Hey everyone, it's Anna. Look, Thanksgiving is coming up already. I can hardly believe it. You can hardly believe it, but it's around the corner.

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Love now and fall in love. I love stronger than anything. For the love of love.

>> And I love you more than anything.

>> There's still love. Love

[Music] >> from the New York Times. I'm Anna Martin. This is Modern Love. Today I'm talking to Megan Fley. Fley is known as an award-winning poet and is the partner of the poet laurate of Colorado, Andrea Gibson.

This past July, Gibson died after 4 years of living with ovarian cancer. And I distinctly remember the day Andrea passed, my social media was flooded with all of these heartfelt tributes to them.

People reposting their poems, talking about what those poems meant to them, how they helped them in really dark times. It was so clear how much people felt this loss. And that made sense.

Andrea Gibson was all about feeling things and feeling them deeply. They even sold merch that said things like feelings are not the enemy. And in their time together, it seems like Andrea Gibson and Megan Fley explored just about every emotion two people can have together.

Andrea and Megan's deeply moving love story is the focus of a new documentary called Come See Me in the Good Light. And even though by the end of this movie I was really in tears, what hit me was just how much joy these two poets radiated.

On today's episode of Modern Love, I talked with Megan about what it was like to love fiercely, even when she knew she was going to lose, and how despite Andrea's passing, they are very much still here.

Megan Fley, welcome to Modern Love.

>> Thank you. I am really excited to be here.

Megan, you recently wrote an essay called Don't Ask a Widow This. And in it, you mention not wanting to be asked the question, which I was tempted to start the interview with, but which I'm not going to anymore. You don't want to be asked this question, how are you? Why don't you want that question?

I think as somebody who rever language as much as I do, how are you does not feel like an adequate container for the answers. Uh the truth, the magnitude of the experience of having just lost my partner.

And I think what I ended up writing was that the question, how are you? feels like a thimble at the mouth of a river.

That's how small it is trying to catch something so big and rushing and vibrant and not static.

And it just really falls short.

>> What's the question you prefer?

It's quite possible that somebody who wasn't a writer would find this to be a really odd question,

I'm writing that down. and to turn it right back to you, my friend. And and so I will just ask, can you tell me a story from your life that grazes some part? I love that word graze.

>> Yeah.

Some part of what you've been through. I wonder what comes up today on this day. today on this day.

You know, I I wish I wish I had a slightly different answer, but I will answer from today on this day, which is that I was just at uh Hedgebook Writing Residency, which is a retreat for women writers on Whidby Island off the coast of Washington,

and Women in Cottages. And it's about radical care so you can just focus on your your creativity and disconnect from the internet and cell phones and be among creatures and nature and build yourself a fire every morning. Yes.

>> Yeah. I mean that's just bliss. So everything you're saying I'm like yes and yes and women and radical care and a cottage. I'm walking through the I mean yeah sounds like exactly what I want to be doing. Okay. you were just there.

>> And part of the reason that I said yes, besides it being heaven, was that I thought that in that space I would really be able to connect to Andrea. I thought in the quiet, disconnected from self service in nature, not distracted with work, that Andrea and I would be in this ongoing cosmic conversation of sorts.

And when I was there, I did not feel them at all.

>> It felt almost like a rejection from any romantic part.

>> It felt like

>> like I'm being ghosted, but maybe

Exactly. That's what I was going to say. The true meaning of that word.

>> Wow. And so it was it was really disappointing for me and I felt scared that I wouldn't connect to Andrea again and I just didn't know what it would look like.

But I continued to read there and write there and work on my manuscript and poems came and I was painting which I'm not even a painter but my creativity was coming back to me.

And then I imagined that Andrea was there hiding in the corner somewhere and waiting for me to realize that I didn't go to find them but I came to find myself.

I want to shift gears somewhat. I know you two met in the poetry world, but when was the first moment that you felt proverbial sparks?

Yeah, we were at the National Poetry Slam. We'd been friends for a long time. We were on the dance floor and Andrew would want me to tell everybody not to try this move at home.

And that their particular level of coolness and charm and my weird receptability toward this is the only reason it works. So don't try to do this. You might This is a long disclaimer. Somebody might call HR. I don't know.

