A Kiss Under The Kismet Tree

Chapter Seven - My Decision

With Cary's letter held limply between my fingers, I stare down at both the invitation and his business card that now lie on the pull-down desk of my old mahogany bureau.

Could I?

Should I?

Would I?

I only ever imagined myself going to visit Woodstock in New England, in order to meet with Sara. Knowing that I'll be going there only because she has now died, is just so unbelievably sad. And yet, there's a part of me that feels like it would be a lovely way to bid a final goodbye to my sweet and talented friend.

Sara and I met via an online poetry group. We both enjoyed penning poetic prose and rhyming verse. I tend to write far more rawly, emotionally dipped in reality and my thoughts.

But Sara, she wrote with honest humour and laugh out loud narratives. Although we had never met, our words connected us almost immediately. It was during a conversation about how the art of letter writing seemed to sadly now be so out of fashion, that myself and Sara decided to rectify that. We made a deal with one another – we could write our poems online, but anything else that we wanted to say to one another, we had to write it down in a letter.

For nearly four years, we did just that. Back and forth our letters went between Woodstock, New England and Bridport in Dorset.

We even knew what one another looked like, because we once sent each other a photograph of ourselves after almost a year of our letter writing. Sara had wrote to me, saying that it was ridiculous that she didn't even know what I looked like, even though I knew the size of her feet and her underwear. Which was true. We told each other a lot. We shared our lives with one another, only we did it via a handwritten letter...seriously, we had written about everything!

So, I remember digging out a nice piccy of myself and posting it along with my next letter to her. When Sara's letter finally came, I couldn't wait to put a face to the person who had become such a dear and trusted friend to me. When I first saw that picture of Sara, I know I had smiled at it. Her hair was thickly long and dark, with bold purple balayage running right through it. Just like her hair, Sara was eye-catching. She had a small and pretty face, with the palest green eyes I had ever seen. Sara was twenty eight when she sent me that photograph, but there was an imp-like look about her, that made her look much younger than she actually was. But it was her confident closed-smile that really spoke to me. In that smile, I saw a woman who was perfectly happy with who she was. From Sara's letters, I knew that anyway, but when I saw her face, I only admired her even more for always choosing to follow her own path in life.

Sara was never interested in money and materialistic things. She often wrote about how she hated that the world was spinning for only wealth and war, slowly killing all of our humanity with such ugly greed. She was a deeply spiritual soul, who cared about people, animals and nature. Sara didn't want to be rich, she only wanted to be soulfully nourished. That's why she had her little shop. It was her professional sanctuary and her spiritual haven. Apparently her family didn't quite understand why she would give up the reliability of working as a pharmacist, to open up a New Age gift shop in her local town. But Sara's little shop had done surprisingly well over the years. It was full of all the things that Sara loved—crystals, minerals, fossils, incense, essential oils, salt lamps, healing jewellery, worry dolls and greeting cards—Little Piece Of Haven, it wonderfully had it all.

That shop was Sara's whole life.

She didn't just sell things there, she was also a Reiki practitioner and Crystal Therapist. In a tiny back room of her shop, Sara enjoyed restoring balance and wellbeing to those who needed it, using her gift for energy healing.

Being as I'm an Acupuncturist, it was just yet another thing that would bind our solid and effortless friendship together.

Inhaling a conflicted breath, I put down the thoughtful letter that Sara's brother has written to me, wondering whether it feels right for me to take up the kind offer of joining Sara's family for the Thanksgiving celebration that will honour her short but well-lived life. As I lift my head and begin staring out at nothing in particular, I have a short poem that Sara had once written to me, now strangely consuming my wandering thoughts. In my head, I can hear it so clearly being recited in my head. So loudly, so clearly, that I find myself searching for it in the pigeon hole storage compartments of my bureau. I sentimentally always kept it in here, because Sara had written it for my last birthday. Like I am supposed to find it, I recognise the Himalayan handmade paper that it had once been so sweetly written upon:

Friendship doesn't know time, it doesn't know distance too.

It has no awareness of the miles, that exist between me and you.

Time and distance doesn't matter, your friendship is in my heart.

The oceans and their oceanic winds, can't keep our friendship apart.

A kindred spirit you are, my sweet and British friend.

I am here and you are there, yet on each other we still depend.

Birthdays come once a year, but your friendship I feel each day.

All the way from Woodstock, HAVE A BLESSED ONE...is all I wanted to say.

At the end of the poem, Sara also wrote:

I swear, I'll get your British butt over here, if it's the last thing I do!!!

Your impatient friend, Sara x

It's her final sentence that deeply gets to me. It's like it's reaching right inside of me and drawing out all that I am questioning and worrying about.

What better way to feel closer to a friend that I'm still missing so much?

What better way to remember Sara and to pay my respects to our friendship?

What better way to honour her wishes?

.......go to Woodstock.