Risk!
My friend Christina died last September, on the day we flew to Australia. I found out when I called the hospital to speak to her from Tulsa International Airport. Beginning to mourn her on an airplane over the Pacific was weird in several ways -- we had met on an airplane, for one. But also nothing feels very consequential in transit like that. Exhaustion and jetlag, in a darkened airplane cabin, with a bunch of sleeping strangers oriented in rows, faces glowing with the light of their in-flight entertainment systems. Nothing feels real in that environment.
It's continued to be weird, though. I don't know if you've ever mourned someone on the far side of the world from where you knew them, but it's kind of a disorienting experience. I felt disconnected from my memories and my grief in a way that I seem to lack the ability to describe.
Before she died, my friend went on this story-telling podcast, Risk!. At their live event in Minneapolis, she told the story of a relationship with her former partner, who turned out to be living a double-life, engaged to his high school sweetheart. It's a story she told me the first night we met, on a red-eye flight from Los Angeles (where we'd each flown to see Conor Oberst play two shows) to Minneapolis. She was more open than anyone else I've met in adulthood, before or since.
This week I finally decided to listen for the first time. I hit play on Christina's segment as I was riding my bicycle through Kings Park, where all the plants and animals still look wildly foreign to me. And I thought about how fortunate I was to have such a recording of Christina's voice, telling a story that was a big part of her life. And how weird it is to hear the familiar voice of a dead person, on the far side of the world.
It's continued to be weird, though. I don't know if you've ever mourned someone on the far side of the world from where you knew them, but it's kind of a disorienting experience. I felt disconnected from my memories and my grief in a way that I seem to lack the ability to describe.
Before she died, my friend went on this story-telling podcast, Risk!. At their live event in Minneapolis, she told the story of a relationship with her former partner, who turned out to be living a double-life, engaged to his high school sweetheart. It's a story she told me the first night we met, on a red-eye flight from Los Angeles (where we'd each flown to see Conor Oberst play two shows) to Minneapolis. She was more open than anyone else I've met in adulthood, before or since.
This week I finally decided to listen for the first time. I hit play on Christina's segment as I was riding my bicycle through Kings Park, where all the plants and animals still look wildly foreign to me. And I thought about how fortunate I was to have such a recording of Christina's voice, telling a story that was a big part of her life. And how weird it is to hear the familiar voice of a dead person, on the far side of the world.
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