Illustration by Alina Martinez
You are 107 miles away from my new apartment. It’s a two-bedroom, six-floor walk-up, ten blocks from the last place we said goodbye. My new room is decorated with pictures of you. Your pictures have become wallpaper, both on my phone and in my room. Your old clothes hang in my closet. They keep me warm some nights, but mostly, they keep me sad.
107 miles. Sometimes I walk further downtown and the distance increases, sometimes I walk uptown and the distance shrinks. But, that’s only a measurement. It doesn’t matter where I am, there is always a distance between us. Even when I visit you.
I take the same train that I always took to see you. I am rushing—of course—down the platform, trying to make the 7:21 p.m. express. I weave and bob around New York’s new arrivals, breaking up families and couples in my way.
The noise is faint at first, not loud enough to compete with the loud voices that shout greetings, goodbyes, and swears. I only begin to really hear it as I get closer to the doors—closer to you.
Grand Central is 108 miles away from you but you haven’t sounded this close to me in so long. Your laugh, it’s so lively, it—
I stop and turn to see if you are right behind me. I shouldn’t be disappointed when I see you aren’t there. I shouldn’t have even bothered to look. I just miss you.
An uptight businessman bumps into me, and yells that I am the reason we are going to miss the train.
I am not missing two things today.
I turn to the closest train door and hop in. I am met with a crowd. I still feel alone.
I’m forced to stand next to the man who yelled at me so I make a mindless, off-hand joke. He huffs and puts his earbuds in. You would have laughed at my joke. I put my face against the cold window and sigh.
The train holds memories. The fifth car holds the memory of our first adventure in the city. The tenth car holds the memory of when I shoved my camera in your face only to snap away when you stuck your tongue out at me. The eighth car holds the memory of when I texted you about how excited I was to come home to you. The last car holds the memory of me reaching for my phone to text you, but stopping short of hitting send. You won’t answer my texts. Not anymore.
Memories aren’t the only things that this train has held. It holds me when I cry, something you used to do.
But I’m not crying on this trip. I made a promise to myself not to cry. So, I take my head off the glass door and stand up straight. I’m not going to cry, I’m not going to cry, I repeat as my eyes water. A random old lady sees me—it’s always a random old lady with kind hearted eyes and lipstick on her teeth—and reaches for a tissue she has in her bag. My face turns the shade of her lipstick. I shake my head no furiously, I’m fine, but she doesn’t believe me and she shouldn’t. She makes two strangers pass the tissues down to me. A man in his mid-thirties gets up from his seat and gestures for me to sit. I politely tell him that I don’t need a seat, but the businessman who yelled at me and wouldn’t laugh at my joke also won’t take no for an answer. I try to stand firm in my choice as the group around me keeps telling me to sit down. A decision is made for me when the train takes a sharp turn and pushes me into the empty seat.
The moment I sit down, I start crying and I don’t stop until my stop is announced.
I immediately stand and retake my stance of not crying on this trip, another lie I tell myself. As I walk towards the exit, the train speeds up to meet its mark at the platform. I stand in front of the door motionless. Fairfield welcomes me back with flashbacks of you waiting for my arrival. I can see you as clearly as I heard you an hour and 38 minutes ago. We lock eyes and your grin expands as you take off after my car, attempting to meet me at my door. I hear you laugh again, running just as they taught you in the Army. Left-right-left. You make me laugh with your exaggerated style that would have gotten you in trouble years ago when you were tortured with running their mandatory eight miles a day. Now, your stomach is bigger and your black hair has thinned, showcasing small gray highlights, but you still have that boyish smile.
The train stops, and so do you. I tap my right foot nervously out of habit as I wait for the doors to open. You are being dramatic, breathing heavily. A smile that matches yours appears on my face. You open your arms as the train opens its door—you disappear and so does my smile.
I wait for Alyssa for twenty minutes. I never waited for you. You were always there.
Now you are 57.3 miles away from me.
Alyssa pulls up right beside me as I notice a dad greet his daughter. Her car horn scares me out of my gloom. I look at her and she gives me a weak smile. I return it. I hop into her oversized truck and give her a hug. She returns it. We hold each other a little longer than usual and when we separate, she can tell that I have been crying. She doesn’t mention it.
She does mention her job, a show that she is binge-watching, and the new waiter at the local diner. She hits a curb when we head out of the train station. Her driving skills are still the same.
There are a lot of things in Connecticut that are still the same. The smell of the Charter Oak trees, the speed limit, the stop-and-go traffic on I-95 heading north. We take the same route home and stare at the same billboards that haven’t changed since 2013. Everything feels the same, but I don’t.
