Henrietta

She announced her superior position in a text:

This is his wife. He is in the hospital. And does not want to see you. Do not come here.

I knew you first, by the way. Not that we’re keeping score.

When I’d asked, a few months earlier, who will call me when you die? You said: I want you here with me. Holding my hand.

You and I were friends who loved each other. You said I was the one with whom you could discuss your death, because I had a way of listening without holding you accountable for my grief. You said, please keep coming back.

For eighteen months and eighty thousand miles, I came back. Until I knew the thruway like I knew my back yard. Until the baristas in the rest-stop Starbucks recognized me. You said the wife, from whom you were long separated, knew you had a meaningful friendship with a woman you’d known for decades. You said I was important. You called me your best friend. So I came back to you.

You said your people would honor my place in your life. The moment you were too sick to speak any of that sweetness, Your people found different words for me: Lying piece of shit. Drama queen. Gold digger. Whore.

So I stayed in a hotel in Henrietta. For two sleepless days. Weeping. Raging. Disintegrating. A five minute drive from you.

I didn’t know how to be that sad in Henrietta. So the next day, when you called to ask why I didn’t come to see you, I was in Rhode Island. I will forever regret being so far away from you when you called me for the last time, and I will forever regret coming back.

I didn’t know you tried to add me to your will. I didn’t know you tried to give me money I didn’t want or need, to thank me with dollars when you ran out of words. Of course they hated me. Of course they thought the worst of me. Of course they forced you to change that will, took your phone, read words not meant for them. Or course the laser focus of their grief became the inexplicable intimacy of a long platonic friendship. All that grief turned into more palatable rage; of course it did. You offered up the perfect recipe for rage-grief on a gilded platter.

What were you thinking? You sweet, stupid, selfish man.

My final gift to you is quietly accepting that I am reviled by nearly every person who ever loved you. I will not hate them back. I wish them all well (and far away, but still, honestly, well).

So please, darling, understand. I did not mean to let you down on our final day.

That broken girl in Henrietta was unprepared for a hospital room filled with the people who banned her from your funeral.

So the woman who grew up in the shadow of a castle and drove nine hours from Narragansett had to come instead. To stand alone in a room full of hate and whisper to you: Thank you for this adventure. I’ll see you next time.