Letters From My Friend

This month, Amy and I would have been friends for twenty-five years. Half our lives. But Amy died eleven months ago.  This month, I didn't send her the annual valentine marking the anniversary of our friendship. Instead, I brace for the anniversary of her death. 

Still, Amy makes her presence known: I gesture or grimace and then exclaim, "That's an Amy thing I just did!"  Marilyn nods in recognition. 

And there are her letters, her words. 

"You have a letter from Amy!" Marilyn would call out, as she entered the house with the mail.  

Every week or so, a letter in a small green or ivory envelope would arrive with that familiar handwriting in black or green ink.  I almost took them for granted, they were that frequent.  But I didn't.  

Sometimes, I opened the letter right away, standing in the kitchen, reading quickly.  Other times, I saved it until the quiet of bedtime. I kept all her letters.  Now, I  turn to them when I need to hear her voice. 

Today, my daily poem from the Academy of American Poets was "February 29"by Jane Hirshfield, one of my favorite poets. I was struck by the last lines of the poem: 

"An extra day—

Extraordinarily like any other.
And still
there is some generosity to it,
like a letter re-readable after its writer has died."