Hey, everyone.
It's Anna.
Look, Thanksgiving is coming up already.
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From the New York Times, I'm Anna Martin.
This is Modern Love.
Today I'm talking to Megan Fowley.
Fowley is known as an award-winning poet and is the partner of the Poet Laureate of Colorado, Andrea Gibson.
This past July, Gibson died after four years of living with ovarian cancer.
And I distinctly remember the day Andrea passed.
My social media was flooded with all of these heartfelt tributes to them.
People reposting their poems, talking about what those poems meant to them, how they helped them in really dark times.
It was so clear how much people felt this loss.
And that made sense.
Andrea Gibson was all about feeling things and feeling them deeply.
They even sold merch that said things like, feelings are not the enemy.
And in their time together, it seems like Andrea Gibson and Megan Fowley explored just about every emotion two people can have together.
Andrea and Megan's deeply moving love story is the focus of a new documentary called Come See Me in the Good Light.
And even though by the end of this movie I was really in tears, what hit me was just how much joy these two poets radiated.
On today's episode of Modern Love, I talk with Megan about what it was like to love fiercely, even when she knew she was going to lose, and how, despite Andrea's passing, they are very much still here.
Megan Fowley, welcome to Modern Love.
Thank you.
I am really excited to be here.
Megan, you recently wrote an essay called Don't Ask a Widow This, and in it you mention not wanting to be asked the question which I was tempted to start the interview with, but which I'm not going to anymore.
You don't want to be asked this question, how are you?
Why don't you want that question?
I think, as somebody who reveres language as much as I do, how are you?
Does not feel like an adequate container for the answers, the truth, the magnitude of the experience of having just lost my partner.
And I think what I ended up writing was that the question how are you?
Feels like a thimble at the mouth of a river.
That's how small it is trying to catch something so big and rushing and vibrant and not static.
And it just really falls short.
Yeah.
What's the question you prefer?
It's quite possible that somebody who wasn't a writer would find this to be a really odd question.
But I think the idea of like tell me a story of something that's happened in your life recently that feels like it not even captures but grazes some part of what you're experiencing right now.
I'm writing that down and to turn it right back to you, my friend.
And so I will just ask, can you tell me a story from your life that grazes some part?
I love that word, graze.
Yeah.
Some part of what you've been through.
I wonder what comes up today on this day.
Today, on this day.
You know, I wish I had a slightly different answer, but I will answer from today on this day, which is that I was just at Hedgebook Writing Residency, which is a retreat for women writers on Whidbey Island off the coast of Washington, and women in cottages.
And it's about radical care, so you can just focus on your creativity and disconnect from the internet and cell phones and be among creatures and nature and build yourself a Fire every morning.
Yes.
I mean, that's just bliss.
So everything you're saying, I'm like, yes, and yes, and women and radical care and a cottage.
I'm walking through the... I mean, yeah, sounds like exactly what I want to be doing.
Okay, we're just there.
And part of the reason that I said yes, besides it being heaven, was that I thought that in that space I would really be able to connect to Andrea.
I thought, in the quiet, disconnected space from cell service in nature, not distracted with work, that Andrea and I would be in this ongoing cosmic conversation of sorts.
And when I was there, I did not feel them at all.
It felt almost like a rejection from nature.
Any romantic part.
It felt like I'm being ghosted.
By a ghost.
Exactly.
That's what I was going to say.
The true meaning of that word.
Wow.
And so it was really disappointing for me.
And I felt scared that I wouldn't connect to Andrea again.
And I just didn't know what it would look like.
But I continued to read there and write there and work on my manuscript and poems came and I was painting, which I'm not even a painter, but my creativity was coming back to me.
And then I imagined that Andrea was there hiding in the corner somewhere and waiting for me to realize that I didn't go to find them.
But I came to find myself.
I want to shift gears somewhat.
I know you two met in the poetry world, but when was the first moment that you felt proverbial sparks?
Yeah, we were at the national poetry slam.
We'd been friends for a long time.
We were on the dance floor and andrew would want me to tell everybody not to try this move at home and that their particular level of coolness and charm And my weird receptability toward this is the only reason it works.
So don't try to do this.
You might.
This is a long disclaimer.
Somebody might call HR.
I don't know.
Andrea wiped their hands because I sweat when I dance, and Andrea wiped their hands down my arms and licked their hands in this dirty-ass nightclub.
