Angela Hart

Endings

One summer afternoon, after someone I care about ended our relationship, I went to a friend’s garden and gathered a heap of fresh basil to take home.  On the way I stopped at the market for ripe local tomatoes, garlic and an assortment of nuts.  I thought to myself, I’ve been wanting to make pesto, brushetta and Ina Garten’s chipotle and rosemary spiced nuts for a while now, that’s what I’ll do today. I could tell he was uncompromising this time.  It’s really over.  All the private history: the long tails of grief, tears, unprompted smiles, discoveries, tedious ho and hum, then the ambivalence, from both ends —it’s over and done with, fini. Things got in the way and we didn’t recover, like we thought we would. I wanted us to stay invincible. He reminded me that everyone is vulnerable. I turned on music when I got home. Adele. As a bonus Madeleine Peyroux shows up in that mix.  (It’s a “smart mix” from my iTunes library, and it picks up the “adele” in Ms. Peyroux’s name.)  I simmered the garlic while I diced my tomatoes and sprinkled them with sea salt. The basil’s scent wafted through my kitchen, a deep olfactory pleasure, like warm linens straight out of the dryer. I’m quietly aware that I’m drowning out a realization by stimulating three of my five senses: taste, smell and sound.  Four if you count sight.  I had a vase of fresh-cut roses on my working countertop.  All that was missing was touch. 

I went out with friends that night.  I floated in and out of the stories and the laughter, feeling like a modern-day vagabond on the outside looking in, or inside looking out. 

I cried later, when I was home alone.  I called a friend and told her the scoop.  I said that I had homemade pesto to prove it, which made us both laugh. Transition is a bitch, she said.  I agreed.  But necessary and often best understood in retrospect, the stalwartly therapist in me said.  After my friends midnight counsel, I flipped to TBS (looking for "very funny")and watched the last bit of Spanglish, during that pivotal scene where the mother uproots her daughter from her fancy, made-up life and takes her home. Of course it all seemed relevant and I sobbed my way through a box of Kleenex, feeling more connected to Penelope Cruz than anyone in the entire world. In the end, I drifted off to sleep.


This song makes me think of my friend and the happy sad feeling that comes along with letting someone go, when it's time.