being left behind

It took me a plate of rice, an argentine soy burger, a whole bottle of water and a few cups of mate to realize that the emptiness in my stomach wasn’t from the oatmeal I had for breakfast.

The oatmeal turned out to be the last meal I ate with Jeremy before he left to the airport. After two going-away parties, a few last suppers, many pleas that he stay, and tears from various pairs of eyes, Jeremy left Buenos Aires this afternoon. He spent 316 days here, less a few in Uruguay and a couple weeks in the United States.


Now he’s on his way to New York, where he’ll go on immediately to arrive at last to Boston, where he will pass the next three years at Harvard Law.

Now I do understand how it feels to be left, to be the one who stays behind. When I left Philadelphia to come here, it was of course hard to say goodbye to all my friends and workmates. But when you leave someplace, you leave behind all the people who belong in that place. On Newmarket Street, I left my neighbors Dan and Susan and two huge dogs; on Baltimore Ave., Anna and Cary; and in my work I left more friends than I can say. When I arrived to Buenos Aires, I didn’t expect to find Dan on the “Avenida de Mayo"; I didn’t wait to hear Anna’s voice singing in my new answering machine; and I didn’t hope to see Troy or Sarah running through the woods in the park in Palermo. People in my old haunts stayed there, where they belonged; even though I missed them here, they didn’t show up to haunt me.


But when somebody leaves, it’s different. Now I’ve learned that, though I wish I didn’t have to. For me, after these ten months, Jeremy belongs to Buenos Aires, in an apartment on Córdoba avenue, on the twelfth floor. And when I walk through the familiar downtown streets around his apartment, I can’t stop thinking that I should stop by and see what Jeremy’s doing tonight. I look at all the faces in the street, thinking that one could be Jeremy’s, ready to buy a bottle of wine, make some quick pasta and watch Resistiré one more time. And I call my voicemail, *123#, to see if he’s called. But now the response will be, more than before, “Welcome! You… have not received… NO new messages.”

Now I do understand what it’s like to be left behind. I feel the emptiness in my stomach. And I don’t like it one bit.

previously there was The Margarita Belén memorial
afterwards you have Underground nerd

comments

• navigate
• « previous item
• next item »
• present
• past
• weblog
• chronicles
• images
• content
• herald timeline
• subway bg
• etcetera
• about
• colophon
• cambiar idioma