Well, here we are again

Only this time we’ve lifted the curtain on spirituality and illusion. The best part about you being dead is I don’t have to wonder if you have all the necessary information – of course you do – you are omniscient now.

Its one thing to be able to write to your best friend and get a killer response where she says all the right things and reminds you how loved and cherished you are in one fell swoop. It’s quite another thing to know the words you used were mine all the while.

That’s how things are playing out down here, R. Sue. The future isn’t so much a mystery as it is an observable phenomenon based the illusions and belief systems of the people in the story. Feel free to use those words inter-changeably.

Illusion – the great curtain itself. Religion – the belief in the illusion.

It goes by many names: Maya is a pretty one – appropriately invoking imagery of the deep ruby hues found in the earth of India, the mystical eye of Fatima.

We like the pretty ones don’t we. Their existence far more acceptable than the ugly ones–the baddies. But, R. Sue I’m here to tell you the more beautiful they seem on the outside the more repugnant they eventually reveal themselves to be. The veil lifting on the great and talented spiritual performers? It’s easy to say the curtain doesn’t exist when the actors are so skilled. Now, go out and find me a nice hairy hunchback dude and let him show you the light.

Bring me the deformed! Bring me the sick, weak, tired and hungry for they know suffering and therefore true wealth.

But I guess you probably know all this by now and I’m so glad because I know you felt like one of the ugly ones while you were alive. Like no one could see your beauty, but it shined through in your writing to me and others. It showed in your smile and your eyes and that made you truly beautiful. It’s not what made you shine but it is the reason your words reached us, touched us and changed us all so profoundly.

You’ve been dead for a while now and I feel bad for not writing sooner but I know I’m going to be(fore)given. HAHA! How’d you like that one?!

Once you told me to write it all down as if I was writing a letter to you and then you sang me a song, “Winter, spring, summer or fall… All you gotta do is call. And I’ll be there right now yes I will.” I knew then it would be the last time we spoke.

Once you told me how lucky I am to be riding on the shoulders of my mother’s sisters: You the wave makers; the women whose rights were won but not gotten until the bras were burned and the children with them. You the women who pioneered, piloted and perturbed the glass ceiling until it shattered but couldn’t quite break through.

You who made it possible for me to be

To be where I am

Where I am now

Is not nearly

As important

As who

You are

Once you told me to be patient. That time has a way of working things out if we let it. That the sun will come out again. That this time next year I will be able to look back and say, “Wow, look how far I’ve come.” And that you were proud of me. And that I am brave and capable and compassionate and more than enough. That you love me no matter how many times I f*ck up and say something stupid. No matter how many times I hurt you or take too much from you.

Once you told me that there’s no such thing as not taking things personally. Unless you’re not a person. And that womanhood would get in the way of personhood until a certain age. And then it would basically be all about bowel movements and dirty laundry and sex or lack of it and that was something to look forward to if I had someone to share it with. Someone who would read me and know the me that isn’t sitting in that chair in front of the television but soaring high above all our material messes. Someone who cherished and trusted me enough to let me take them up, up and away into a story that could only be composed one line at a time.

Then you said, “Let’s play a game. It’ll be fun. I’ll go first!”

And you were not a person anymore.

Oh! How I loved the you that was R. Sue Dodea – Best Friends Forever!