But Andrea wiped their hands cuz I sweat when I dance. and Andrea wiped their hands down my arms

>> and and licked their hands in this dirty ass nightclub

>> and um

>> yes, wait.

>> Okay,

let's back it up even. I want to actually get a sense before this moment, who were you, who were they? What was the reputation to you?

>> We were writers on the same press, but Andrea's career was massive. Everyone any poet in the world knew who Andrea was, but al their performances were at rock clubs.

They were touring like a musician tours. It was not a, you know, a small reading in a cafe or a bookstore. It was rowdy.

>> Sold out theaters. Yeah.

>> Yeah. Sold out. line around the door, you know, just people you'd watch and people would mouth along the lyrics to all of Andrea's words. It was some mix of like a party and a church and a safe haven and it

>> Yeah. I'd never seen anything like it.

>> Did you feel any kind of energetic tug between you or was it sort of like there's Andrea the rockstar, you know, like what was the what was the energy between you two?

How I viewed Andrew was that they could date anybody that they wanted to date. We called them the gay James Dean.

I kind of similar hair at certain points. Yeah, totally.

>> Uh-huh.

They could anybody that they wanted to be with. I just assumed that that would be feasible for them.

Um, I have had lifelong body image issues and struggles and I I just I didn't think that they would choose me.

And turns out Andrea loved a curvy woman. I mean,

>> Yep.

Okay. You were in and you found out during a night, a sweaty night on a dance floor. Andrea approaches, runs their hands down your sweaty arm, and then licks the sweat off their hand. Were you How did you react?

I I was in shock but also laughing and continuing to dance and just sort of felt the molecules of my brain rearrange themselves where I'm like, "Wait, what just happened?"

>> Was there something that when you said your brain was rewiring, was there something that like wasn't connecting here and not computing for you? Like,

>> well, when we we went back to the we all collectively as a group walked back to the hotel and I saw our mutual friend Katie in in the elevator and I like ran into the elevator just so I could have a moment to talk to her and I told her everything that happened

>> all about the sweat incident.

>> Yes. Thinking she would be like, "Whoa, that's what?" And she was like, "Oh, I'm not surprised." I'm like, "What are you talking about?" She's like, uh, she would call Andrea Dre. She said, "Dreas had a crush on you for years." And then I was like, "What? I thought I was hearing her wrong."

>> To find out Andrea had a crush on you. What was that like?

>> I That would have been I think about 12 years ago. But I will say after that moment, there has not been a day in my life where I've not spent a majority of the day thinking about Andrea.

>> Wow.

Um, it was Yeah, it it really rearranged I think a lot of my ideas about myself. And I know they say that you have to love yourself before somebody can love you. But

>> I do love to say that. I do also think there was something about Andrea loving me that this person who I was like, "Oh, you could have your pick of the litter then kind of picking me where it opened my eyes to the idea of loving myself as is. If Andrea was loving me as is."

When you were together, when you were a couple.

Yeah.

Was there something you feel like they saw in you as your relationship progressed that you weren't used to people seeing or maybe that you couldn't see yourself?

>> I think that it might have been the other way.

>> Huh. Um,

I think it was pretty easy to see in Andrea who they were public facing, which was this beacon of wisdom,

>> which was this sage, kind, deep, thoughtful person.

What I saw in Andrea and how our relationship started was like two kids unleashed to host the living room show of their lifetime.

>> Wow.

We made up dances together. We wrote parodies to pop songs to make them about queerness or feminism. We were goofy, peeing our pants, laughter. Just

>> You mean that literally? I feel like

>> I mean, okay, I was being nice to Andrea. Andrea peed their pants. They did not.

>> Call them out.

Adria. Andrea multiple times full bladder emptying pee their pants. It runs in their family. I don't know.

>> Oh my god. That And how Okay, I'll just say if you were if I was to tell a joke that made someone literally pee their pants, I'd be like, I'm the funniest person in the world. I mean, really, truly, I I would. It'd be so gratifying.

>> I did feel I did feel like the funniest person.

>> I felt like the funniest person in the world with Andrea and I it was so contagious to make them laugh and truly I think it making Andrea laugh is one of the best things I have ever gotten to to do in my lifetime.

