Dear Friend
I saw a moose who wasn’t there and thought of you. Yesterday, he had been there—standing tall and majestic. My breath caught in my throat as I came up over the rise where the trees give way to the blueberry barren and caught sight of him walking towards me. And then just as suddenly, I was gone, descending back into the woods, yet still searching for one last glimpse of him in my rear view mirror.
When I passed the same spot again today, it was as if the image of him that had imprinted on my mind was there, but he was not. The place where he had been felt empty, and in that moment I thought of you. It is not that you remind me of a moose, though you definitely are someone whom I wish to be there when you are not, but rather I thought of you for the same reason that I think of you when I pass a gaggle of teenage turkeys beside the road or see two young fawns still clinging to their spots running past my office window with their tails held high. I think of you because these are things you did not see when you were here that I wish you had.
If you lived closer, I could perhaps experience these extraordinary and everyday occurrences with you. If you lived closer, we would spend long afternoons sitting in my backyard making loud conversation with the geese, followed by comfortable evenings playing games that I would mostly lose. If you lived closer, we would more often find ourselves chatting in a quiet coffee shop, sharing those things we save for the people we love most. You would ask me the questions that no one ever thinks to ask and invariably you would say something to me that I would mull over for days to come until it had sunk into my heart and shifted my very core closer to who I’m meant to be. You remind me to fill my space, to stand a little taller, raise my eyes a little higher, and to speak a little louder.
You continue to remind me of those things even when you are not here, though it is easier to hear when you are present. And that is why I continue to miss you in the ordinary events of my day and see you in the empty spaces left behind.
