Dear Girlfriend,
I see you.
Maybe it’s just on FaceTime or Zoom, maybe it’s a walk six feet apart.
I know you are here.
Even if we can’t touch, hug, rub each other’s shoulders and say it’s OK.
I can feel you around me.
Waiting, like me, for our conversations to be about the mundane (not the inane).
I know you are scared. I am too.
Sometimes at night my breathing gets sharp and my chest tightens. I know you are in your bed feeling it too.
I hope you know that you are my rock.
Endless days leave less room for possibility and laughter; now they are filled with survival and fear.
I know you are suffering too. I miss your hugs and warmth in ways too overwhelming to describe.
I’m trying to focus on hope and the temporary nature of it all, but then there is darkness.
Sick. Dying. Suffering.
Do you feel this way too girlfriend?
I want to comfort you like you did for me, countless times before.
But I don’t know how.
I try to remember the before. I close my eyes and see us at your daughter’s graduation party. All dolled up.
I see us at lunch for our birthdays, sneaking a glass of wine at noon like we were delinquents.
I try to see what it was like before. I do. But I am having trouble. I am stuck right now. Images in my head play like microfiche.
Overcrowded hospital beds.
Doctors in tears.
People dying alone.
Families torn apart.
Jobless.
Foodless.
Homeless.
So I need you now more than ever girlfriend.
I need your soul. I need your spirit. I need your love.
I need you to remember with me. What before was like.
So that one day soon, in the after, we can pick up.
Where we left off.
Can you do that for me? Can you do this with me?
I can’t lose you in the after because I will need you even more.
To pick up the pieces of what we lost.
To make sense of what we have.
To build a new future on our oldest foundation.
A friendship that held up through all this is one worth keeping.
For now, we will keep following the rules. Calling each other once a day.
In between cooking, cleaning, working and navigating a full house.
For now we will abide by the rules and miss each other’s company like never before.
For soon we will be whole together again.