>> You're talking about I love that the greatest living room show of our lifetime. There's a lot of play. Um, and you're kind of answering my question, but I'm really genuinely curious like how two poets woo each other. You know, for the lay person writing a love poem, it's like my goodness, what a lift. But for y'all, that's just another Tuesday. How do poets Yeah. H how do you do it? What was that? What was the early stage of your relationship like?

>> Oh my god. Thank you for asking these questions. It's nice to travel back here in my mind.

Uh, the first gift Andrea ever sent me in the mail was a ukulele that said, "You are the music."

Um, we spent our birthdays were a week apart. their first birthday um that I ever spent with them. They were turning 40 and I spent weeks buying, making, wrapping 40 presents so that I could give them one for every year that they missed.

>> Can you share one of them if you don't mind?

>> A laminated award that I had their best friend sign as like the witness um that I also signed for the best face in the world. Oh my god, you're going to get me. Best face in the world.

Yeah, they got me an actual boom box where they made actual mix CDs or mixed tapes, I'm sorry, for me. And considering our age difference, I was more of the CD time. I didn't know how to open up the

>> You're like, "Excuse me, fouryear-old. Can you help me with this?

Um, yeah, they stitched poetry into a pillowcase for me. A line of poems like they handstitched.

Yeah, there's a lot.

We're talking about Well, let me just say this. This is putting every single one of my boyfriends to shame, which I kind of knew would happen in asking that question. And yet, it is wonderful to linger here with you. I mean, you keep mentioning the age gap. Let's just put a number on that. How what was that age gap between you and Andrea?

>> 13 years.

>> 13 years. Okay. I mean, I wonder it sounds so dreamy and romantic and honestly like better than what I imagined two poets would do in the early stages of falling in love. But of course, you are not only poets, you are humans. It couldn't have been all rosy all the time, right?

We'll be right back.

[Music] Prior to Andrea being diagnosed, we were really actually on the verge of of breaking up.

Um, the pandemic had been really hard. Um, our life had gone from touring all around the country and this just this big life to

>> being very quarantined, but also we sort of kept with that longer than other people and maybe more strictly because Andrea had also had an autoimmune disease that Lyme disease that they had to, you know, be cautious with with their health. And um

honestly I Andrea was like self soothing with drinking and not a massive amount but that was sort of their thing and I was numbing out with food or TV or just anything to shut it off.

And we were really disconnected and not doing well uh at all. And

when we got the news that that there were masses, we didn't know if it was cancer, but it was a strong likelihood.

Um, Andrea even had tried to to end it with me. Like, I don't think we should do this together. I just we haven't been good. Like, I don't want to

I just I remember we stayed up the whole night almost. And in another iteration of that conversation, I think I would have been like, "Screw this. I'm sleeping in the guest room or something." But because of what the stakes were,

>> I just I must have said a hundred times, I'm not going anywhere. I'm not going anywhere.

We're We are meant to do this together.

>> What made you so sure? May I ask? Like where was that conviction? And where did it come from?

>> I think that even through our hardest times, I always held this image of us that I felt like already existed on the horizon and always saw that picture and just didn't know how we got there.

>> What was the picture? Was it an actual picture? Like an actual image?

>> That's really interesting. Um, I I think it was honestly in part knowing um knowing this other side of Andrea that was like without anxiety and fear. Um, and then because of that, I

just always knew that Andrea could get to a place of total alignment between who they wanted to be in the world and who they consistently were.

And after I told them I wasn't going anywhere and it was in a week's time that they were doing surgery and being diagnosed with cancer, but the next morning I felt like they were already in that alignment.

>> Wow. So one night, one sleep basically. I mean to put it that way, but and then you woke up and it was was it a different Andrea? Was it a different you? I mean, I'm just trying to What was the the change the shift that you noted?

>> It was like we woke up unknowing each other.

We woke up not holding on to past versions of the other, but

almost like, who is this person that I get to spend this time with? And this sort of brand new feeling, but it was better than a brand new feeling. It was actually better than falling in love with somebody initially to fall in love with your partner who you've been with for six years. It was the most incredible feeling.

This happens at a time in your relationship where you know there are masses inside of Andrea's body, but you don't yet know you know what those masses are. I mean, I find it remarkable that you wake up that morning and you're excited, delighted. You there's there's a fresh feeling. There's a new feeling. And yet then you said there's there's a surgery a week later. Is that what it is? And then the diagnosis is confirmed.