I feel empty—Alyssa’s gas meter echoes the sentiment—so we turn into the Stop & Shop gas station close to home. Alyssa pumps fuel into the truck while I head into the store to pick up the last minute grocery list that mom texted us.
I walk up and down aisle three, searching for mom’s favorite chips, pushing the filled cart while also pushing away the memories of you. This isn’t the first time I’ve walked this aisle without you and it won’t be the last aisle I walk down without you.
I choose to self-check out so I don’t have to explain my quivering lip. The robotic cash register voice reminds me to take my receipt as I pick up my heavy baggage.
We are a two-minute drive to our house. While my apartment attempts to keep you alive, mom has buried you twice. Once, three Decembers ago, and the second, two months later when she buried your clothes and her grief in boxes. We placed those across town in a storage unit and we placed you 46.1 miles away from us.
That is only 47 minutes by car. That is one episode of Blue Bloods. Two episodes of The Goldberg’s. A whole Al Green album.
“Let’s Stay Together” plays throughout the house over the Bose speaker as we finish our late dinner. I fall into your old routine of late night chores, and although mom doesn’t acknowledge the similarities, she acknowledges the help. She plasters on a fake smile as we tell her our plans to visit you tomorrow. We already know the answer, but we still ask if she wants to come.
So much for staying together.
We depart to our own rooms.
The walls are thin. I hear mom’s Hallmark movies playing, I hear Alyssa’s video game sound effects, and I know they hear me crying. Their volumes increase as I try to lower mine.
In the morning, mom increases her volume so much while talking to grandma that I wake up groggy and angry. I wear a death stare as she greets me with a smile. I change out of that and into one of your old ratty work shirts that I packed. Mom gives me a quick once over and closes her door. She doesn’t say goodbye to me, but she always has another chance to. She’s lucky like that.
Alyssa speeds on the highway and I can’t help but wonder if she is trying to get this over with just like me.
We drive over that small overpass that bridges the gap from exit 22N to Silver street—it doesn’t bridge the gap between us even though you are just one mile away from me.
My heart rate speeds up as Alyssa slows down and makes a right turn into Connecticut State Veteran’s Cemetery.
You brought me to Yankees games, you brought smiles to my face, but most importantly, you always brought me peace. I never thought that the idea of visiting you would bring me unease.
Alyssa brought your favorite drink for you two to share. She goes first, and it brings back the same sibling jealousy that I had when I was younger. She has all of your attention as I stare off in the background. The cold wind forces my arms to wrap around myself and I sit further back on the bench, keeping my distance.
Alyssa kisses your tombstone and hides her face as she makes her way back to me.
I stand up.
I’m one yard from you.
Two feet.
One foot.
When my feet stand right above you, staring directly at your tombstone, I automatically lie down on top of you.
Growing up, my favorite place in the world was on top of you. Smothering your face with kisses, taking naps on your lap on long car rides home, squeezing my arms and legs around you so tight, begging you not to leave me.
I didn’t beg you to stay in the hospital.
I’d told you to “go” so many times before that night in the hospital. I yelled the word at you when I was an upset teenager, I laughed the statement at you when you kept pulling me back for more kisses on my first days of school, I whispered it at you when my friends were coming close and I didn’t want you to embarrass me, but I commanded you to do it at the hospital.
You didn’t follow my order right away. But you were always messing up lunch orders, forgetting about certain sales orders at work, and you didn’t follow orders from the Army when they denied you days off, so it’s no surprise you didn’t follow mine.
It was a surprise the first time you beat cancer. Doctors prepared for major surgery while you prepared to be around for my graduation. You told me you had places to be with me, adventures to have with me, so you couldn’t leave me just yet.
Yet came six years later. You saw me graduate. You saw me move from place to place. You saw enough, you did enough, I told you as I held your hand in the hospital. I told you, you have places to be without me, adventures to have without me, so you can go.
Your life was in your hands as I held your hand. You gave me one final squeeze and even though you wouldn’t let go—I did.
I took a giant step back and put distance between us.
I try to live my life as you would: with joy, with love, with at least one hot chocolate a day. I try to keep going—something you couldn’t do. I try to fill the empty space with more than four feet of cemetery dirt
But it doesn’t matter how hard I try. It doesn’t matter if I’m laying on top of you here or if I am 107 miles away. It doesn’t matter if I make you my wallpaper on my phone or wear your old clothes at night. I could tell a million stories about you, I could tattoo your handwriting on my body.
It doesn’t matter how hard I try to still feel close to you—all I feel is distance.