Esther Andrews, 1976-2001
Sep. 19th, 2011 12:05 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
Esther died ten years and two days ago. Five years ago, I wrote "It's rare for a day to go by when I don't think of her." Sometime in the past five years, that stopped being true. The last time I wrote about Esther here was four years ago. So it's important for me to mark this day once more (even if it's two days late), because forgetting what she meant to me would be forgetting something central.
Esther would have been 35 now, which is inconceivable. I'm five years older now than she ever was, which is inconceivable now. How can it be that I know so little when she seemed to know so much? She has now been gone for twice the amount of time for which I knew her. When I think about how this person who knew so much about me at a time when very few people knew anything about me is no longer in the world, and will never come back, I feel lost. It bothers me not being able to say more, and it bothers me how much of what I can say is about me more than it is about her. What is left to say?
Nothing, except the same thing I said a year after: She was my friend. I loved her. I miss her. What would I do just to have the chance to say goodbye?
Esther would have been 35 now, which is inconceivable. I'm five years older now than she ever was, which is inconceivable now. How can it be that I know so little when she seemed to know so much? She has now been gone for twice the amount of time for which I knew her. When I think about how this person who knew so much about me at a time when very few people knew anything about me is no longer in the world, and will never come back, I feel lost. It bothers me not being able to say more, and it bothers me how much of what I can say is about me more than it is about her. What is left to say?
Nothing, except the same thing I said a year after: She was my friend. I loved her. I miss her. What would I do just to have the chance to say goodbye?