>> Yeah.

And and to be really clear with this, what was the the diagnosis that Andrea received?

>> Uh ovarian cancer. Um if anyone's like in the oncology world looking for the technical term, it was high-grade cirrus ovarian cancer stage 2B.

for those not in that world. How did you understand that diagnosis? How was it explained to you too?

>> Well, I have a a filter that everything goes through which I think is the filter of best possible light and I think Andrea had not always had that filter and I think some for some ways that is probably what what brought us together. Um, I understood it to be

the most common ovarian cancer that it was the one that responded best to chemotherapies.

Um, and I was pretty hopeful in the beginning, very hopeful in the beginning that Andrea would have this surgery that they had already had and that we would go through the six cycles of chemotherapy and it would be in the past after, which is not what happened.

>> How did Andrea understand the diagnosis? You say you had different filters.

>> I honestly Andrea went into almost an awakened state at that time. Um, and I I don't know that Andrea was actually that interested or curious in what the diagnosis was, but

so excited to be alive and feeling what they were feeling. And

there was one moment where, you know, they would say, "I might die soon." And I said, "Andrea, I don't know that you really think that because I mean, why aren't you bungee jumping? Why aren't we

>> prove it?

If you think you're going to die, we should be on an island in Greece, obviously.

>> In Colorado, where we live, damn." Yeah.

And they said the they took they paused for a moment and said, "I don't care to do any of that. that I am doing what has always been on the top of my bucket list in this life, which is to live with an open heart and to live without worry and fear and blame and just be in this present moment. I'm doing exactly what I've always wanted in this life.

>> I mean, how do you respond to that to someone? What what did what did that mean to you? How did you hold that? I mean, then do you just go on a walk or like make mac and cheese? Like, how do you live? You know what I mean? How did you continue to live to live life? I don't know. Like, how did you respond when they said stuff like that?

>> I had a lot of moments of just feeling great reverence for Andrea. Um,

just feeling lucky to be like in the path of light that they were trailing. Uh,

I sky I went skydiving myself with my mom.

>> So you did the bungee jumping understood and Andrea did not go. Andrea watched from the ground um and and cheered for me.

>> Was it not medically advisable?

>> I I don't think that they were we had very different nervous systems and I don't know that theirs needed to jump out of a plane to get the rush that mine mine did. H

you know earlier in the conversation we were speaking about the the early stages of your relationship.

You know we had this amazing scene on the dance floor with the sweat and the you know the the the the physical connection the sexual connection between the two of you. How did your intimacy evolve or change with this diagnosis?

>> Well, one thing that was really interesting is uh Andrea went through the kinds of chemo where you lose your hair and lose your eyebrows and uh your eyelashes and to the world you are looking ill and there were so many times where somebody would stop us and like ask if they could pray for us or something and I would feel shocked

because you know Andrew would have a hat on and I would draw some eyebrows on their on their face and I was like, "You look good, babe." Like, I I would be I I would be shocked because I was just seeing them glow and just seeing their beauty.

And even when Andrea lost their hair, I remember I was like, "Oh, now I can see more of you."

>> And so our Yeah. In a lot of ways, I mean, this is different toward the very end of their life when their body was um more sick, but in a lot of ways, our intimacy increased because we somehow felt like we were blessed with the chemicals of the beginning. Um

it but then there was like the deep trust there as well.

Did your sex get better after the diagnosis? I mean, better is a is a tough word, but were you enjoying it more after the diagnosis?

>> It felt like um I mean, I'll be honest, it was always great, but I

>> Hell yeah.

I will say it felt more like I don't know, like a depth of of the experience. It's like

it wasn't just sex, but like a a real understanding of touching into the eternity and then two very mortal bodies. And I mean they the chemicals in your brain, right, released during sex, birth, and death are are similar or the same. And

yeah, I just wonder if there was a touching into at those times the energy that all energy, but an awareness of the energy that can't be destroyed or

>> what was between us that wouldn't wouldn't be able to be taken in a heightened moment like that. M and and also the vulnerability on Andrea's part of I'd felt vulnerable about my body for a long time, but to be like bald and thin and have a port coming out of your chest and you know some I couldn't kiss Andrea the first 5 days after chemo because they were noxious with medicine

that the oncology nurses would wear a hazmat suit to pump directly into their veins and we weren't supposed to share a toilet because their like backsplash of their pee could be toxic to me.

