Today I spend time with Wendy.

I tell her about Kris. She listens so well. I begin to feel more settled, speaking to her. Unlike Melisa and Andre, she had met Kris. Has a point of reference. She notices that learning of this death comes just a handful of days after Katharine Hepburn died. I tell her that I was sad and moved and confused when I heard that Katharine Hepburn died, but it was nothing compared to this. Katharine had lived to ninety six. Had lived until she couldn’t remember anymore. Could let it all go. And, of course, though her life changed the course of mine, I had never known her. Kris was 50. So young. She was in my world. She was a phone call away. And I loved her and she loved me. It is hard for me to deal with the death of someone I loved, and so many times harder dealing with the death of someone who has loved me.

Wendy takes me to Fort Funston. We watch the hang gliders. The human cranes fly. They dip and rise, they arc and soar. They show off for the benefit of all of us watchers. Wendy commentates, tells me how hang gliding works. Helps me understand what to be properly impressed by. I am delighted to watch people flying. I am a child. I want to fly. I want to have wings 30 feet wide, to run off the edge of a cliff confident that the wind will hold me, give me lift up over the tops of trees, over the ocean, over the upturned faces of the astonished crowd. Wendy begins what I imagine will be a long campaign. Trying to convince me to take hang gliding lessons. So that I can be her hang gliding buddy. I do not think I will need much convincing. (What it must feel like to fly!) I will just need more funding.

We move on, drive down Highway 1 past Pacifica to this gorgeous beach that a friend had shown her. And now she, Wendy, my friend was showing it to me. We climbed down to the wild grand Pacific. It felt like a protected space, like a large cove. The sand was muticolored, shades of yellow and brown. The hills were green and red-brown, with orange and red and yellow wildflowers. I am not doing this place justice. You’ll have to go there and see for yourself. We could very well be in Big Sur or in Hawaii, somewhere. But, no, we are just south of San Francisco, the fog climbing down over the hills with little white shadow feet.

We eat a decadent picnic. We had stopped at Trader Joe’s earlier in the journey. Spent twenty dollars on a wild feast. Smoked chicken. Garlic naan. Mushroom brie. Fresh basil. Cherry tomatoes. Giradelli’s mint chocolate chips. Sesame & shitake vinagrette. Bing cherries the color of fresh blood. Sweet. Delicious. We moan in pleasure with the taste of such ecstasy. We talk about magnificent work. The work I am currently pursuing. The work she has done. We talk about travel and languages. The languages we wish to learn to speak, possibly together. We talk about flying. I feel less and less like I need to die.

What I need to do is this: I need to make good food with people I love. I need to share meals with people I love. I need to go to gorgeous places with people I love—whether those gorgeous places be living room floors or hidden-away beaches or canoes on lakes or kitchens or gardens or car seats driving somewhere, anywhere. I need to do magnificent work. To travel. To learn. To speak. I need to read and write and call and check in and love and be present and dance and sing and have extraordinary conversations and fly. I need to run off the cliff, the solid ground of every pattern of behavior I have so far in my life developed and know that if I take the risk of casting my body into chance of following my fancy, my wildest desires, the unknown invisible firm force of air will rise, catch me up in its warm current and carry me higher than I have ever been before. This is living. It is not my turn to die. Not today.

Living--really living--is the only resistance to death.