Friends of the Heart: Communication Between Long-Term Friends

Sophie had stood alone in her father’s now empty house for close to fifteen minutes. Knowing she’d never return to this place again, she wanted to allow herself time to experience the feelings of relief and sadness pulsing through her heart and gut. She visualized her father as she had often seen him during her annual visits “back home,” seated at the kitchen table, bathed in a low light, smoking cigarette after cigarette. She remembered the ever-present stacks of now discarded magazines and newspaper clippings he piled neatly on the floor near his feet. As she blinked back the tears filling her eyes, she turned one last time to look out the window overlooking the creek and meadow where just this morning she had seen three deer grazing in the knee-high grass. She tried futilely to remember the names her father had given each one, remembering how nearly every time he had called her, he’d talk endlessly about them, and how she almost invariably would tune him out. Now, she wished she’d paid closer attention and knew which was which. Realizing that this thought, too, was hopeless, she began to sob.

Sophie realized that nothing would ever be as it had been, and she simultaneously ached to bring her father back and struggled to let him go. Dabbing at the tears that had begun to flow less freely, Sophie knew there was nothing now to do but go on. She sighed and said aloud, “That’s it.” Her own voice startled her in the quiet as she quickly and definitively strode to the back door, opening it and shutting it tightly behind her.