when sorrows come, they come not in single spies

but in battalions.

--william shakespeare

I learned yesterday that someone I loved immensely was dead. And has been dead. For quite some time. I was having dinner with my darling friend Melisa. We made spelt pasta, fretted and fussed over when to add the capers, the dried roasted red bell peppers, the cheese, baby bellas, garlic. We sprinkled fresh lemon juice over slices of fuji apples, added salad greens, aged cheddar, sesame seeds, yellow bells, balsalmic vinager, sesame oil. Called it salad. Called it delicious. Shared conversation on sex and somatics. Therapy and childcare. Walked to the car, the sky exploding around our heads like bombs dropping. I jumped every time. Certain we were finally getting what was coming to us. Even once I knew they were fireworks.

We drove. Towards the End Dependence celebration at La Pena. Which I never made it to. On the way, Melisa spoke to me of an event she attended recently. She mentioned seeing someone there. Sara Moore. I recognized the name, of course immediately. But, perhaps it is a common name. I asked if I knew her, if she knew me. Melisa said yes. She knows you. I smiled to think of Sara Moore, because I hadn’t seen her in a long time and I was fond of her. I asked Melisa if she was still together with Kris Kovick, her partner. Someone I loved so dearly. I hadn’t seen her in such a long time. Two years. Perhaps I would invite her to my upcoming not-so-surprise birthday party that I don’t know my partner may or may not be planning for me. I remember being so honored to be invited to their hand-fasting (which never happened because of family stuff and health stuff). Kris called me family. The last time I saw her.

Melisa said, ‘No. She’s not with Kris, anymore. Kris died a few years ago.’

It was a sudden jalepeno in the mouth that scalds the tongue and waters the eyes. Broken glass embedded in the palms. A swift kick to the solar plexus that spasms the diaphragm. A fractured rib. Nausea in the moment before vomiting takes over. No oxygen. No air. No light. Solitary confinement. And bombs still dropping all about my head and shoulders. The sky is falling.

I am nauseous. I am sick. I am in shock. I can’t breathe. I don’t know what to do. Oh my god. How can this be?

I try to work out the pieces. My uncomprehension viscous and thick. My heart is become a jagged thing, shredding my flesh, tearing at my reason.

She could not have died a few years ago. She was at my graduation party two years and two months ago. She was very alive. How I adored her. She and her partner came early and stayed late. Kris charmed my mother and my grandmother. She gave me a long perfume tube full of 420. (Which took me a long time to get through. I am not 1/10th the rasta she was, dear Kris; though, I swear, that was the best graduation present I received.) I had forgotten about that until now. That night was a celebration of our still-fresh bliss connection, hers and mine. It was the night she vociferously, adamantly adopted me into her family and she into mine. How could I know it would be the last time I would ever see her?

I knew we would be kindred spirits from the get-go. Perhaps that’s how it is with Kris. The first time we met I was performing at Sadie’s Flying Elephant. She sat there in the front and to my right, looking up at me and beaming, open mouthed grinning the whole time and afterwards she came up to me and said that she had heard about me and was so delighted and overjoyed to meet me and it was as if we had been friends forever and of course. She was so magnanimous. I was enraptured. Who on earth wouldn’t fall in love with Kris the moment they met her?

We interacted only a handful of times after that. I performed at her and Sara’s new event. I saw her here or there. On this or that occasion. She came to my graduation party. Each time we interacted, though, our connection deepened. She invited me over to her home so many times and I never made it. Open invitation. How many millions of us dykes and writers and little satellites to the bright nova of Kris Kovick did she open her doors to? Map out directions to the hidden key. Her generosity competing with her magnanimity, her warmth, playfulness, joyfulness, flirtatiousness for the infinity prize.

I’m cursing myself now. For not visiting. For not calling. I could have known her so much more closely. Could have shared so many more experiences with her. I just assumed she’d be there when I got around to calling. It is so common for me to allow years to pass between telephone calls. My sloth doesn’t allow anyone the freedom of death. No, you must be there. You must still be alive. Of course. Of course.

I was really really out of it. For a really long time. Kris died on October 26, 2001, after battling with breast cancer for 8 years, the internet tells me.

I can never allow this to happen again. I cannot go a year and a half without knowing that someone I love has died. I cannot be so peripheral to anyone’s world that no one would think to call me. To let me know. That it is time to grieve now.

I dropped Melisa off and drove to work. I had a late shift last night. I tried to contain all of the grief that was decimating my insides. I tried to keep myself safe on the road even as I wanted to die, myself. This is the first time a death has had that effect on me. I really wanted to die. The only thing that I know kept me from driving off the road was the knowledge that Andre would have to live with my death for the rest of her life.

I don’t know if it was Kris’s death, itself. Or if Kris’s death was one too many. In a year and a half, I’ve lost Sifu Coleen, June Jordan, Ntombe, and Kris. Cancer is one-by-one killing those beloved to me. I do not know how to survive this plague of cancer. I grow less and less capable of coping with death the more death I encounter. It’s wearing me down. It’s driving me off the road. Into the glaring headlights of the oncoming traffic.

When I came home that night, Andre held me as I cried and cried and cried. I am so tired of all of this crying. I have never so desired to have a gravesite to go to. To go to a physical headstone with flowers and kneel down and beseech the heavens or the earth or god or Kris or someone somewhere, to cry and grieve and honor and love and beat my breast and hold on to the ground lest I should fall off the world . . . I’ve never felt so like I’ve needed ritual. Probably because I am a year and a half late. I can’t imagine that there is a gravesite to go to. I can’t imagine Kris would want to be embalmed and buried any more than I would want to be. So, I move my picture to the ocean. To the top of a grassy mountain. I come bearing flowers and tears and my jagged and swollen heart. I come with grief and appreciation. With joy and sadness.

When I was in love with Cass, I used to say that I was glad just to know she was in the universe, even though she lived in another country and I rarely saw her or interacted with her. It brought me joy to know she was alive and breathing. I used to think that if anything happened to her, all the light would be sucked out of the universe. And the oxygen, too. That never happened as long as I was in love with her. But that’s what the experience of losing Kris is like. I was joyous just to know she was in the world. Was interacting with people, was loving, was fucking, was bringing the joy of her presence to a world that has such great need of joy. She dies and all the light and warmth and air is sucked out of my universe.

I want respite from all this death. I want a year in which nobody dies. A year in which nobody experiences so much pain that death would come as relief. I want a year with no bombs bursting. No cancer. No fatal accidents. Please. Please. Just one. Just one year.