Yes, yes.
Wait, hold on.
Okay.
Let's back it up even.
I want to actually get a sense before this moment, who were you?
Who were they?
What was their reputation to you?
We were writers on the same press, but Andrea's career was massive.
Everyone, any poet in the world knew who Andrea was, but their performances were at rock clubs.
They were touring like a musician tours.
It was not... you know, a small reading in a cafe or a bookstore.
It was rowdy.
Sold out theaters.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Sold out lying around the door.
You know just people you'd watch and people would mouth along the lyrics to all of Andrea's words.
It was some mix of like a party and a church and a safe haven.
And it was, Yeah, I'd never seen anything like it.
Did you feel any kind of energetic tug between you?
Or was it sort of like there's Andrea the rock star.
You know, like what was the energy between you two?
How I viewed Andrea was that they could date anybody that they wanted to date.
We called them the gay James Dean.
Kind of similar hair at certain points.
Yeah, totally.
They could Anybody that they wanted to be with.
I just assume that that would be feasible for them.
I have had lifelong body image issues and struggles and I just I didn't think that they would choose me.
And turns out Andrea loved a curvy woman.
I mean... Yep.
Okay.
I was in luck.
You were in And you found out during a night, a sweaty night on a dance floor.
Andrea approaches, runs their hands down your sweaty arm and then licks the sweat off their hand.
Were you... How did you react?
I...
I was in shock, but also laughing and continuing to dance and just sort of felt the molecules of my brain rearrange themselves where I'm like wait, what just happened.
Was there something that, when you said your brain was rewiring?
Was there something that like, wasn't connecting here and not computing for you?
Like, in that sense?
Well, when we went back to the, we all collectively as a group, walked back to the hotel and I saw our mutual friend Katie, in the elevator and I like, ran into the elevator just so I could have a moment to talk to her and I told her everything that happened.
Told her about the sweat incident?
Yes.
Thinking she would be like, whoa, that's what?
And she was like, oh, I'm not surprised.
I'm like, what are you talking about?
She's like, she'd call Andrea Dre.
She said, Dre has had a crush on you for years.
And then I was like, what?
I thought I was hearing her wrong.
Yeah.
To find out Andrea had a crush on you, what was that like?
That would have been, I think, about 12 years ago.
But I will say after that moment, there has not been a day in my life where I have not spent a majority of the day thinking about Andrea.
Wow.
It was... Yeah, it really rearranged, I think...
A lot of my ideas about myself, and I know they say that you have to love yourself before somebody can love you.
You love to say that.
I do also think there was something about Andrea loving me, that this person who I was like you could have your pick of the litter then kind of picking me, where it opened my eyes to The idea of loving myself as is, if Andrea was loving me as is.
When you were together, when you were a couple, was there something you feel like they saw in you as your relationship progressed, that you weren't used to people seeing, or maybe that you couldn't see yourself?
I think that it might have been the other way.
Huh.
I think...
It was pretty easy to see in Andrea who they were public facing.
Which was this beacon of wisdom, which was this sage kind deep, thoughtful person.
What I saw in Andrea and how our relationship started was like two kids unleashed to each host the living room show of their lifetime.
Wow.
We made up dances together.
We wrote parodies to pop songs to make them about queerness or feminism.
We were goofy, peeing our pants, laughter.
You mean that literally?
I mean, okay, I was being nice to Andrea.
Andrea peed their pants.
I did not.
Call them out.
You'd have multiple times full bladder emptying peed their pants.
No way.
It runs in their family.
I don't know.
Oh, my God.
And how?
Okay, I'll just say if I was to tell a joke that made someone literally pee their pants, I'd be like I'm the funniest person in the world.
I mean, really, truly, I would.
It'd be so gratifying.
I did feel like the funniest person in the world.
I felt like the funniest person in the world with Andrea, and it was so contagious to make them laugh.
And truly.
I think making Andrea laugh is one of the best things I have ever gotten to do in my lifetime.
You're talking about, I love that, the greatest living room show of our lifetime.
There's a lot of play.
And you're kind of answering my question, but I'm really genuinely curious, like how two poets woo each other.
