Mood Indigo

"We are given each other in trust. I think people are much too wonderful to be alive briefly and gone." ~ Marilynne Robinson

I don't know how to say this, except to say it.

Indigo is dead.

She passed away just before Christmas 2014 and I've been trying to kindle any desire to write ever since.

Because I cannot write something, anything here, without first writing about Indigo. And that prospect has simply remained too painful.  She is so much a  part of the world around me, but no longer of it. I've only now gotten to the point where I can reconcile it's happened, that she is gone.

I remember getting the call from Ragdoll, a recounting of a headline seen in the news, my brain splintering, a wrung out, heartsick Christmas vacation.

She has occupied my thoughts so often in the past months. I see something beautiful - a slant of light, a bumble bee rummaging in a flower,  a mother unhurriedly walking hand in hand with her toddler, and I think about how much Indigo would have appreciated these moments.

That was the great gift she gave me, reminding me to appreciate the simple moments of pleasure and beauty that are always all around us. It was something for which she had a sixth sense of sorts, the ability to find in life's every day mundaneness, the special, the overlooked, the essential. She captured it in her photography, spoke of it in her poetry, talked to me about it over coffee.

And what is even more astonishing to me, is that as MS ravaged her body and carved out her life, it's as if her ability to appreciate beauty was amplified. She still noticed it all, still made the effort to keep in touch, to wish me well, to be my friend, to speak of these things.

In August, I was very privileged to attend Indigo's memorial service, what her family called a Celebration of Life. It was wonderful to meet Indigo's relatives, see her husband again, to talk about her with her mother. I thought that is what would buckle me, seeing the loss contended with, the swath it had cut in people's lives. But what really drove an icepick in my heart were the pictures of Indigo that were showing in endless slideshows.

They were pictures taken before her MS began to progress. It was the vibrant and driven Indigo I remember meeting and becoming friends with, the Indigo that could dance, make plans for summer and could come to friends' houses for monthly cheesy movie nights. I'd never lost that Indigo, even as MS ravaged her body, she was still herself despite it all. We just found different ways to be together. We would meet for coffee and good food, chat as her hand shakily raised her favourite chocolate tarte for a bite. Eventually we would chat less as the MS began to affect her speech. We moved on to manicure dates when eating and drinking became impossible.

That was Indigo, still enjoying life, still participating in it. But it wasn't until I saw the pictures at her Celebration, that I began to understand how much she had lost and how hard she had to fight to keep some parts of herself and her life as she wished them to be.

My God, she was beautiful and so full of light. And I realized in seeing those pictures how much I missed her and always would.

I'm so grateful she was my friend. I'm even more grateful that despite all she went through, she made sure I knew it.