Lisa

And then one morning she was cold and dead on her bathroom floor. 

No more constant sorrows.

March 16, 2023, 2 days before her birthday.

Two weeks later, no word on a cause of death. Apparently a report will be several more weeks in the making. It's a situation of my own creation that I may or may not ever hear results.

But... the rest of the world is ok with this? We don't care why she died? She was 50. Yes health issues. Yes smoker. Yes covid, yes lung stuff. Yes often depressed. Yes, the emotionally abandoning platitude has surely already been voiced, "She's no longer suffering." But she was 50.

She was 50. And the guess is heart attack.

I'd like to hear more than a guess. 

Does no one but me long for a reason, an explanation, some words of professional witness to say, I see with you that she has died, this being whom you loved as well as you could for as long as you could, in spite of your mutual synergistic propensities for almost never seeing eye to eye?

I do not wish for false words and false smiles in a false room led by people who never knew her. Neither would she. I will honor her by going rock hunting up at Christmas Cove Beach, soon. She'd love that.

But I want community, too. I want something to happen somewhere that honors Melissa Marie Nixon for 50 years of surviving her unsurvivably brutal childhood. For the inexhaustible strength of her longing to experience love. For her pour painting and her green thumb. For her stupid sense of humor and her insistence that everyone else had to laugh too. For her stubbornness and her tenacity and her endurance and that incredible will to live that always came out triumphant over all of her demons--and they were many. For her flashing eyes, her long grey/white hair, her belly-shaking laugh that could drag a grin out of you no matter how mad you were at her. For terms like "bambu-lance" and "fuckshit ton." For her unpredictable eruptions of song, performed poorly but usually quite loudly. For her outrageous protracted protests against simple facts. For her love of music and cooking and art and trail hiking and swearing and canning and nature. For her love of Kayleighcat, and Izzo Izza Dog, and the devastatingly handsome Monty.

For her love of her sons.

I feel she deserves some honor. Respect. A communal outpouring of love and a proper goodbye.

It doesn't matter to me that we parted ways a few years back. I had already forgiven the betrayal. It doesn't matter that neither of us had reached out for reconciliation. We had a deep connection for 20 years. Even though I walked away, I never stopped missing her, never stopped thinking of her fondly, never stopped loving her. It was on me that I couldn't figure out how to hold my boundaries with her at closer range. That doesn't change that I loved her. 

We shared traumatic pasts that few people we knew understood. We were grateful they didn't, and also grateful for the understandings we found with one another. We could say a word and give a look, and we Knew so much about each other's wounds without having to explain.

After I walked, I grieved her loss in my life. I thought I grieved it all the way through me. 

She deserves to be remembered with love.

Having gone through so much, having sacrificed over and over for love, she died alone, despite family very close by. 

She died alone, and too soon, and I would very much appreciate the minimal community gestures of a Certificate of Why; and an obituary; and a sincere ceremony, which absolutely must include a rendition of Amazing Grace. 

She'd love that.

See you on the beach, Lis. Don't you dare start sending me heart rocks, though. You can't hunt agates and Petoskeys through tears. 

But I will try. She'd love that.