You know, for the layperson, writing a love poem, it's like my... goodness what a lift but for y'all that's just another Tuesday how do poets yeah how do you do it what was that what was the early stage of your relationship like oh my god thank you for asking these questions it's nice to travel back here in my mind uh the first gift Andrea ever sent me in the mail was a ukulele that said you are the music um We spent, our birthdays are a week apart.
Their first birthday that I ever spent with them, they were turning 40.
And I spent weeks buying, making wrapping 40 presents so that I could give them one for every year that they missed.
Can you share one of them, if you don't mind?
A laminated award that I had their best friend sign, as like the Witness that I also signed for the best face in the world.
Oh my God, you're going to get me.
Best face in the world?
Yeah.
They got me an actual boombox where they made actual mix CDs, or mix tapes, I'm sorry, for me.
And, considering our age difference, it was more of the CD time.
I didn't know how to open up the cassette.
You're like, excuse me, four-year-old, can you help me with this?
Yeah, they stitched poetry into a pillowcase for me, a line of poems, like they hand-stitched.
Yeah, there's a lot.
You're talking about Well, let me just say this.
This is putting every single one of my boyfriends to shame, which I kind of knew would happen in asking that question.
And yet it is wonderful to linger here with you.
I mean, you keep mentioning the age gap.
Let's just put a number on that.
What was that age gap between you and Andrea?
13 years.
13 years.
Okay.
I mean, I wonder, it sounds so and romantic and honestly, like better than what I imagined two poets would do in the early stages of falling in love.
But of course, you are not only poets, you are humans.
It couldn't have been all rosy all the time.
Right.
We'll be right back.
Prior to Andrea being diagnosed, we were really actually on the verge of breaking up.
The pandemic had been really hard.
Our life had gone from touring all around the country and just this big life to being very quarantined.
But also we sort of kept with that longer than other people, and maybe more strictly, because Andrea had also had an autoimmune disease, that Lyme disease that they had to, you know, be cautious with with their health.
And honestly I Andrea, was like self-soothing with drinking, and not a massive amount, but that was sort of their thing.
And I was numbing out with, food or TV or just anything to shut it off.
And we were really disconnected and not doing well at all.
And when we got the news that there were masses, we didn't know if it was cancer, but it was a strong likelihood.
Andrea even had tried to end it with me.
Like, I don't think we should do this together.
I just, we haven't been good.
Like, I don't want to I remember we stayed up the whole night almost.
And in another iteration of that conversation I think I would have been like screw this, I'm sleeping in the guest room or something.
But because of what the stakes were, I must have said a hundred times, I'm not going anywhere.
I'm not going anywhere where we are meant to do this together.
What made you so sure?
May I ask, like, where was that conviction?
Where did it come from?
I think that even through our hardest times, I always held this image of us that I felt like already existed on the horizon, and always saw that picture and just didn't know how we got there.
What was the picture?
Was it an actual picture, like an actual image?
That's really interesting.
I think it was honestly, in part knowing this other side of Andrea that was like without anxiety and fear.
And then because of that, I just always knew that Andrea could get to a place of total alignment between who they wanted to be in the world and who they consistently were.
And after I told them I wasn't going anywhere and it was in a week's time that they were doing surgery and being diagnosed with cancer, but the next morning I felt like they were already in that alignment.
Wow.
So one night, one sleep, basically, I mean, to put it that way.
And then you woke up and it was... Was it a different... Andrea, was it a different you?
I mean, I'm just trying to... What was the change, the shift that you noted?
It was like we woke up unknowing each other.
We woke up not holding on to versions of the other, but almost like who is this person that I get to spend this time with?
And this sort of brand new feeling, but it was better than a brand new feeling.
It was actually better than falling in love with somebody initially to fall in love with your partner who you've been with for six years.
It was the most incredible feeling.
This happens at a time in your relationship where you know there are masses inside of Andrea's body, but you don't yet know what those masses are.
I mean, I find it remarkable that you wake up that morning and you're excited, delighted.
There's a fresh feeling.
There's a new feeling.
And yet then you said there's a surgery a week later.
Is that what it is?
And then the diagnosis is confirmed?
Yeah.
And to be really clear with this, what was the diagnosis that...
Andrea received?
Ovarian cancer.
If anyone's in the oncology world looking for the technical term, it was high-grade, serious ovarian cancer, stage 2B.
For those not in that world, how did you understand that diagnosis?
How was it explained to you two?
