My Buddhist teacher said to love those who have died with the same open heart that we loved them alive. I think that’s crazy talk. How the hell am I supposed to grieve an unimaginable loss and love at the same time. She’s dead for chrissake. That’s nuts. But I get it now. Love the dead as we love the living. Even more so. They made us who we are.

If only he’d said live from the scar not from the woundI might have caught on sooner. When the wound was barely healed it would reopen at the thought of her. At the sound of her name. At a song playing in the grocery store from the mixed tape she made me decades earlier. At the sight of a dandelion puff floating by.

What I miss. I miss the beach, and greasy pizza with watery light beer in frosted mugs. I miss her sitting on a green plastic chair on the balcony outside the hotel room in the early morning as the kids and I are still asleep, crossword puzzle and pen on her lap, coffee cup, lit cigarette in the ashtray on the white table beside her. I miss dancing into the wee hours in the sultry heat of a St. Thomas night.

She’ll never breathe salt air again. Never make us grits with salt and pepper for breakfast. Never ponder that we’re made of stardust. She never even got to hear Dance Monkey, let alone skip down the block listening to it. That’s okay. I’ve got this. I’ll make her a mixed tape. We call them playlists now I’ll tell her. I’ll fill it with Jump and I’m So Excited by the Pointer Sisters; Donna Summer; Laura Nyro; Phoebe Snow; How Can You Mend a Broken Heart by the Bee Gees; her friend Suede singing Emily Remembers. And when Dance Monkey comes on, I will smile and I will hear it for her. And I will skip down the sidewalk. I can do that for us.