Dear Mr. Badger

Dear Mr. Badger,

This was bound to happen sooner or later.

It’s been four months since you’ve been gone. 17 weeks. It doesn’t feel that long, but I checked the calendar. Since you passed away, people have been lighting up your Facebook page, tagging pictures of you, inviting you to events, posting “miss you" messages on your wall. I know your family looks at your page, and I hope it gives them some comfort, as much comfort as possible—you know, knowing that you were and are loved.

That being said, I want to punch every last one of those people in the face.

I do. I do. I really, really do. And I’m surprised at my reaction, you know, because it’s so strong, it’s so intense, but I see these people write on your wall about how much they miss you, and I get so angry because where the fuck were these people when you died? Why weren’t they in your hospital room, too? Why hadn’t they been calling to check in on you and see how you’re doing? I get so, so angry on your behalf. Because you never got angry at people for not checking in. You didn’t want to be a bother. You didn’t want to tell people when it was getting bad. You wanted people to go about their everyday happy lives, and you’d jump right in when you bounced back from this cancer thing. You couldn’t get angry about it because it wasn’t in your nature. So I am angry on your behalf.

And really, I think part of the anger comes from the fact that these people are living out my fantasy. Because I want to post on your wall and pretend like you’re reading it. I want to write you emails. I want to call your voicemail so I can hear your voice on the recording. Those Facebook people get to do that. They can write messages to you and let themselves believe that you’re still out there somewhere on the InterWebs, still alive, still happy, still doing all the things they think of as quintessentially “Mr. Badger”.

But I can’t do that. Because I know your family is operating your Facebook and your email. I know if I call your phone your family will check the caller ID or the voicemail or pick up, thinking that there’s yet another friend they’ll have to explain the news to. And I’ve met your family now, and I can’t do that to them, no matter how much I want to hear your unusual inflection on “Hi, this is Mr. Badger.”

And another reason I can’t do that is because I saw you die. There can be no fantasy for me because I was holding your hand while first the blood and then the breath left your body. I was the one who got the nurse to try to resuscitate you, I thought, but actually to declare your death. After I brought her in, I was standing with my back against the wall while she stood there looking at her watch, with the fingers of her right hand on your pulse, waiting for the last thread to fade away. I saw your body with no soul left in it. I watched the toxins slowly take over your body and turn your skin yellow. I cradled your head against me one last time, and I touched your hair, and I kissed your temple. I kissed you and fled from the room, ostensibly to give your family time alone with you and their prayers, but really because I needed to flee the reality of what had just happened. I made it to the hospital lobby before my legs stopped working. After that, there’s no way to make the fantasy work. There’s no pretending. You’re gone, and I saw you go. I felt you go.

It makes me angry because I want to be able to pretend.

So instead, I’ve been writing you letters that I can’t send anywhere. I’ve been writing about you and your body and about us to try to figure all this business out. The problem is, I can’t pretend that those messages get to you. The letters sit in my house, since if I send them to your old apartment, they’ll get forwarded to your family. The stories are planted on my computer like a headstone. But I’ll be goddamned if I post something on your Facebook page so everyone can gawk at my grief. Or so it looks like I’m proving that I miss you. But then here I am, posting this letter to you in this little corner of the InterWebs, because I need to get it out of my hands. As long as it’s in my apartment or on my computer, I know it’s nowhere near you. Because you’re not here. But if it’s out there in the universe, then at least there’s a chance.

See? For all of my self-righteousness, I’m no better than anyone else.

There are some things you need to know, Mr. Badger. If there is any chance this letter will get to you, then there are some things that I need you to tell you. I’m sure you’ll read this carefully and not get where I’m coming from on a minimum of 27% of it, but that you’ll be sure to read it thoroughly, anyway. It’s the effort that counts. So here are the things you need to know:

1.) I miss you. I really miss you. I think about you every day. I wish you were here. And not for me, either, but for you. Even if I never got to see you or talk to you or touch you ever again, I wish you were here. So you could live your life and travel and have fun and get the house you were saving up for and get married and have babies and do all those things you planned to do and wanted to do. I wish you were still here.

2.) I’m glad I was there with you at the end. I knew how much you wanted me there, and you waited while I drove through the night to get to you so that we could connect one last time. You waited for me. So I held your hand and stroked your hair and your chest and your thigh just like I used to do when we were in bed together, so that way you’d know it was me. And it didn’t matter that underneath your clothes I could feel all the morphine patches attached to your skin, the tubes taped to your body to remove the waste you could no longer eliminate on your own. It didn’t matter that I saw blood filling one of those tubes, and it didn’t matter that your family was watching us. You had to know it was me, that I made it, that I was there with you, just like you wanted.

