If they already left, you can't really let go

"Maybe part of loving is learning to let go" rang in my mind. I always understood that if you loved someone you were supposed to let them go because if they came back it meant they were worth it. Knowing that doesn't make it hurt any less. The chasms stretching across my heart don't begin to heal.

Sayings like those always seemed to just be excuses to me. I didn't  feel better about losing her. They never made it easier for me to cope knowing the person who was always there wasn't there anymore. I still ached knowing that the person who I barely knew myself without could be taken away in a breath.    The people that say that don't know what its like to have someone be standing by your side one day and then the second they leave you; they are gone forever.

People hear my silence-unwilling to talk about a childhood scar. They see my eyes dry and think I don't care- refusing to cry about someone who isn't ever coming back. They watch me go about my life normally, a routine that just keeps me from having to feel- a life I throw myself into so that if I ever get that close to someone again I will know how to keep them.  No one sees the tears that fall down my cheeks at night as I bury my face into the pillow to silence my cries. The breaking of my heart as it just tears into tiny pieces is invisible. When I am by myself unable to deny the emptiness anymore-no one sees me fall apart. What do you do if you let someone go and they don't come back?

________________

I wish I could say I remember why were fighting but I know that’s just another puzzle piece of my memory that doesn't fit.

Five-year-old glares shot across the tables at their targets. Both girls had the same identical look to the point that it was probably laughable. The two girls spent a class time silently communicating in glares and stuck out tongues. A head of light brown hair would turn to face her other classmates so she could pretend she was interested in them while the object of her interest glared at the side of her head.  Every few seconds a telltale look would give her away, a quick glance darted to the other side of the room to see what a different girl with icy colored skin was doing. A game of look and look away had begun.

The recess bell rang and a rainbow of hair colors raced out to the playground, determined to claim their territory. Two little girls ran out side by side. Their steps and movements synchronized as if they were used to being inseparable.  The sea of children spread out along the cobalt pavement. Miniature hands dug in the sandbox trying to find secret treasures that appeared anew between yesterday and now. 

Agile bodies moved from monkey bar to monkey bar swinging across the tan bark. On two different sides of the playground, two little girls stood still. Each bored and unsure of what they wanted to do.

Sitting on the edge of a beige slide, a little girl buries her head in her hands unable to have fun with anything she is doing. She gets up starting to walk across the playground to see the silk worms dangling from the trees. Her tiny feet make little imprints in the tan bark that are shifted out of existence in the seconds after by running feet. She walks through waves of kids playing tetherball, tag, hopscotch but she barely sees them. Halfway across the dark pavement she stops in her tracks. She can't go over there to where another little girl stands with her arms over her chest. She remembers why she can't walk over there and watch the tiny bodies of silk dangle from the forgiving trees next to the girl whose shadows has forever been apart of hers.

The other little girl, Mora rubs strands of black hair out of her eyes-unable to shake the cropped hair away from her sight. She is staring at the back of a boy's head while he kneels in the dirt sifting for worms. He tries to show her the civilization of the underground but her eyes wander. Mora looks over, quickly before anyone notices, towards the slide. Her gaze skips from girls with pigtails and boys with hats playing hoops. Mora's eyes barely land on the tall teacher standing by the door to the classroom watching over her charges. Her eyes meet the stare of a brown haired girl, a lighting on the shoulder length hair that her fingers have braided many times in the past. She looks at the freckled face of the girl of whose side she could count on one hand, how many times she had left. Mora looks away refusing to give in first. She turns her back to the other girl and lets her arms hang down. She isn't going to let the tears fall and let anyone see her misery.

The days pass and slowly the girls find other people to hang around. They manage to take up their time sitting with different circles at lunch and playing at different houses. Looks are still sneaked to see what the other is doing and if they are having fun but they grow less frequent. The classroom becomes empty of glares and stuck out tongues. Soon the feud is forgotten and neither girl is still mad. The brown haired  girl doesn't remember what happened that paused their friendship because she has become busy in preparation for Valentine's Day. The anger has faded out of two girls. If chance brought them sitting next to each other at circle time, neither would hesitate to ask the other over to play.

The entire Kindergarten erupts furiously into work preparing for the upcoming holiday. Sequins of turquoise blue and princess pink decorate boxes designed to carry Valentine's Day cards. Drawings of NASCAR’s and airplanes decorate cardboard paper haphazardly glued to shoe boxes. Paper hearts go up all around the classroom. Finally the day arrived, children are excited to see what they got in their box. All the kids spend the day laughing and comparing goodies. By the end of the day half the grade is hyper with the energy level and full of Hershey chocolate bars and colorful lollipops that paint your tongue with rainbows. Mora with candy coated lips skipped excitedly out the door holding the hand of her big brother. She was going on a plane to her family's summer home for the vacation and she had a lot of candy to eat during the flight.

