Closure In The Mail

So I had a strange week that started with a dead body in the mail.

Okay…I exaggerate. It was just part of a dead body.

Okay…I exaggerate even more. It was just part of the ashes of a dead body. But it did come in the mail. Forgive my dark humor. It’s how I cope with pretty much everything life throws at me.

Maybe I should back up a little and start from a different place in this story. You may or may not recall my post which was an open letter to my former best friend of over twenty-five years, E. She abruptly cut off all communication with me nine years ago (the reasons for which, I’ll never find out now), and then she up and died four months ago without ever reaching back out or trying to mend fences with me. If you want to read that post, you can do so here. 

After her death, a mutual friend went to help another former friend with some of the final arrangements. She asked me if I wanted anything that had belonged to E.

My first inclination was to say, “Not no, but hell no!” I’ve spent the better part of the last nine years trying to put the sadness of the death of our relationship behind me, along with my frustration, anger, and bitterness. Her death and having to read everyone’s loving tributes to her on Facebook just tore open all the old wounds and, frankly, made me want to punch someone in the throat.

Mostly E, but she’s not here anymore. So, there’s that.

Then, I remembered E’s wedding where I was the Maid of Honor. There were four of us in the bridal party and we were each tasked with giving E one of the “Something old, something new, something borrowed, and something blue” items. I was tasked with giving her something blue.

I thought about it for a long time and decided I wanted to buy her a piece of jewelry that she could use long after her wedding, but she wasn’t much on jewelry. Her ears weren’t pierced and the only ring I had ever seen her wear, besides her engagement ring, was her high school class ring that she wore for years. I finally settled on buying her a bracelet, because I knew she already had a necklace to wear and I thought a bracelet was something she could wear when she dressed up.

When my friend asked me if I wanted anything that belonged to E, I decided I wanted that bracelet back. Though the friendship ended abruptly and that memory was not a good one for me, there were a lot of good memories around that bracelet.

For one, I took my mother with me to shop for it. She and I always had a good time shopping together in those years before online shopping took over our lives. We went out and ate lunch and then went to the department store and we combed through so many choices before I found the one that I thought was perfect. I wanted something bold, but simple, without a lot of fancy filigree or ornamentation, because E’s taste was pretty simple when it came to that sort of thing. I selected a blue topaz tennis bracelet.

My mother gave her stamp of approval and I excitedly tucked the bracelet away for the big day. At the rehearsal dinner, we all presented our gifts. E seemed genuinely stunned when she opened the box. I don’t think she was expecting something quite like what I gave her. We shared a really heartfelt and special moment. That wedding was one of the most fun ones I’ve ever been a part of.

So that’s why I asked for the bracelet. I have spent the last nine years harboring the sad and hurtful and angering memories. I wanted to remember the way we did the Chicken Dance at the reception, and that we all cried when her parents danced together, because none of us had really been sure her mother would live long enough to see her walk down the aisle. I wanted to remember her laugh and the way her eyes and nose scrunched up when she was laughing really hard, because I’ve spent the last nine years remembering her hard, cold stare and harsh final words to me.

I wanted something to help me remember why we were friends in the first place and I wanted to remember a time when we were more than friends and that we were sisters.

My friend located the bracelet and sent me a photo, which I confirmed was correct. Her next question, however, caught me off guard.

She told me she knew this was a bit morbid, but that she had a necklace with some ashes of a friend of hers and she was going to get one made with some of E’s ashes. She asked me if I wanted one too.

My first thought was to cackle. I’m not sure if it’s because E loved all things macabre, or if the thought of a piece of her spending eternity with me after she blatantly avoided all contact with me over the last nine years made the snarky side of me come out to play. And then, I felt a little sadness again.

“I wouldn’t mind, but I don’t know if E would’ve wanted that?” I responded.

Then my friend pointed out something I hadn’t really considered.

“Well I believe…there is nothing but love in heaven…so of course she would. Besides, if she was that much of a hater, she would have tossed the bracelet.“

The bracelet came in the mail a couple of weeks ago. I took it out of the envelope and the scent of perfume hit my nostrils. E had always worn Obsession by Calvin Klein. This wasn’t that scent. I don’t even know if they make it anymore, but this scent was strong like that.

It smelled like E.

It hit me that if it smelled so strongly of her perfume, then she had probably worn it enough to get her perfume all over it. I wondered if, when she wore it, she remembered all those things I remembered too. Did she miss me? Did she ever regret cutting off our relationship? Did she ever get the urge to call me?

Fast forward to this week. Another padded envelope from my friend. I knew what it was.

I left it on the kitchen counter for a couple of hours while I made dinner and completed some chores, just kind of staring at it when it caught my eye. After I cleaned up the dinner dishes, I took it into the bedroom and tore it open and pulled it out.

It was just a small vial with an angel wing on a chain.

I actually laughed out loud. I don’t know why. Maybe it reminded me of the time that E came back to El Paso so that we could take her Mom and Dad’s ashes up to the mountains to scatter them. She was afraid to bring them on the plane, so she had them shipped to our friend’s house.

We joked a lot about Mom and Dad getting lost in the mail or getting delivered to the wrong house. When we got into her rental to take the three hour drive to our destination, we buckled the urn into the seatbelt and there were more jokes.

I thought about the jokes we would’ve come up with for me getting “a dead body” in the mail. A dead body on a chain, no less. We would’ve laughed for hours.

I haven’t decided what I’m going to do with the necklace or the bracelet. I have an almost identical bracelet of my own. I told my Mom after I bought that bracelet that I liked it so much, I wish I had bought one for myself. Mom found one and gave it to me one year for Christmas. So, I don’t really need to wear E’s because I already have one.

Maybe I’ll put the necklace and bracelet in a shadow box with a picture of the two of us during better times. I have one from the wedding and I think you can see the bracelet on her wrist. That might be the right one.

But for now, I’m just going to tuck them away in a drawer and wait for my heart to heal a little more. It’s going to take a while, but at least I finally got something I’ve been waiting nine years for.

I got closure.

Thank you, A, for your generosity and for thinking of me when nobody else did. Love you.