Well, I have a filter that everything goes through, which I think is the filter of best possible light, and I think Andrea had not always had that filter and I think, for some ways, that is probably what brought us together.
I understood it to be the most common ovarian cancer, that it was the one that responded best to chemotherapies, And I was pretty hopeful in the beginning, very hopeful in the beginning, that Andrea would have this surgery that they had already had and that we would go through the six cycles of chemotherapy and it would be in the past after, which is not what happened.
How did Andrea understand the diagnosis?
You say you had different filters.
I...
Honestly, Andrea went into almost an awakened state at that time.
And I don't know that Andrea was actually that interested or curious in what the diagnosis was, but so excited to be alive and feeling what they were feeling and There was one moment where you know they would say I might die soon.
And I said Andrea, I don't know that you really think that, because I mean, why aren't you bungee jumping?
Why aren't we... Prove it.
If you think you're going to die, we should be on an island in Greece, obviously.
Instead of in Colorado, where we live.
Damn, yeah.
And they paused for a moment and said...
I don't care to do any of that.
I am doing what has always been on the top of my bucket list in this life, which is to live with an open heart and to live without worry and fear and blame, and just be in this present moment.
I'm doing exactly what I've always wanted in this life.
I mean, how do you respond to that?
What did that mean to you?
How did you hold that?
I mean, did you just go on a walk or make mac and cheese?
How do you live?
You know what I mean?
How did you continue to live life?
I don't know.
How did you respond when they said stuff like that?
I had a lot of moments of just feeling great reverence for Andrea.
Just feeling lucky to be like in the of light that they were trailing.
I went skydiving myself with my mom.
So you did the bungee jumping, understood.
Yeah.
And Andrea did not go.
Andrea watched from the ground and cheered for me as I came down.
I don't think that they were.
We had very different nervous systems and I don't know that there's needed to jump out of a plane to get the rush that mine did.
You know, earlier in the conversation we were speaking about the early stages of your relationship.
You know we had this amazing scene on the dance floor with the sweat and the.
You know the physical connection, the sexual connection between the two of you.
How did your intimacy evolve or change with this diagnosis?
Well, one thing that was really interesting is Andrea went through the kinds of chemo where you lose your hair and lose your eyebrows and your eyelashes and to the world you are looking ill.
And there were so many times where somebody would stop us and like ask if they could pray for us or something.
And I would feel shocked because you know Andrew would have a hat on and I would draw some eyebrows on their face.
And I was like, you look good, babe.
Like I would be...
I would be shocked because I was just seeing them glow and just seeing their beauty.
And even when Andrea lost their hair, I remember I was like, oh, now I can see more of you.
And so our Yeah.
In a lot of ways, I mean, this is different toward the very end of their life, when their body was.
But in a lot of ways our intimacy increased because we somehow felt like we were blessed with the chemicals of the beginning.
But then there was like the deep trust there as well.
Did your sex get better after the diagnosis?
I mean, better is a tough word, but were you enjoying it more after the diagnosis?
It felt like...
I mean, I'll be honest, it was always great.
But I will say it felt more like... I don't know, like a depth of the experience.
It wasn't just sex, but like a real understanding of touching into the eternity.
And then two very mortal bodies.
And I mean the chemicals in your brain right released during sex.
Birth and death are similar or the same.
And yeah, I just wonder if there was a touching into at those times the energy, that all energy but an awareness of the energy that can't be destroyed, or what was between us that wouldn't be able to be taken in a heightened moment like that.
And also the vulnerability on Andrea's part of.
I'd felt vulnerable about my body for a long time but to be like bald and thin and have a port coming out of your chest and I couldn't kiss Andrea the first five days after chemo because they were noxious with medicine that the oncology nurses would wear a hazmat suit to pump directly into their veins.
And we weren't supposed to share a toilet because their backsplash of their pee could be toxic to me, but they're pulsing with it.
There's a vulnerability there that...
I never actually acknowledged with Andrea in this life, so I hope that they're listening.
Oh my gosh, me too.
While you and Andrea are navigating this diagnosis, the treatment, the many treatments, you were being followed by a film crew filming the documentary that would ultimately become Come See Me in the Good Light.
And as I watched that, this film, I was struck by how steady you seemed.
You were a real source of hope.
I mean, you self-described as an optimistic person.
