Two Years

Here we go again. That terrible, horrible, no good, very bad date has arrived: June 27. I don’t like calling it the “anniversary” of Eric’s death, because that feels celebratory. I really don’t like calling it his “angel-versary,” because that feels ludicrously white-washed. Here’s what it is: June 27 is the date Eric died.

I went back and read what I wrote about One Year. All true. Nothing to revise there.

What to say about Two Years? Maybe it’s… better? Or maybe it’s just that the sadness is more callused. It definitely doesn’t feel like it has been two years. There’s a bit of wait, what? Did that even happen? A sort of unreality. The memories are starting to fuzz at the edges.

On the other hand, two years is a long time. Two years after Eric and I got together, we were traveling in Turkey. All of the locals were infatuated with Eric, because his name means “plum” in Turkish (spelled erik). This blew everyone’s mind, and we were invited to many homes for dinner and to many cafes for tea. It was a golden period of magical thinking, before his tumor had recurred, when we thought, “Oh, look how much fun we’re having, look at all we’re learning. We’ll do this forever. Cancer wouldn’t dare interfere.”

Doh!

A friend asked me recently what I missed most about Eric, and I said hanging out with my buddy. I miss him late at night, when I can’t sleep and go out to the couch to read a book. In ye olde days, Eric would stumble out of the bedroom and see me and say, “Sweetie! Can’t you sleep?”

He’d be in his decades-old, tiki-print boxers, the elastic so worn they almost were falling off. Then he’d stumble back toward the bedroom, kiss the mezuzah in the doorway, fall back in bed, and immediately go back to sleep. How is sleep like that even possible?

In the morning he’d have no idea how long I was away. I always mock-accused him and said with indignation, “I could have been kidnapped! Taken far, far away before you realized I was gone.”

“I’d find you,” he’d say, with a casual swat of the hand.

And he would have.

So tomorrow is that day when infinite dumbness happened. I’m gonna spend it remembering and not remembering. Donuts, baseball, books, poems and movies will be involved. Tofu, veggies and a gin martini will go down the hatch. I’ll try to be kind, help others and not postpone things I want to do (aka don’t waste time). Join me! And we’ll head into the third year and see what happens.

Eric and his Turkish pals, some with spectacular mustaches.

That time Eric had the same name as the local fruit.

I’ve written before about how Up was one of Eric’s favorite movies. This clip used to destroy us. It still destroys me. Watch if you dare. It sums up grief in 4.5 cartoon minutes.