i carry your heart with me

Mary Coffey Overholser, 1947-1970

40 years is a long time to remember. A long time to save letters from someone. There are some people, though, you never forget. Mary Overholser was one of my dearest friends from the time I met her in 1963 until she died seven years later, in a car accident. I suspect that everyone who knew her felt the same. She was a friend's friend--loyal, compassionate, kind. She was also intelligent, inquisitive, full of life, down-to-earth, and other-worldly. Beautiful inside and out. I can still hear her laugh, after all these years.

In a letter to her mother two months she died, I wrote that my friendship with Mary had not been severed by her death, merely transformed: "Mary always made my mind feel W-I-D-E and now it feels even wider. I frankly cannot help believing that anything is possible."

To another friend I wrote, "I am still formulating my thoughts on her absence, death, disappearance - it's almost like she went off somewhere and forgot to tell us she was going. But I can't fool myself - she's dead. -- But you know how her mind worked - for instance, if I say The fact is: Mary is dead, I consider that awhile; then I can see that twinkle in her eyes and hear that laugh that meant she was seeing one step ahead and was waiting for me to catch up. And I wonder: as always, Mary knows something I don't know and she's having a damned good time about it."

When someone dies young, they never grow old, so Mary will always be on the cusp of life. She still pops into my mind occasionally, especially around the time of the Winter Solstice, which is when the van she was riding in slid on the ice and flipped. Coming home for the holidays, from film-making school in the northeast. She was the only one not wearing a seat belt; not because of carelessness, but because there weren't enough to go around, and someone needed to volunteer. Mary was like that.

I once saw her eyes in the eyes of a young autistic artist, and thought, "Mary reincarnated?" I laughed at the idea--God asking for a volunteer to come back as an autistic child; Mary not hesitating for a second, but raising a wing and shouting, "Me, me! That sounds so exciting!" Which, it if were true, would explain the child's extraordinary artistic ability.

Mary visited me again today when I read e. e. cummings' poem on Patti Digh's blog, 37 Days. Mary loved cummings, and quoted him frequently. Her poetry reflected his influence. My life reflects her influence.

I will always carry her heart in mine.

i carry your heart with me(i carry it in
my heart)i am never without it(anywhere
i go you go,my dear; and whatever is done
by only me is your doing,my darling)
i fear
no fate(for you are my fate,my sweet)i want
no world(for beautiful you are my world,my true)
and it's you are whatever a moon has always meant
and whatever a sun will always sing is you

here is the deepest secret nobody knows
(here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud
and the sky of the sky of a tree called life;which grows
higher than the soul can hope or mind can hide)
and this is the wonder that's keeping the stars apart

i carry your heart(i carry it in my heart)

e. e. cummings