You were really a rock for Andrea.
And I wonder, like, did you ever feel not so rock-like?
Did you ever feel unsteady or unable to show up for Andrea in the way that they needed?
I think my disposition, while I ultimately believe it was exactly what was right and needed for the journey, I do wonder if sometimes it made Andrea feel lonely, to despair or worry alone.
Not that they were alone, but that it might have felt like that.
Because my way is not to worry about anything unless it's directly in front of me and happening.
And I don't spend much, if any, time in what if this bad thing happens.
Say we're waiting on the blood results to find out if their cancer is growing or shrinking.
In those days, my mind isn't making its worried preparations of what if it's this, what if it's this?
It's just when we open it, we'll know what it is, and then we'll do from there.
And while the first year of Andrea's diagnosis was that enlightenment, that slipped some.
And then what happened was after that.
Rather than having this moment of grace and awakening, they now had a barometer for where they wanted to be and would always actively try to get there or be there and be really disappointed when they weren't feeling that.
That's so interesting.
It's almost like you two had set an example for yourselves how to move through this with light and hopefulness and love.
And then, of course, when you can't always reach that Mark, you're saying that Andrea would get frustrated at themselves for not being this enlightened hopeful, huh.
And how would you try to help them return to that level or?
Yeah, Andrea's, the way Andrea would say it is, I just want to be in the palm of God.
Yeah, okay.
That was doable, yeah.
Or they'd be like I'm not.
I can feel that I'm not in the palm of God right now and I just want to return.
It's pressure.
Yeah.
It's a lot of pressure.
It did put pressure.
Yeah.
I would try multiple things.
I think some days I would say, you know, like I understand we've set this example for ourselves and sometimes you just need a day to fall apart or give up or like why don't you take off those damn boots and jeans and put on some sweatpants and get to bed?
And just like, let it, you know.
And then other times I would say, get in the car, we're going on a drive.
It's Andrew's favorite thing to do.
We're going to go see something beautiful.
And I would watch their perspective shift often returning to nature.
But they had so many of their own tools to get there, whether that was listening to The Untethered Soul by Michael Singer or Eckhart Tolle, or this Hawaiian prayer, which is just the repetition of thank you, I love you, I'm sorry, please forgive me.
Sometimes they'd just listen to that for hours and they had a million ways that they'd find their way back to the present.
Did you feel like you had space to be...
I don't know, angry or mopey or sad?
Or did you feel like you had to sort of carry the hopefulness or the optimism for both of you?
I absolutely would have had space to feel anything.
Andrea just, that was sort of their big message in the world.
I mean, they sold t-shirts that said, feelings are not the enemy.
Yeah. they definitely encouraged always everybody's feeling.
And I think sometimes they worried with me that I was perhaps pushing feelings down or avoiding or in denial.
And I still don't know the answer to that.
I don't know the difference necessarily between being in denial and being in the present moment.
Wow, say that again.
I don't necessarily know the difference between being in denial or just being in the present moment.
How do you figure that out?
Really?
No, I just, I mean... I imagine that it would be hard to find joy in denial.
I don't know that you dance through denial or you laugh through denial.
I think denial seems like something that would be... busier or more distracted than I felt.
And I will say like days when, you know, with the bone metastasis it was very hard for Andrea to walk and they were in pain, and those were days where I was really scared and I was really sad.
But on the days when they felt good, and we were, like, choreographing to Chapel Roan, or I...
I didn't go there.
And I think that would have been If Andrea and I had any arguments during.
Of course we had arguments during cancer, but that would be the basis of them.
And in some ways I think that they were worried for me that if I didn't pre-grieve them, that when they died I would be ill-equipped to handle the reality, if I didn't spend a ton of time in my head preparing for what it would be like if they were no longer here and almost like mentally running the lines of that story.
And that isn't what happened for me.
Uh, I feel like, had I worried the whole time, or had I constantly ruminated about they could die, what will it look like if they do?
I would have had so much more regret than I do because I would have been robbing myself of so many beautiful moments together, just truly living.
We'll be right back.
I tell one story?
Oh my goodness, you don't even have to ask permission.
So, Andrea died really over the course of three days.
When the hospice nurses told us that Andrea would be sedated, my understanding of sedation was out of pain, woozy and out of it.
I did not know that sedated meant essentially without words and pretty non-responsive, with rare moments of consciousness.
