Dear Anna

Dear Anna,

You died earlier this year. May 1, to be exact. Some unseen breath blew so gently on the flame that was you and just like that, you were gone. Quick, unexpected, rocking my world along with that of so many others. Without fanfare, you left the room, which wasn’t surprising because you were never a fanfare kind of person.

I planted a Japanese Maple in your honor, choosing the variety for its delicacy and beauty. Right outside the back door, I talk to the little tree—a conversation with you, really. “How ‘bout a cocktail, Anna?” I say as I approach with the watering can. Tenderly brushing off oak leaves that rest on your tiny branches, “let me get those for you, Anna.”

I miss you.

You live on in a million funny moments.

Walking into a hotel room:

Margaret: (checking the coffee supply left with the in-room coffeemaker) “They only left decaf??”

Anna: (slumping into a chair and rolling her eyes) “Here we go.”

or in talking with my daughter Maddie after a particularly rough patch with a guy she’d met this summer:

Maddie: “I asked myself ‘what would Anna say?’ and I heard her say ‘you deserve better.’ “

You appear in just about every volume of my life. We met when we were 4, after all. But recently I’ve noticed something that hadn’t dawned on me before. The book of 2018 rests with its spine tilted—the relative weight of what’s passed nudging the book towards closure. Just about to go on the shelf, it will stand in line, encyclopedically, with the other chapters of my life.

And though 2018 has held plenty of joy as well as those things that need to go, I’m resistant. This is the last volume in which your character will appear. I don’t want to close the book. And time has a way of making us move forward even when we want to take a pause. I can’t imagine opening a new volume that does not contain you. And I’ve held this revelation up to the light, examining it from every angle, trying to make peace with it in order to let it go but it’s harder than that. You will, of course, live on in my heart and memory, but there’s something tangible about this year’s ending.

And I imagine you saying “I’m right here, Margaret!”

What I think I need to do is imagine casting you like Ruth May in Barbara Kingsolver’s Poisonwood Bible. Each voice in the novel is distinctive, with Ruth May’s 5 year old voice especially poignant. When she’s bitten by a snake and dies, her voice appears as her spirit lives in the trees, reflecting on the lives of those still living, adding surprising insight.

In the volume that is about to open and the ones beyond that I’ll listen for your voice, like I guess I always have, really, wisely reflecting as well as bringing a wry smile. I’ll listen for you around the little maple and everywhere I go.

Happy New Year, Anna.

Love,

Margaret