But they're pulsing with it like it there's a vulnerability there that

I I never actually acknowledge with Andrea in this life. So I hope that they're listening.

>> Oh my gosh, me too.

While you and Andrea are navigating this diagnosis, the treatment, the many treatments, you were being followed by a film crew filming the documentary that would ultimately become Come See Me in the Good Light.

And as I watched this film, I was struck by how steady you seemed. You were a real source of of of hope. I mean, you self-described as a as an optimistic person. You were really a rock for Andrea. And I wonder like did did you ever feel not so rock like? Did you ever feel unsteady or unable to show up for Andrea in the way that they needed?

>> I think I think my disposition while I ultimately believe it was exactly what was right and needed for the journey, I do wonder if sometimes it made Andrea feel lonely

to uh despair or worry alone

or that it not that they were alone but that it might have felt like that because my

my way is not to worry about anything unless it's directly in front of me and happening

and I don't spend much if any time in what if this bad thing happens say we're waiting on the blood results you know to find out if their cancer is growing or shrinking in those days my mind isn't making its worried preparations of what if it's this, what if it's this.

It's just when we open it, we'll know what it is and then we'll do from there.

And while the first year of Andrea's diagnosis was that enlightenment, that slipped some. And then what happened was after that rather than this having this moment of grace and awakening they now had a barometer for where they wanted to be and would always actively try to get there or be there and be really disappointed when they weren't feeling that.

>> That's so interesting. It's almost like you two had set an example for yourselves how to move through this with light and hopefulness and love. And then of course when you can't always reach that mark you're saying that Andrea would get frustrated at themselves for not being this enlightened hopeful huh

and how would you try to help them return to that level or Yeah. Andreas, the way Andrea would say it is, I just want to be in the palm of God.

>> Wow.

>> Yeah. Okay.

>> Sounds doable. Yeah.

Um I Or they'd be like, I'm not I can feel that I'm not in the palm of God right now, and I just want to return.

>> It's pressure. There's a lot of pressure.

>> You did put pressure. Yeah. I I would try multiple things. I think some days I would say, you know, like I understand we've set this example for ourselves and sometimes you just need a day to fall apart or give up or like why don't you take off those damn boots and jeans and put on some sweatpants and get to bed.

Um, and just like let it, you know? Um, and then other times I would say get in the car. We're going on a drive. That's Andrea's favorite thing to do. we're going to go see something beautiful.

And I would watch their perspective shift often, returning to nature. Um, but they had so many of their own tools to to get there, whether that was listening to the untethered soul by Michael Singer, um, or echartole or this Hawaiian prayer, which is just the repetition of thank you, I love you, I'm sorry, please forgive me.

Sometimes they'd just listen to that for hours and they had a million ways that they'd find their way back to the back to the present.

Did you feel like you had did you feel like you had space to be I don't know angry or mopey or sad or did you feel like you had to sort of carry the hopefulness or the optimism for for both of you?

>> No, I I absolutely would have had space to feel um anything. Andrea just that was sort of their big message in the world. I mean, they sold t-shirts that said feelings are not the enemy. Uh

they definitely encouraged always everybody's feeling. And I think sometimes they worried with me that I was perhaps pushing feelings down or avoiding or in denial.

Um, and I still don't know the answer to that. I don't know the difference necessarily between being in denial and being in the present moment.

>> Wow. Say that again.

>> I don't necessarily know the difference between being in denial or just being in the present moment.

>> How do you figure that out? Really? No, I just I mean

>> I imagine that it would be hard to find joy in denial.

>> H I don't know that you dance through denial or you laugh through denial. I I think denial seems like something that would be busier or more distracted than I felt.

I And I will say like days when you know with the bone metastasis it was very hard for Andrea to walk and they were in pain and those were days where I was really scared and I was really sad.

But on the days when they felt good and we were like

choreographing to Chapel Rome or I I I didn't go there

and

I I think that that would have been if Andrea and I had any arguments during of course we had arguments during cancer but that would be the basis of them that and in some ways I think that They were worried for me that if I didn't pregrieve them, that when they died, I would be ill equipped to handle the reality if I didn't spend a ton of time in my head preparing for what it would be like if they were no longer here.

and almost like mentally running the lines of that story.

