Inexplicable date

I've been cleaning my studio space up a bit this week, rearranging books and shifting dust from one bookshelf to the next. I took down this wood box where I have all my old letters in and set in on the couch. Later that evening Olly was sitting on the couch talking to me and she started to finger through the letters. She asked if she could look at them. I said sure, just a part of my past - I'm not jealous of them if I'm there. It was interesting that she didn't want to read the Italian letters, only the ones written in english. As if the Italian was too real for her while the english was part of some sort of life I'd once had. She wanted to know about the gay best friend I lived with for a year and the boyfriend that I had for so many years that succumbed to ALS in his early thirties and also my little brother who used to write me a letter once in awhile. Very short, very sweet.

"How come these people used to write to you?"

"Because, Honey, when I was younger the internet didn't exist, as well as cell phones with sms messaging. We would sit down with a pen and paper and write a letter and then the other person on the other end would wait anxiously for the postman to deliver it." She laughed at that.

The world has changed, for the better and for the worse.

So yesterday I was listening to some music I had downloaded and inexplicably started crying for like fifteen minutes. All I could think about was my brother and how much I missed him. I re-read his letters and thought about how I used to read them all the time and that in actuality the pain of his not being here has lifted ten fold during these years. It used to seem unbearable. Now I just get really sad.

This morning P and I went and had a cappuccino together at the local bar while we read the paper. I looked at today's date: 29 june 2008.

A ha.

Yesterday was the anniversary of his death. I didn't even remember that, but maybe that why I was somehow drawn to the letters and the box and the tears. I feel better now, as if I needed to do that. I'm glad I remembered in some way.