This was devastating to me.
It resonated as a robbery.
I felt like, had I known what was going to start happening, I would have initiated some conversations both about what was happening and A proper goodbye.
How will you visit me?
How will I know it's you?
Conversations that maybe Andrea wanted to have before the last three days of their life, but it wasn't in front of me yet.
And now that it was, I was ready to talk about it and they couldn't.
And see, that's an image there aren't adjectives for.
However, within a couple of hours of realizing we weren't going to have that final conversation, I got a text message from our friend, the musician Chris Parica, saying that Andrea had written the lyrics to a song.
It was a love song for me about their death.
And Chris had recorded it and sent it to music.
And sent it to me in that moment.
Oh, my God.
Andrea hadn't heard it either.
And I just kept playing it for both of us.
But the lyrics were essentially the conversation that I would have wanted us to have.
The first lyrics are, hold down the fort, because I've got to go.
Light on the water will carry me somehow.
Don't say goodbye.
Forever's not too far.
The other side's just a stone's throw from love and you've got a great arm.
It's a beautiful song.
It's called Hold Down the Fort.
The refrain is, I had it all, I had you.
I had it all, I had you.
And so I already, I think, felt like Andrew is in this liminal space between this world and that.
And they're already finding these magical ways to communicate with me and to give me what I need, even as their body's unable to give anything but its last bits to death.
Thank you for sharing that.
Thank you.
I mean I wonder what it's like to be ostensibly.
I mean you tell me, but in the bed that you shared.
I mean, there's all these places that they are not now.
You know, Andrea died in our bed.
They died with me like, pressed up against their face, and their mom at their back and their father at her back.
And four of their ex-girlfriends at their feet and a couple of people they didn't make out with but were good friends.
And the night after the first night I slept in bed without them.
I intentionally switched to sleeping on their side of the bed.
I didn't like the idea of looking over and seeing them missing.
And that's where I've stayed.
I have their boots beside me on my desk.
I have their ashes probably in each room.
And I realized, so back to Hedgebrook, I guess.
Back we go to the colony of artist women.
When I was there the last day that I was there, And I still hadn't had any visitations from them.
But again, maybe I was there to find myself.
But I spread some of their ashes in this clearing of trees where they had built a wooden desk amongst the trees.
And I just knew that Andrea would love that spot, that writing desk in the woods.
That's got, you know, pine needles scattered all across it the way like nature's pens and post-its.
And I laid Andrea's ashes on the desk and also at the roots of some of the trees in that clearing.
And I thought about them almost fertilizing the poetry of the writers who would sit there after me and had the thought that maybe it's not about finding Andra everywhere I go, but bringing them everywhere I go.
Then maybe this is the wrong question to follow up with.
But who are you learning you are?
I was going to say without them, but you tell me if that's the right way to put that question.
Yeah.
You know, I think I'm really comforted by the idea of energy not being created or destroyed, because Andrew has boundless energy.
I used to call them Energizer Gibby.
We had learned that exercising throughout cancer increased your likelihood of survivorship.
Andrew is like jumping on the trampoline.
They're lifting weights, weights like these days where anyone else would just stay in bed, but they're saying like movement, resistance training, this stuff will help you feel better after chemo, could help you live longer and literally like they would look so undercooked and destroyed from a chemo and then they'd be playing Justin Bieber and like pulling dumbbells out of their pocket out of nowhere.
I'm like what is?
They had so much energy, so much creative life force.
You could see a scene in the movie.
We don't say what they're doing, but I'm icing their hands and feet with mittens so that they don't get neuropathy and their fingers and toenails don't fall off.
And they cut a tiny hole in the mittens so that they could use one finger to type a poem on their phone together during these chemo sessions where everyone else and why wouldn't you be is like zoning out on their iPad.
Like they wouldn't check out ever.
They wouldn't turn off.
And so my feeling now is that, you know, and I felt DeAndrea's heart stop beneath my hands.
Like I was right there.
And my hope is that some of that boundless energy is now in me.
It reminds me of something you've said, which is you hope that for the rest of your life, people will look at you and see Andrea.
I wonder what you mean by that.
I don't want to be separated from this story.
I don't feel like... It's like, who am I outside of Andrea and our relationship?
