"Love, Love, Love, and Fields of Red-Poppy Kisses"

In the eighties, I was wild about Paloma Picasso perfume and wore it all the time. My best friend Sam loved it, too, and told me that he wanted a bottle for the 24th birthday that he would not live to see.

Years later, I drove to Arlington on the May 13 that would have been his 31st his birthday. It was a Saturday. I had not thought of the fact that, because it was a Jewish cemetery, it would be closed. I convinced a groundskeeper to let me in. He drove me in on some sort of tractor, chatting blandly all the while to someone on a walkie-talkie. I sat under the tree and talked to Sam. Before I left, I poured a huge bottle of Paloma next to the grave. I watched it pool into the enormous tree roots before disappearing into the muddy ground.

Surrealistically, I received a letter from Sam about six months later, thanks to the Italian postal system in the mid-80's. The letter had been written in Venice. What has always stayed with me was the ending:

"I don't know what my destiny is or where I will go next. I miss you and your happiness so much and I hope to see you soon. Right now, I feel like Uncle Wiggly, Gentleman Rabbit, lost in the beautiful woods where he lives. Love, love, love, and fields of red poppy kisses. Sam"

Ever since, that image has been my picture of the afterlife: gentle people wandering aimlessly in a beautiful wood, missing the people who aren't there.

And I suppose the red poppy kisses are the opium of memory: standing beside you in the silence or quietly circling the heart -dreamlike, alive and well, traveling freely from this realm to the next.