Dear Christine

I scrolled through your Facebook for the first time after six years. Today, you would’ve been twenty-nine years old, long graduated from UC Davis with a degree in biology and deep in med school to help sick children. You would have still been dancing and performing with friends on the weekends—I know you would’ve made time outside of school for the things you love because life is just as brief as a performance.

Do you miss dancing? The length of your arms seemed to extend further than possible with every tug and pull of your body to the sway of the music. Even though you were the shortest performer on your team, you conquered the floor with sashays and leaps bigger than your body. Your long black hair would swish back and forth, front and back so elegantly yet fiercely that it made me want to grow my then short hair out so I could do the same. Who knew that you were so timid and shy outside of the performance?

Do you still remember me? I was just as shy and awkward as you were when we both hesitantly said, “Hi—I love your show” backstage before our separate competing dance groups were scheduled to go up. We never exchanged names, but I knew who you were because you were that amazing. We’d always secretly seek each other out and make eye contact with an excited smile, waving bashfully from afar. I remember once you still performed with your right arm in a sling and how you still waved at me awkwardly with your left arm.

Did it hurt? When you were rushed into the emergency room because of your lupus breakout, did it hurt? You’ve had lupus since you were twelve, and you’ve had to make frequent trips to the hospital over the next decade. Was it scary when the doctors told your twelve year old self that it was terminal? I heard from hushed, rumored whispers of mutual friends and fellow dancers that your last words to your mother was, “Mommy, I’m scared” before being taken away in nothing but a hospital gown, feet bare and dirtied from a night of dancing on cold, polished wood.

Did you get my letters? I sent them up to you monthly for the first two years you were gone. I chose your favorite colors (orange and purple) for the balloons when I let them go, small notes addressed to you attached to the white string. I tried to keep you updated on the happenings down below even though I was sure you could see everything from up above. It’s still nice to think that you are reading every word I write, even if all that paper, plastic, and rubber end up somewhere in an empty field or swallowed up by a sea mammal in the Pacific Ocean.

Did you get my late friend request on Facebook? I should have done it sooner when you were still here, but I was too awkward and shy with a dash of suicidal-tendencies to have even cared to try. I sent you a long message on the day I saw all of the “rest in peace” plastered on your social media. I kept sending you messages until life got too busy, and you probably got too busy up there too.

Do you know that the only people who post on your Facebook wall now are your family? Your mother and sisters miss you so much. They just found that stuffed penguin named “Henri” that you were so fond of. They wanted to let you know that Henri the penguin will be in good hands. They gave him to your boyfriend.

Do you miss your boyfriend? Did you know that he’s moved on? Do you think he still loves you?—I do. I think he still keeps some kind of picture of you near him, away from his current girlfriend like you are some kind of secret goddess that he still worships. Did you see his performance piece to you an entire year after you were gone? He asked you to marry him in a recorded song as he danced around a framed portrait of your forever memorialized, smiling face. Everyone in the audience was crying—I was too. I think I was ugly crying the hardest out of all the strangers in the crowd.

How long does it take to stop mourning the loss of a person?

Are you dancing up there? Did you keep your hair long and flowing? Or did you cut it cropped and short to represent the new beginnings of a maybe afterlife?

Are you still there?

I’m not sure if you’re there at all anymore. You probably disintegrated into stardust long ago, particles of you dancing in the cosmic wind like how your hair would sway and defy gravity when you danced. You’re no longer here anymore, and that’s okay. I think remnants of you dispersed along with what few words I had left for you a few years ago. The feelings of depression and mourning were still so fresh when you passed that it made articulating how I felt about your passing and how I saw others felt about your death so easy to express.

I’m not sure whom I’m writing to anymore. All of the letters and balloons I’ve sent you must have landed in someone’s backyard or somewhere littered in the ocean in a poor whale’s belly. All of the messages I’d send you on social media have been left forever unopened and unread, even by the person managing your account. Despite these failed attempts at communication I still felt some amount of comfort writing and sending it somewhere to someone—even if that someone was dead.