September 21,2013

Approaching the seventh anniversary of Elizabeth's death, it is hard to understand that she never heard Adele sing, or saw Julia Louis Dreyfus in the Veep, or watched a single episode of Girls.  Popular culture is something we shared, and I relied on Elizabeth, as much as a mother could rely on her teen daughter without being able to follow everything of her taste, to understand what was going on.  Now I listen to students at school discuss things, to navigate what is current.  I always find myself asking, what would Elizabeth think?  Most recently I wonder about Lake Bell, (what a name!) and how E would have liked In a World.  There is something about Bell's writing talent and offhand beauty that reminds me of her.

Back to School

The routines are familiar, but it is still rough terrain, this land without Elizabeth.
She would have done something for her father's birthday, she would have been working somewhere, or in graduate school. In her eighteen years, she was always a student, with her notebooks neatly labelled, and her array of pens. On her laptop were stickers.

 Since I work as a teaching librarian, I keep walking, keep going to school. Most days it is all right, just a slight hitch in my step. Children keep getting born, learning to walk, going to school, looking forward to those early days of making new friends, cementing the old ones.

Elizabeth Kester and Elizabeth Aakre

The way she held a bat

ready for gravity
or for hurtling orbs
when she swung
the ball went straight at me
I had to dodge it
or it might hit me
straight in the heart.

Every day I say her name

At the Salvation Army in Honesdale, at Lisa's Not Just Antiques, channeling Elizabeth's looking for something that would suit her style, I say her name over and over again, remembering the times we were there together, remembering how lost we would get looking at objects for the meaning they could bring to you, there, that antique pin in the shape of an airplane, or there, a rhinestone necklace that has three loops in concentric circles.  Those were keepers.  I still have them.

Sometimes she would try on dresses, and come out of the dressing room looking fabulous.  She could turn heads with her beauty.  It wasn't just physical.  She had something else, a spirit that was warm, and witty, and you wanted to know her better.

Elizabeth. Elizabeth. Elizabeth.

December 26, 2012

Every place I encounter for the first time since Lizzy died—places we were together when she was alive—has a feeling of fresh mourning or grief to it. Today it was the Captiva library.

I try so hard to live in the moment, but how can I forget the joy of finding this place away from home that gave her a feeling of familiarity and friendship? The library world is our world, something she was raised to from the beginning of life.

Captiva Library is just off the beach, behind the cemetery, adjacent to the church, three blocks from Jensens where we stayed. The library shares a building with the community Center, not unlike the Arts Alliance in Narrowsburg, frequently given over to arts exhibits and cultural events.

Today I was happy after settling in with the ghosts of former lives—missing her keen intelligence, friendly way with strangers, and instinct for the best things to be had in a library—to find a table and chair for sitting and scribbling in my note book.

Captiva Cemetery markers

Tree in cemetery adjacent to library

Elizabeth's writing

Instead of writing about Elizabeth, here are some pages written by Elizabeth. She had legible handwriting, and wrote in those Mead ruled writing tablets. I think this must date from when she was 17 or 18.