Everything is going to be ok

Hi Steph.

It's barely 6am on September 2, 2011, and I am awake. Which, on a normal Friday, would be fine. But I don't have to work today. I should be asleep, dreaming of puppies and rainbows. I never dream of such pleasant things but hey...it could happen.

Five years ago today, your father called to tell me you'd passed. I knew it was coming but that didn't make it any easier.  I had to go to this asshole's birthday dinner and sit there, trying to make sense of the fact that people were still doing things like having birthday dinners when the world as I knew it had dramatically shifted. Of course, I drank my ass off. I wandered the streets of Uptown, blindly shitfaced, sobbing. I was so angry. Angry that you died, angry that I couldn't seem to handle it. Eventually, I passed out and spent the next day in bed, nursing a hangover.

I'm sure that's what you would have wanted.

You were so good, Stephanie. So funny, so smart. Such a delicate looking woman who was tough as shit. And I was such a fucking baby, using your death as an excuse to continue to act like a child, continue destroying my life. Life! I had life and you no longer did and there I was, pissing it away.

So many times over the past five years, when I've been in a state of hopelessness, deeply depressed and unable to find my way out...I've thought of you. I thought of you and I knew instantly that this is not what you would have wanted for me. I know you're watching over me, dude. I'm sure of it. More sure than I have ever been of anything.

The way you handled illness with such stunning grace and acceptance floored me. You never seemed angry or sad. I'm sure you were from time to time. But I remember being in the bathroom with you at The Red Dragon. We were there with friends and I was happy to have a few minutes alone with you. You stood looking in the mirror, fixing your hair, and you were the most calm I had ever seen you. Your enormous eyes were bright and a small, satisfied smile played on your lips.

You were at peace.

I think of that moment all the time. That incredible place of stillness in your heart and mind. I knew looking at your face in that moment that all you felt was love. That's how I imagine you are now. Probably without the mirror, and good fucking God, I pray you're not trapped in the bathroom at The Red Dragon, which is a fate worse then any hell I can imagine.

I know you're all around the people you love. And for me, you bring peace, grace, unconditional love and the very real feeling that everything is going to be ok.

I love you.