For Denise: On Our Two Year, Different Kind of Anniversary

by Deneen Ansley

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It's been two years, today, since Denise died, and I don't FEEL like writing about anything. Nothing in particular, so one might find it odd that this is the thing that I chose to do.

If Denise were still alive, and well enough to talk, she'd be encouraging me to, "Pick up the damn pen! Just pick it up and write SOMETHING!" She was in awe of what she saw as my "talent". She used to say, "Do you know how many people would give anything to have a brain like yours? Do you know what I would give?

"My life is pretty much shot. I had my chance. I had my chance at the Olympics, scholarships to colleges, to be something great, and I blew it. I was meant for so much more than this." She would gesture with a strange, melancholy look upon her face, a sweeping motion that encompassed the trailer home that we shared with her mother. And the dogs. And the cats. And the annoying parrot. And at any given time, my daughter, granddaughter, my daughter's ex-girlfriend, etc.

"I was meant for something great. I can feel it, right underneath," she'd pat her chest. "But, somewhere, I went wrong and I lost my chance. Now all that I have in my life, all that I hope for is to live through the greatness that I see in you. You have to succeed with your writing. For me, too."

The most amazing thing about those conversations to me is that she never, never, ever, not even once understood a single thing that I ever wrote. Her faith in me, her belief in the underlying stuff that she felt pouring through me was just that strong. So - tell me, how can I let myself blow it?

I've done very well today, not losing myself in the grief, but I still feel very unstable.

My friend, Candice, spent about two and a half hours on the phone with me, and when we hung up, the sadness was gone for the biggest part of the day. My partner, Michelle, and Candice both brought laughter in to me, so that was the most helpful thing of the day. And the love, I guess.

I spent a lot of time talking with Candice about what love is, and what being "in love" meant, and what was the right kind for a relationship and what wasn't. Our conclusion was that there is no conclusion. Loves really can't be compared. I mean, it's an individual thing. A thing created by the two people (sometimes more), but living in a space within them, intersecting in their withouts.

I don't know what it meant that I loved Denise so deeply. She's not the only one that I've loved that way, for sure, but I think she counterbalanced me in a way that hadn't been done before.

I remember how I used to ask her to go make Universes with me, once we got finished playing with our spiritual selves here, in these forms. Once we progressed to something greater. Something more God like. I've since come to believe that we may not be progressing TO something Godlike, but that the God in us wants to live through these physically limited bodies. That we've agreed to this limitation because of the wonder of it all, the fun of it all, the miracle and mystery of it all.

When I talked about such things, just like with the writing, Denise never understood a word I said! None of that made any sense to her. She was a conservative, a traditionalist, a republican, and she believed the rhetoric from the church of her experience. In her mind, she saw herself bound for hell. Her heart wanted to believe otherwise, and she would say to me, "I've told God that if he's going to send me to hell for loving women, then he'll just have to do it - because it's a part of myself that I can't help. He's just going to have to understand and forgive me for it."

I tried to tell her that hell wasn't real. Not the way she thought, but she didn't understand that either. There was a lot that Denise didn't understand. It means absolutely nothing that she didn't understand it. It's not even relevant.

During those discussions about the Universe, and our making more of them, I could see it so clearly! I can see it in words that don't exist. Emotions, and powers, and an otherness that even I can't quite grasp. It's that BANG!! where the Yin meets the Yang, the dark battles light, where the matter collides with the antimatter. It bears the force of creation and destruction, each as necessary a part of life as any two balancing acts.

I was the creation, she was the destruction, and it was not an evil thing that she was so. It was a necessary thing. Without her, I could not have reaped the materials for my rebuilding.

So, is that what I'm doing now? Has she destroyed herself to leave me with the remnants of love, my staring at the bloody afterbirth, reliving the overwhelming joy in new life, recalling the overtaking renting and pain necessary to bring it forth?

In my vision, she swirls around me in a spirit form that is echoed by clouds of gas and debris attracted by her motion in the vast background that we know as "space". I am there, surrounded by opposing colors, swirling in the opposite direction - and when the trailing tendrils of our selves meet, there is the immediate reaction of a swallowing up, a collision of leftover "star-stuff" that creates this almighty calamity. I am embraced, suffocated and beaten as the matter in her self rips through the matter in my self and - this to me is the most amazing part - we do not, not actually, ever merge.

No, we are separate selves, working in conjunction in our new galactic system. When things need to be brought forth, I do it. When things need to be demolished, she swoops her energy in. Through that, beings like us, the human "we's" on this planet, are born. They are not human. They are a different sort of children who have been lent life through the God part of myself mixed with the God part of herself, and whether or not I am "aware" is not even a thing that matters anymore.

On the night that Denise took her life. This life. The night that she destroyed the body that she had been gifted, destroyed its ability to sustain her spirit here, with us, any longer in that form that I so well loved, I begged, crying through that damned inanimate, separating phone line: "Denise, tell me, are you still going to make Universes with me?"

"I don't know," she replied, her voice uncertain and cracking through the telephone I held smashed, wet from tears, against my ear. I imagine her, sitting there, in the empty bathtub, liquor in one hand, shotgun in the other, staring into the face of her demons. She adds, "I hope so." And I think I can feel it. Imagine I can feel it, that she's starting to believe that such a thing can happen. That there can be something, that great stuff that she was meant for, waiting in that linear place that we refer to as "future".

"I really hope so."

I hope so too, Denise. For you too, I hope.


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