My Listener Has Died

If all had gone as planned, I would be preparing to walk down to my car and drive across town to a regular Wednesday appointment. A reminder from my phone’s calendar just rose into the center of the screen as though out of nowhere. As though from the dead.

When once I write about him, I told myself a few weeks after his death this past summer, I am that much closer to never writing about him again.

When once I write about the office and the routine and the chairs facing one another, I am that much closer to not needing to ever again.

When once I write, I am that much closer to silence.

When once I write, I am that much closer to a silence that no one, it seems, could possibly have a way to change.

Except…

He had been the one to write each Wednesday – quick occasional notes during session after session. Those notes have entered the silence for which they had seemed always to be destined.

The notes were not the substance – the listening was. I would look up. Because his writing was not constant, it caught my attention at those moments when he put pen to paper.

I hear now that three other clients of his have received in the mail the files he kept of just such notes. His family, it seems, is making an effort to get the session notes to the clients involved. They will not know where to send mine, however, unless I notify them of a change of address.

Our regular Wednesday session the last week of June fell exactly between the Monday when professional movers had been scheduled to clear my apartment and the Friday I needed to leave those rooms broom clean.

On that last Wednesday of June, a printed notice hung in one of the windows flanking the door to the office waiting room across town: “All appointments have been cancelled.”

I met the silence of the listener to whom nothing more can be said.

I feel like leaving those session notes in the same silence.