So I know that all my talk about how I’m responding to your death—all of my crying and hiding out and not sleeping and not eating—I know it would upset you, but I wanted to let you know that it’s okay. If my being there brought you the tiniest little bit of comfort, then it’s more than a fair trade. I’m glad I could be there with you. I just hope you don’t mind that I couldn’t pray over you after you passed. You know that I don’t have any prayers. I don’t have prayers—I have kisses. That’s all I have. So that’s what you got.

3.) You should also know that your best friend Declan followed your orders to the letter.

After you died, and I collapsed in an obscure corner of the hospital lobby, Declan found me. When I looked up at him, he had the most heartbreaking look in his eyes—one that was filled with overwhelming sympathy. With pity. For me. Because now I was the grieving widow.

And you should know that Declan was perfect. He was so Old World Irish—exactly what you would expect, and exactly what you wanted, I’m sure. He sat very close to me, and he let me try to logic my way out of what happened; he sat with me while I tried to deny that I just watched you die. And once I couldn’t deny it anymore, this man that I met maybe twice, he held me for just long enough to be both soothing and appropriate. We sat in the lobby, and he let me cry and babble and talk about you. And he mainly stayed strong and silent and listened—such a good Irish Catholic boy—but he would say something soft and genuine and comforting at the appropriate intervals. He told me that you confessed to him that we were lovers, although he tried to find a way to say it that was delicate enough to say in front of a lady. “You mean he told you that we were sleeping together?” I asked, just to make it easier on him. And he said yes, that you told him, and that you told him that it was “top secret” though. And Declan laughed to himself a little and said, “He didn’t need to tell me. I mean, I could tell just looking at the way you were together…” And I reflexively asked him why he wasn’t supposed to tell anyone, and Declan kind of stumbled over the right way to say it, but essentially it was because it was to protect my honor, you know. Because you didn’t want anyone casting aspersions about my character. God, Mr. Badger, you were pretty Old World Irish, too.

But he looked after me while I was in town. He sat with me for a couple of hours in the hospital. When he discovered I had no place to go afterwards, he chose a coffee shop for me and had me follow him there in my car. (Although I never got out and went in. I just stayed in the parking lot.) He called as soon as he got out of work, and he took me out and bought me tea because I couldn’t eat, and he helped me make a list of songs for your memorial, and we talked about you more, and he drove me to pick up Shiawassee from the bus station. And he checked in on me the next day and took me and Shiawassee out for tea again because I still couldn’t eat. He read the story your mom wanted me to write for the memorial, and he said he’d find an appropriate woman to read it. He was tremendously strong, even though I know he must have been falling apart inside.

I know you gave him instructions to look after me, although I don’t know if they were explicit or implicit. I kind of can’t bear to think of you there, knowing that the end is near and still taking the time to tell Declan that I was coming and that in case anything happened, he should take care of me. So I’m going to pretend that it was because you two were so close. And I said as much, tactlessly, thanking him for looking after me and saying, “I know you’re doing this because of Mr. Badger.” And Declan admitted yes, that you wanted him to take care of me, and he said he was “still following The Captain’s orders”. So you should know that he did what you wanted, and perfectly. And thank you for thinking of it—of asking him to take care of me—because I never would have made it through that first week without him. He did you proud.

4.) Even under these unusual circumstances, it makes me a little nervous to try to tell you this, but I have to. So here goes: back when we made that bumbling attempt at official dating when we were little babies in early graduate school….you were the first man I was ever intimate with who never raised a violent hand to me. Yeah. You never knew this. In fact, you never knew anything about my history of violence. And the strange thing is, you were pretty much the only one who never knew anything about my past, since I’m really open about it and it’s part of who I am and I’m not ashamed, but somehow, you never knew. And as we started to get more involved over these past two years, I started thinking that I needed to tell you, and I tried a few times, but somehow the conversation would get cut off, or get tense, or I’d back out because I thought you wouldn’t be able to handle it. Although our long-ago spell of official dating was short and disastrous, it was a monumental landmark for me, since you showed me something that I didn’t think was possible—that I could be with a man who would touch me with not only passion and desire but also with respect and care. That changed my life. I always thought you needed to know that. Now you do.

5.) And I’m nervous to tell you this, too, because it’s going to sound so childish and stupid, but you should know it: I tried to heal you. For real. During that last visit we had over the summer, I could tell you were nervous about seeing me again, since now you were sick. You didn’t say it, but I could tell you were afraid that I might think that your illness made you less of a man. It was written all over your face. And it was heartbreaking, since I didn’t know how to make you see that it wasn’t true. So I tried to make you better instead. I tried to heal you with my body. You felt powerless, so I tried to give my power to you.  Really.  So every time I touched you, I tried to send my energy, my power, my health over to you. I brought everything I had right to the surface, thinking that when you touched me, it would transfer over to you and stay there.