And that isn't what happened for me. Uh, I feel like

had I worried the whole time or had I constantly ruminated about they could die, what will it look like if they do, I would have had so much more regret than I do because I would have been robbing myself of so many beautiful moments together just truly living.

We'll be right back.

[Music] Can I tell one story?

>> Oh my goodness. You don't even have to ask permission.

>> So Andrea died really over the course of 3 days.

When the hospice nurses told us that Andrea would be sedated, my understanding of sedation was out of pain, woozy, and out of it. I did not know that sedated meant

essentially without words and pretty nonresponsive with rare moments of consciousness.

This was devastating to me.

It resonated as a robbery. I felt like had I known what was going to start happening, I would have initiated some conversations both about, what was happening, a proper goodbye,

>> how will you visit me? How will I know it's you?

conversations that maybe Andrea wanted to have before the last 3 days of their life, but I it wasn't in front of me yet.

And now that it was, I was ready to talk about it. And then they couldn't.

And see, that's that's an image there aren't adjectives for.

However, within a couple of hours of realizing we weren't going to have that final conversation, I got a text message from our friend, the musician Chris Perka,

saying that Andrea had written the lyrics to a song. It was a love song for me about their death

and Chris had recorded it and said it to music and sent it to me in that moment.

>> Oh my god.

>> Andrea hadn't heard it either. And I just kept playing it for both of us. But the lyrics

were essentially the conversation that I would have wanted us to have.

The first lyrics are, "Hold down the fort cuz I've got to go. Light on the water will carry me somehow. Don't say goodbye. Forever's not too far. The other side's just a stones throw from love." And you've got a great arm.

>> It's a beautiful song. It's called Hold Down the Fort. Um the refrain is I had it all, I had you. I had it all. I had you. And it was

And so I already I think felt like Andrew is in this liinal space between this world and that. And they're already finding these magical ways to communicate with me and to

give me what I need. Even as you know their body is unable to give anything but its last bits to death.

Thank you for sharing that. Thank you. I mean I I I wonder what it's like to be ostensibly I mean you tell me but in the bed that you shared I mean there's all these places that they they are not now you know

Andrea died in our bed um they died with me like pressed up against their face and their mom at their back and their father at her back and four of their ex-girlfriends at their feet and a couple of people they didn't make out with um but were good friends. And I

um

the night after the first night I slept in bed without them, I intentionally switched to sleeping on their side of the bed. M

>> I didn't like the idea of looking over and seeing them missing and

that's where I've stayed. Um I have their boots beside me on my desk. I have their ashes probably in each room. And I

I realized So back to Hedgebrook, I guess.

>> Yeah. back. We go to the colony of artist women. when I was there, the last day that I was there, and I still hadn't had any visitations from them, but again, maybe I was there to find myself, but I spread some of their ashes in this clearing of trees where they had built a wooden desk amongst the trees.

And I just knew that Andrea would love that spot, that writing desk in the woods that's got, you know, pine needles scattered all across it. The way like nature's pens and postits

and I laid dangerous ashes on the desk and also at the roots of some of the trees in that clearing. And I thought about them

almost fertilizing the poetry of the writers who would sit there after me and had the thought that maybe it's not about finding Andra everywhere I go, but bringing them everywhere I go.

Then maybe this is the wrong question to follow up with. But who are you learning you are? I was gonna say without them, but you tell me if that's the right way to put that question.

>> Yeah. Um, you know, I think I'm really comforted by the idea of energy not being created or destroyed because Andreo has boundless energy. I used to call them Energizer Gibby.

We we had learned that uh exercising throughout cancer like increased your likelihood of survivorship. It Andrea is like jumping on the trampoline. They're they're lifting weights like these days where anyone else would just stay in bed, but they're saying like movement resistance training. This stuff will help you feel better after chemo could help you live longer.

And yeah, it literally like they would look so undercooked and destroyed from a chemo and then they'd be playing Justin Bieber and like pulling dumbbells out of their pocket out of nowhere. I'm like, what is they had so much energy, so much creative life force they

you could see a scene in the movie. We don't say what they're doing, but I'm icing their hands and feet with mittens so that they don't get neuropathy and their fingers and toenail toenails don't fall off.