I feel like this is my marrow, this is stitched into my spine, this is my new genetic makeup and I will, of course, carry this into everything that I do and I feel, I mean as a fairly young person.
I'm 37 now.
Andrew is almost 50 to carry the uh And I feel a lot of gratitude for that.
You know I read for a while that you fell asleep listening to a recording of Andrea reading a poem that they wrote for you called Love Letter from the Afterlife.
Is that something that you still—is that something you still do?
There's a video recording of Andrea reading the poem to me.
We're just sitting in our yard, like cross-legged with our dogs frolicking around us.
But there's what moves me most about the video.
I mean, the poem is gorgeous and I'll share it, but what moves me most about the video is Andrea seems almost shy and nervous to read it to me.
And there's just something so sweet in it.
And yeah, I have, Many nights have fallen asleep watching that.
I would be very honored if you would share this poem with us right now.
Let me pull it up.
Okay.
Love Letter from the Afterlife My love.
I was so wrong.
Dying is the opposite of leaving.
When I left my body, I did not go away.
That portal of light was not a portal to elsewhere, but a portal to here.
I am more here than I ever was before.
I am more with you than I ever could have imagined.
So close you look past me when wondering where I am.
It's okay.
I know that to be human is to be farsighted.
But feel me now walking the chambers of your heart, pressing my palms to the soft walls of your living.
Why did no one tell us that to die is to be reincarnated in those we love while they are still alive?
Ask me the altitude of heaven and I will answer, how tall are you?
In my back pocket is a love note with every word you wish you'd said.
At night I sit ecstatic at the loom, weaving forgiveness into our worldly regrets.
All day I listen to the radio of your memories.
Yes, I know every secret you thought too dark to tell me and love you more for everything you feared might make me love you less.
When you cry, I guide your tears toward the garden of kisses I once planted on your cheek, so you know they are all perennials.
Forgive me for not being able to weep with you.
One day you will understand.
One day you will know why.
I read the poetry of your grief to those waiting to be born, and they are all the more excited.
There is nothing I want for now that we are so close.
I open the curtain of your eyelids with my own smile every morning.
I wish you could see the beauty your spirit is right now making of your pain.
Your deep-seated fears, playing musical chairs, laughing about how real they are.
Not my love, I want to sing it through the rafters of your bones dying is the opposite of leaving.
I want to echo it through the corridor of your temples.
I am more with you than I ever was before.
Do you understand?
It was me who beckoned the stranger who caught you in her arms when you forgot not to order for two at the coffee shop.
It was me who was up all night gathering sunflowers into your chest the last day you feared you would never again wake up feeling lighthearted.
I know it's hard to believe, but I promise it's the truth.
I promise one day you will say it too.
I can't believe I ever thought I could lose you.
Oh my god.
Thank you for reading that.
Thank you.
You know what I wish?
I wish that every time someone asked you, how are you, you could read them this poem in full or infuse it into their body and into their mind.
It is such a beautiful poem.
It really is.
And I mean it's reduced me to a lot of tears in the studio and I cannot imagine if this was written for me.
I mean, what a... I do think it was written for you.
Like I do really think Andrea had in their consciousness.
Yes, I am the person that allowed them to access these feelings, but I think that it was really written for anyone who's lost somebody to be able to give voice to there.
I think they knew.
And thank you, Andrea Gibson.
I mean, really, I mean it.
Thank you, Andrea Gibson.
And thank you, Megan Valli.
The Modern Love team is Amy Pearl, Christina Josa Davis Land, Elisa Gutierrez, Emily Lang, Jen Poyant, Lynn Levy, Reva Goldberg and Sarah Curtis.
This episode was produced by Sarah Curtis.
It was edited by Lynn Levy.
Original music in this episode by Marion Lozano, Rowan Nemisto, Pat McCusker, and Dan Powell.
Dan also composed our theme music.
This episode was mixed by Daniel Ramirez, with studio support from Matty Macielo and Nick Pittman.
The Modern Love column is edited by Daniel Jones.
Mia Lee is the editor of Modern Love Projects.
If you'd like to submit an essay or a tiny love story to The New York Times, we've always got the instructions in our show notes.
And if you want to hear the song that Megan was talking about during our conversation, it's called Hold Down the Fort and it's by Chris Parika.
We'll put a link to that in our show notes as well.
I'm Anna Martin.
Thanks for listening.
