At the Corner of the Future

On First Avenue in New York city, on a cold and rainy day just before Thanksgiving, I could feel destiny just around the corner. Among the coffee shops and delis, the Christmas tree lots and stores, I sensed a phenomenon, intangible and everywhere, like the floating and twisting fog that darted among the sea of yellow cabs in Manhattan.

I remember standing at the corner, waiting. Waiting for someone. Something, anything. To share an experience; to discover a destiny.  A destiny already written by a a higher hand; one that knows the path of my soul.

Looking up at the soaring buildings and their intersecting fire-escape ladders, they seemed to stretch into the clouds. They reminded me of Lhasa, grand and glorious, its cliff-walls stretching into the mystery and the mist of the Tibetan steppes. Around me, I sensed the city as an incense, its sounds like the soothing and rhythmic chanting of monks.  

For the first time in years, I didn't feel scared. I didn't feel afraid that someone I loved was struggling to stay here - fighting to remain on our conjoined timeline. That they were alone in a hospital bed, trying to stay alive.

I no longer felt that awful shared pain. The pain of desperation and hopelessness.

Walking down First Avenue, my world went from black and white to Kodachrome. To color and clearness. I started to feel the pain and fear fade. Freedom washed over me like the Thanksgiving rain.

It was an inexplicable knowing. As if I had opened The Book of Secrets in a clairvoyant dream.

The secret was that these soul loves don't leave us. They don't. They just shift; like a sideways step. They become a reflective presence - like the mirrored street lights puddled in the intersection of 71st and First. A comforting inverse of the original. A comforting release.

At last, I knew.  As if God had whispered, "It's time, John. Now you know. Be comforted." And then He gently pushed me in the back and said, "It's time to move on, I've got stuff planned for you."

On this First Avenue journey, I didn't feel lonely. There was a presence, announced by the warm and slanting sunlight on my face. A connection. To something, everything, everyone. I wanted to linger at the deli and talk to the cashier. To sit at someone else's table at Starbucks. To step into every store and look for someone I knew.

As I walked along, a felt a hopefulness. A certainty of expectation; that this was the time. That this was a wonderful life.

And that something would happen. I just didn't know when.

On felt and love

I think this rickety old house knows it will soon be sold, along with its quirks and antiques, its funny smells and its memories.

Today, Kellie visited the house for a final tour. As she walked past the dining room mirror, I could almost see Cathy on her arm, in bell-bottoms and a sweater. Just the way this place remembers her. And the way I do.

To Cathy, who left us last winter, Kellie was one of the inseparable few.  Like Sally and Bobbie, they seemed to be souls connected in early childhood - and maybe long before that.

And now, too often, the vacuum of Cathy's absence seems like an empty ocean that needs filling.

On a bitter and cold January night, I told Sally that we'd miss how Cathy helped each of us feel important. That who we are, what we've done and whatever we'd experienced in that moment in time was special.  She made our lives feel special because she believed in our goodness.

Sally stared at me.  "Now what?" And with that, she disappeared through the front door and into the night - without a coat. Just covered with sadness.  

Now what indeed?

"I remember our first day in this house, before you moved in," Kellie said as we walked through the dining room.  "Cathy and I counted all the knobs in the kitchen because we'd never seen so many before.  There were 57."  Just like Cathy to see wonder in every little thing, like the number of kitchen knobs.

I offered Kellie a laminated copy of Cathy's secret cookie recipe, which Meg found in the back of a cookbook in the kitchen.  She smiled, "She never wanted me to have this whole recipe; she'd just give me parts of it and leave me wondering why my cookies were never as good as hers," she said, laughing, "I won't take it now, but I will take a picture of it." Just like Kellie to keep the joke rolling between heaven and earth.

As we passed through rooms and closets and different parts of the house, she'd recall what the two of them did there.  "Your mother asked us to make chocolate chip cookies so often in this kitchen that we used to time how fast we could finish a batch. I think our fastest time was eight and a half minutes."

She told us how they felt when they first saw the house, with dried fall leaves and dust covering the parquet floors. I'm sure we both thought of the transformation that would happen as we filled those same rooms with Simon and Garfunkel music, high school parties, and holidays.

Like Christmas.  When Cathy would decorate it with pieces of herself.

Every Christmas, from bolts of felt, Cathy would create Christmas stockings for each of us. With scissors and glue, she'd decorate each of them with illustrations.  They were her portraits of us - painting, cooking, our dolls, our music, our sports - us.  Reminders of how she felt we were special. And we were.  Together, we were.

Of course her green parrot, Charlie, was always on her stocking. Charlie, now an adopted member of Sally's family - spoiled and glorious and indestructible.

Last night, I received a text from my son Andrew. He was telling me how much he loved that Katie, his sister, was again making felt stockings for our family. About asking him for ideas for her boyfriend's family. He said, "For a moment I was sad because it reminded me of how much I missed Cathy. But then I thought how cool it was that Cathy lived on through Katie."

Cathy lives on in so many different ways. In felt stockings, in turquoise Christmas ornament parties that her inseparable soul-mates host in her honor, in stories and smiles, and in much much more.

Even in Sally's new adopted parrot.

But mostly she lives on in us - as we find ways to remember that we are special and that our lives are wonderful - which we thought would be unimaginable without her.

Now, her lingering sweetness - and goodness - is part of us, all around us.

Now what?  I think we found the answer.