talk to him.”
Sure enough, moments later, you show up. Of course you were surprised (and probably bemused) that I handed you the keys, fumbling over my words, not really wanting to tell you that *my mother* had picked your keys up in order to have me talk to you. We start talking and though part of me didn’t want to invest in anything more than a fun acquaintance, we were rather friendly to one another. Over the course of the week, we saw each other a lot. I found you charming, this California surfer dude who was an apprentice chef. My insecurities had the better part of me, telling me that he was being friendly because I was his English-speaking relief. You said you had the hots for my cousin, you made me your confidante and burrowed yourself into my heart. Clever!
I thought we had what most of my friends would call the hot summer fling. Kissing by the moonlight, bonding over our similarities, laughing at Italian way of life. I left that little vacation town with a mixture of relief and sadness. I never thought I would see you again, I was glad to have met you, but my heart was elsewhere. I thought. I remember thinking, on the treacherous train trip back to Milan, I got to have a summer fling with a California surfer dude. Things like this, at the time, seemed important, I suppose. Imagine my surprise when three weeks later, close to my return to the States, you tracked me down. It was an unexpected phone call, one that I thought perhaps (pesky insecurity), was made out of courtesy. We talked over the next year and a half. We truly became friends. You, always urging me to come to the better coast; telling me you wanted to show me where you lived, take me to the places you loved. Me, doing the same for you. You won that battle first.
I came to visit you in San Francisco, in July, two years after we had met. You lived in a beautiful Victorian in North Beach. You had two roommates who seemed to me more like your two older brothers, protective of you. I didn’t expect them to know who I was, I was shocked to hear, “Well, finally we meet you. We thought you didn’t exist.” Everything about my time in San Francisco was unexpected. Everything about our relationship, now that I revisit it, was unexpected. There was a part of me that could not believe how much you cared for me. There was a part of me that was scared shitless of the feelings we both had for each other; both deaf and blind to our own hearts. You told me years later that I was the only person who made you see; I told you, you were the only person that made me hear. But by then it was too late.
It took us ten years to realize that we had found one another; it took your marriage and its subsequent demise; it took my falling in love for the first time; it took your cancer. I always thought the first time we told each other I love you had been after you told me about your diagnosis. I was walking down 22nd street on a cold winter day, holding my cell-phone tighter to my ear, making sure I had heard you right. But a few weeks after you passed away, I remembered another time; a time before the cancer. It was in San Francisco. It was early morning, just as the fog begins to come in, changing the light in your room. The love we made that morning had left us hugging each other tight. You pulled away, ever so slightly, you looked at me, a look that was disarming and you told me you loved me.
We never spoke of that morning; we pulled away from that moment. We were only able to recapture those feelings, let our hearts talk again, many years later. Once again, I came to visit you in Northern California; not in the Victorian house that I liked so much, but in a modest apartment, near Mill Valley. We argued like we had never done before. We argued mostly out of frustration; we argued about arguing; we were getting all the anger, disappointment and fear out in the open. I wish I could have known that’s what we were doing, but I thought it was just a pointless discussion and that perhaps you needed to have it with me. But once the dust settled, instead of retreating, like we had done so many times before, we let it all out. And for as long as that moment lasted, the months we were once again apart, we loved; we loved each other, openly, honestly. That was a gift we gave one another, which I will treasure always; one that I hope helped you and that is helping me let go.
Stephen M. Blackwell 12/07/1969 – 03/29/2007