And the thing is, while I was there, you started to notice that your energy levels were peaking, that you could eat solid food that you hadn’t been able to eat since you first got sick, that you were experiencing less physical pain. And sure, my logical brain knew that was probably the result of the excitement of the visit and the endorphins from the sex—the placebo effect, basically. But the illogical part of me thought maybe it was working, and that’s the reason I didn’t want to leave at the end of the visit. I thought that maybe if I stayed, it would help somehow. That I could just keep handing my power over to you until you didn’t need it anymore. Until you got better.

I tried to keep doing it when we talked on the phone, but I think the voice is a less effective conductor than the body. It’s so ridiculous, I know, but it seemed like a brilliant idea. I tried to help the only way I knew how.

6.) And if this letter ever gets to you, the last thing you need to know is that I’m trying to be happy. I’m really trying. Because you told me that’s what you wanted. If there is anything I’m really haunted by, I think it’s your goodbye speech to me, the one you gave when you called to say that you were going to go into hospice care. And of course, I got stubborn and said no, no, no, you’re going to get better, just try something else, just try for a little while longer. And you were so gentle and patient about it, but ultimately you made me tell you that it was okay, that you could let go, that you didn’t have to suffer anymore. Only after you had me basically give my consent did you start to tell me your goodbyes, and it was one giant blur of beautiful things that I wanted to push away from me because to accept your goodbye would mean to accept your imminent death.  And when you started telling me about how I was the most special person in your life, and how important I was to you, and how you wanted me to meet someone and fall in love, and how you wanted me to be so, so happy because I deserve all the good things in the world, I could just feel my brain pushing your thoughts away, saying “no no no no no” until, ever the lady, I blurted out, “No! Fuck you! If you’re going to say goodbye, you’re going to say it to my face! I’m coming to see you.” And you’re probably the only one in the world who would be excited that his dying goodbye was met with a bratty “Fuck you!”

But that goodbye was perhaps the sweetest thing that was ever said to me by a man who loved me—rather than, you know, by a girlfriend or by a man who was running away from loving me. You wanted me to be happy. And I want to live up to it because now it feels like a promise or a sacred trust. I want to wake up each morning and meet the day all bright and badass and laughing. And over the last couple of months, I’ve started laughing again, sometimes. I’ve gone out with friends sometimes and had some fun. I’ve found myself taking pleasure in my job many days instead of white-knuckling it the whole time, repeating to myself “just get through it…just get through it…just get through it…” I’ve felt love and desire for other men. So something is shifting. Something is happening.

But the thing is, I’m not happy. I’m not, I’m not, I’m not. I’m not happy because you died. And I want to yell and stamp my foot and throw the biggest bratty fit you have ever seen. And I want to pick a huge, angry, crying fight with you and get you totally frustrated and impatient because you don’t know how to deal with emotions. I want to say sharp, shrewish, unfair things that will make you as angry as I am. I want to pout and hurl shoes across the room and throw myself on the bed and sob so noisily that you’re at a total loss for what to do.

I want to do this because I think it would be easier than feeling what I’m feeling. I want to be happy—for you. I want to be happy because you said you wanted me to be. And I feel like I’m letting you down. Because I can’t manage it. And the thing is, I don’t think I’ll be able to manage it, to be really happy, until I feel as unconditionally accepted as I did by you during those last few months before you died.

So remember about 24 hours into our visit over the summer—I had picked a fight with you because I was devastated by some residual South Central pettiness and cruelty, and I felt that you weren’t trying to understand. After we made up and we were lying in your bed, I apologized, feeling I had made a mess of the whole visit. I said, “I’m sorry…I’m sorry…I know I’m a lot,” an apology it seems like I have said a thousand times before to the men in my life, constantly apologizing for who I am because I cannot make myself less. And because less is what I have consistently been told I should be. And you looked at me with this ridiculous little grin, and you said, “That’s okay. I’m looking for a lot.” And you meant it. It was absolutely genuine. And I’m positive you had no idea what a big deal it was, but here’s the thing: you’re the only man who has ever said anything like that. “Yes, you’re a lot, and that’s great, and that’s what I want.” The only one. Goddamn it, Mr. Badger.

I don’t want to let you down, but I’m afraid that I won’t be able to be really happy because I don’t think anyone can love me as much as you did. No one else is going to be able to look at this big bag full of crazy and quirks and desire and intensity and brilliance and noise and just accept it, accept all of it equally. And I am nothing if not a social creature; I need a life full of love in its many incarnations. That’s what I live on—the love, the connection. But good god, who else will ever be able to accept me like you did?

So I guess I’m also writing to say I’m sorry. I’m sorry for all the crying. I’m sorry I’m not happy yet. I want to be, and for your sake, I’m trying.

I suppose those are all the things you need to know. Sure, there’s a lot more I want to say, but I don’t want to push my luck or your attention span. So...I miss you. And I’m thinking about you. And I hope you’re okay now. I hope you don’t hurt anymore.

I hope this letter gets to you. I really, really hope this letter gets to you.

Love,

Lulu