October, 2020

An array of bleached sand dollars was scattered over the early morning.  Asher starting digging and I wasn't sure he would stop. His first hole was in the soft, dry sand. I looked out to the horizon and the tightness in my chest made way for breath and air.

A dear friend died in March. Her breast cancer appeared and then went underground for 12 years. It announced itself over a year ago, returning to inflame every part of her. She didn't tell me or anyone else for months. We traveled to Mexico City over a year ago for the first time to vacation with her and her husband.

It was magical. Robert was not sure he would like what he imagined could be a dirty, poor, city…not Paris or Rome. We both loved it, every inch. The anthropology museum and Frida Kahlo and the ballet and the synagogue which first opened its doors as the Nazis were squelching the life out of Europe. We stayed in a piece of architectural history with their dog, Malu, and two others…Pita, a puppy and a larger lab  whose name I have forgotten. I have not forgotten cooking dinner together in the small kitchen and eating outside every night, long before Covid and the necessity of distance. We drank wine and shared the conversation of two couples who relish each other's company.

The husbands have so much in common. Loners with brains and good hearts whose natural shyness keeps their feelings hidden. They had been married 5 years when she died this March. I miss her, but as much I miss this couple time. The territory that our friendship covered.

The territory of a friendship. I miss my friends now. Today I met someone who had Covid and is now fine. What does it mean to lose someone as so many others I don't even know are dying? It is the particular, and the universal all at once.

Asher found a piece of the sea. He started digging as if he was looking for the source of the water. He circled around this oceanic puddle, splashing and dancing towards and away from the water. I breathed into the horizon and thought about the day my friend died.

I was walking with Asher in Pacifica. I looked out to the sea and prayed that her passing would be peaceful. We had hoped to see her the day before. Her husband talked with us from behind his mask. Hospice was coming soon. Apparently she died at almost the moment I prayed. She is gone now, somewhere I cannot picture.

 Our friendship, however, is alive for me. I hear her voice. I can hear my father too, and my mother. Perhaps it is the territory of love which inflames the heart, like the eternal flame which I picture as the oil burning for the eight nights. We think it will go out, or subside but it keeps going. These friendships.

Asher keeps digging. "Do you think he will get there?" The puddle of ocean and the warm, morning sand is his territory. The horizon opens for me and for a moment I don't feel confined.