Half an hour later another little girl walked out the door her chestnut hair sticky with sweet candy. She wouldn't hold anyone's hand, she was too jumpy. She was going to go swimming with her neighbors and play in the big pool this time. The girls walked away in opposite directions moving into different destinies.

One of them would come back to school feeling broken and betrayed. One of them wasn't coming back.

I still remember that car ride, a trip to get milk and bread from the store, a car ride that defined the person I would be for years to come. That Friday was hot and sticky and I did not want to be the in the car. I stared out the window watching the familiar dry hills and oak leaves pass by. I was pouting unhappy that I wasn't allowed to stay home for even five minutes. I was annoyed that my mom thought 'we just need fresh air, time to get out of the house.’ My five-year-old face was pressed to the window trying to take relief from the glass panes. The cold glass stopped the fires burning in my flushed cheeks. I realized the car was no longer moving and looked toward my mom in the front seat prepared to throw a tantrum. We were parked on the side of the road and I could see the grocery store up ahead through the shrubbery. I wondered why she didn't get out. My mom turned around in the seat and looked at me with a look of such understanding and pity and regret, I couldn't believe it. I connected it with her making me come with her to the store but that didn't seem right. She opened her mouth about to tell me something and then she closed it again as if whatever it was, she wished I didn't have to know.

"Honey, you know your friend Mora?" I did know- she and I were best friends. We were always together playing or coming up with some imaginary game. Oops, it had slipped my mind about our fight. Most of the time we were together I amended in my head. That was our only fight ever so it didn't really count and it was over by Valentines Day we just hadn't made our friendship official again. I nodded to my mom to continue.

"There was an accident over the break. She was in an elevator accident. She died two days ago. She fell to the bottom of where the dumbwaiter was. I'm so sorry!"

My mom's eyes teared up and I think she foresaw how I would feel if not now but later when I was able to understand what happened. Her words barely made sense to me- less than a week ago before we were fighting she was falling on the floor laughing. A week ago she was trying to beat me at tetherball and losing a lot I must add. No, this wasn't right. It couldn't be true. I couldn't look at my mom and I turned away from her. I didn't want to see her tears because then it would have to be true. I was quiet the rest of the way home. I refused to be believe her. I knew she would run up to see me when we got back to school on Monday. She and I would run together and hug- I would hug her and not let go. I would prove that she was there and she was real and that this right now was just a dream.

I walked into school on Monday and I was still looking for her when the bell rang. I expected her to come behind me during circle time and say " Boo, just kidding. I'm here and I'm not leaving you." All the way up until my teacher to announced the class about her dying, I believed. I believed in her. I believed she was coming back, no, I knew she was coming back. She wouldn’t go away. Not without me because if she was going to go away, I knew she would want to take me with her. That’s what it means to be friends. She couldn't be gone. As the bell rang for recess I just sat there. I sat on my spot at circle time looking at the star with her picture in it posted on the wall. I stared at her face, memorizing it. Some expected me to know whether it was all true because I was her best friend. They asked me and without looking away from her gaze up on the wall I answered them what a part of me refused to believe

"Yea, Mora is gone. She isn't coming back."

I just sat there to till they left. They walked away and I remembered promising myself that I wouldn't smile anymore. I smiled once at her face on the wall once, but then I remembered and I stopped. I thought that if I stopped smiling maybe she wouldn't be gone; maybe I could bring her back.

On the last day of school as we stood watching the third graders graduate, I was holding the hand of another girl. We were standing there watching them and I thought any second now she is going to walk over to me and smile at me and I will just wake up. I thought up till the very last part of the school year that she wasn't really gone. She wouldn't go away without me and she wouldn't go away without saying goodbye. The days of first grade passed and then  people stopped talking about her. People forgot but I didn't. I realized when the girl whose hand I was holding on the last day of school invited me over and told me I was her best friend, I knew then Mora wasn't coming back.

It was years until I came to some kind of acceptance of her leaving me. It was 18 months after her death when I made myself push it out of my feelings and stop acknowledging how much it hurt me. It took four years of self imposed denial before I was able to come to grips with her death and understand no matter how much I pretended it didn’t matter to me or that it wasn’t true- it still wouldn’t bring her back. It was in the last three years that I stopped hating her for going somewhere I couldn’t go and betraying that promise of what it means to be best friends.  I turn fifteen in three months. Four months ago on the 10 year anniversary of her death I let it out, I cried, really cried for the first time about it. It hasn’t been till the past month that I am realizing that people that you can’t  forget, don’t  leave you-they remain a part of who you are- imprinted on the heart.