Our Last Conversation Was A Song

What Andrea left me on their way out of this world

Even though mortality had been a topic in our home for the last four years, I was expecting one final conversation. There were questions I still needed to ask. Questions like: How will you come back to me? And: How will I know it’s you?

Our parting, I thought, would be more official. Ceremonious. I thought I’d actually hear the word, Goodbye. There was supposed to be something else, wasn’t there? An epilogue. A curtain lowering. Some symbol to mark the line between are and were, love and loved.

Instead, the transition from Andrea’s evergreen vibrancy into the dying process was fast and medicated. The hospice nurses did their best to keep them comfortable—and mostly unconscious. Not quite here, not quite gone. And while I wanted that ease for Andrea, a painless chemical sleep, it also destroyed me. I hadn’t realized that in the prevention of suffering, they’d lose language.

That I wouldn’t get a goodbye.

Like a barnacle I glued myself to their body, aching every time someone suggested I shower, eat, leave their side for even a moment. Every second I was apart from Andrea, I felt shredded, cleaved. I didn’t know how to be without them.

I still don’t.

The hospice nurse told me that hearing is the last thing to go. After she said this, Andrea’s eyebrows raised a whisper of an inch. I interpreted that as encouragement to keep speaking, keep playing our songs, keep singing my voice-cracking lullabies as I ran my fingers through their forest of curls.

Boygenius covering “You’re Still the One”
Brandi Carlile covering “Heaven”
Sade singing “By Your Side”
Ani DiFranco singing “Hearse”

Each song was perfect in its own way—but none were us conversing the way we could, for hours, picking the flowers of each other's minds. None of it was our crescendos into laughter in the unexpected moments. None of it was the way we could communicate entire novels to each other with only our eyes.

How come I hadn't recognized it earlier? When was my last opportunity to have that conversation? The one where I got to say, Thank you for loving me. It was enough love to last a lifetime. As inevitably as I will feel your absence, I will work to feel your presence. You are stitched into my entire being. You are my freckles, my breath, my blood. I will carry you into every day of the rest of my life. My love for you has no finish line.

Why hadn’t I seized the moment?

God, I wanted so much more than I got. I wanted so badly to hear Andrea’s words again, their brilliant brain spilling forth in sentences. The casual poetry of their living.

Regret was heavy in my chest. Heavy as a stone in the coat pocket of a woman wading into the river forever.

That’s when my phone lit up. A text message from Chris Pureka. A dear friend of Andrea’s, and one of their all-time favorite musicians. Chris’s songs were always playing in our house—Andrea made sure of it. Chris’s voice filled the kitchen, the car. It soundtracked the quiet nights where Andrea and I stared at each other, bewildered by all we were facing.

Andrea’s favorite song was Holy, with its refrain: I’m doing alright, I’m doing alright, I’m doing alright. Andrea sang those lines on days when the news would have flattened anyone else. They sang them with a look of awe, almost disbelief—as if marveling at their own private miracle. Because the lyrics they were singing were true.

“I recorded a song.” Chris texted. “Andrea wrote the words. I wrote the music. It is a song about them passing and it is a love song about you.”

The track was attached.

With quivering hands, I pressed play.

As the first words edged their way into our bedroom, I swear the slight hint of a smile dawned across Andrea’s sleeping face.

“Hold down the fort, ‘cause I gotta go
Light on the water will carry me somehow.
Don’t say goodbye, forever is not too far…”

My whole self flooded with every emotion. Tides of gratitude and grief, terror and love. All of it rushing at once. Drowning me. Keeping me afloat. Above the bed, the neon sign that read good light hummed its soft halo across the room.

My god. Andrea hadn’t even left their body yet, and already they were answering my prayers. In their last hours on earth, somehow they were already an angel.

I played the song again and again and again. (Anyone who knew Andrea personally would know they wouldn’t mind that. My love had a penchant for playing a good song into the ground.)

A dozen times I kissed their face. Their sweet-smelling temples. The tiny wrinkles unique to their ears. The sharp crease of their jaw. I thanked them for the perfect timing of the unfathomable gift.

“It’s so good,” I said, cheeks wet.

And then, a rare quote from me, Andrea’s tireless editor: “It’s perfect, baby. No notes.”

Of course it’s crazy, but part of me still thought they’d wake up and sing it to me. That the whole inevitable course of life would reverse, and somehow we’d slow dance to the song, beneath a canopy of stars. That we would have one hundred weddings. That every day forevermore would be a celebration of our luck, our love.

Andrea’s been gone over two weeks and at night, alone in bed, I still expect the cocoon of their arms around me. At every doorway, some particle of my brain waits for them to walk through. It’s impossible to fathom that I won’t see that smile again. All those lines on their face like the notches on a volume knob, alerting me to how loud their joy was at any minute.

Sometimes our joy was all we could hear.

I’m only thirty-six years old. Too young to be a widow. This is the tragedy of my lifetime. I know it. And still. I want you to know that I see it, too. The beauty. The extreme good fortune unfolding in the eye of such an unfortunate situation:

My love, the poet, had entered a place beyond language. I wished they could speak to me again. And somehow—they did. That final talk I craved so bad came to me at the exact moment I needed it most. It came to me in an even more beautiful form than conversation. It came to me in music.

It came to me like this:

Hold Down the Fort

“Hold down the fort, ‘cause I gotta go.
Light on the water will carry me somehow.
Don’t say goodbye, forever is not too far.
The other side’s just a stone’s throw
from love and you’ve got a great arm.
You’ve got a great arm.

You held the pen to my chest each hour you were writing.
You said, ‘Every good poem is hell and heaven fighting.’
But there’s no gates where I’m going—
I think that’s a good thing.
I want nothing kept out
if I’m losing my everything ‘cause

I had it
I had it
I had it all, I had you.

Prints on the window
Where you watched me come home.
I hear your footsteps on every winter’s first snow.
But this too shall future.
I’ll circle back honey.
When they lay me down,
I’ll hit the ground running
back to you.

I had it,
I had it,
I had it all, I had you.
I had it all, I had you.
I had it all, I had you.”

—

At this moment, I am smiling—glad that Andrea never showed me these lyrics before. We both know I would have suggested some edits. “‘This too shall future,’ doesn’t make any sense,” I would have said. “Because it’s ‘this too shall pass,’ not 'this too shall pasT.’”

Perhaps we would have had a minor argument about it. Eventually, they would have conceded to me. But I would have been wrong. The line is perfect. It’s a little nonsensical, as is this entire crooked carousel of life and death. It’s flawed and mismatched and exquisite and true.

Listen. I’m not going to skip counting all the petals on a four-leaf clover just because my heart is broken.

You do not need to pity me. I had it all. I had Andrea.

Love,
Meg [ + Andrea, forever ] 🖤

PS. Andrea would urge me to tell you to drop everything you’re doing and find a way to listen to Chris Pureka and support all of their art forevermore. Right now I’m listening to this perfect cover of “What A Wonderful World.” It’s gorgeous. It’s aching. It’s hitting all the right notes.

Thank you for being here.