And they cut a tiny hole in the mitten so that they could use one finger to type a poem on their phone during these chemo sessions where everyone else and why wouldn't you be is like zoning out on their iPad. Like they wouldn't check out ever. they wouldn't turn off. Um, and so my

feeling now is that, you know, and I felt Andrea's heart stop beneath my hands, like I was right there.

And my hope is that some of that boundless energy is now in me.

>> It reminds me of something you've said, which is you hope that for the rest of your life, people will look at you and see Andrea. I wonder what you mean by that.

>> I don't want to be separated from this story. I don't feel like I

It's like, who am I outside of Andrea and our relationship? I feel like this is my marrow. This is stitched into my spine. This is my new genetic makeup. And I will of course carry this into everything that I do.

And I feel I I mean as a fairly young person, I'm 37 now, Andrew is almost 50. to carry the uh wisdom and

I feel I feel a lot of gratitude for that.

>> You know, I read for a while that you fell asleep listening to a recording of Andrea reading a poem that they wrote for you called Love Letter from the Afterlife.

Is that something that you still Is that something you still do?

There's a video recording of Andrew reading the poem to me. We're just sitting in our yard like cross-legged with our dogs frolicking around us, but there's What moves me most about the video, I mean, the poem is gorgeous and I'll share it, but what moves me most about the video is Andrea seems almost shy and nervous to read it to me.

And there's just something so sweet in it. And yeah, I have many nights have fallen asleep watching that.

>> I would be very honored if you would share this poem with us right now. Let me pull it up. Okay.

Love letter from the afterlife.

My love, I was so wrong. Dying is the opposite of leaving.

When I left my body, I did not go away. That portal of light was not a portal to elsewhere, but a portal to here. I am more here than I ever was before.

I am more with you than I ever could have imagined.

So close you look past me when wondering where I am. It's okay. I know that to be human is to be farsighted.

But feel me now, walking the chambers of your heart, pressing my palms to the soft walls of your living.

Why did no one tell us that to die is to be reincarnated in those we love while they are still alive?

Ask me the altitude of heaven, and I will answer, "How tall are you?"

In my back pocket is a love note with every word you wish you'd said. At night I sit ecstatic at the loom, weaving forgiveness into our worldly regrets.

All day I listen to the radio of your memories. Yes, I know every secret you thought too dark to tell me and love you more for everything you feared might make me love you less. When you cry, I guide your tears toward the garden of kisses I once planted on your cheek. So you know they are all perennials.

Forgive me for not being able to weep with you. One day you will understand. One day you will know why I read the poetry of your grief to those waiting to be born. And they are all the more excited.

There is nothing I want for now that we are so close. I open the curtain of your eyelids with my own smile every morning.

I wish you could see the beauty your spirit is right now making of your pain. Your deepseated fears playing musical chairs, laughing about how real they are not. My love,

I want to sing it through the rafters of your bones. Dying is the opposite of leaving. I want to echo it through the corridor of your temples. I am more with you than I ever was before. Do you understand?

It was me who beckoned the stranger who caught you in her arms when you forgot not to order for two at the coffee shop.

It was me who was up all night gathering sunflowers into your chest. The last day you feared you would never again wake up feeling light-hearted.

I know it's hard to believe, but I promise it's the truth. I promise one day you will say it, too. I can't believe I ever thought I could lose you.

>> Oh my god.

Thank you for reading that. I You know what? I wish I wish that every time someone asked you, "How are you?" you would just read you could read them this poem in full or like infuse it into their body and into their mind.

It is such it is such a beautiful poem. It really is.

And I mean it's reduced me to a lot of tears in this studio. And I cannot imagine if this was written for me. I mean what a

>> I do think it was written for you. Like I I do really think Andrea had in their consciousness. Yes. I I am the person that allowed them to access these feelings. But I think that it was really written for anyone who's lost somebody to to be able to

>> give voice there. I I think they knew.

>> Then thank you, Andrea Gibson. I mean, really, I mean it.

>> Thank you, Andrea Gibson.

>> And thank you, Megan Valley.

[Music] The modern love team is Amy Pearl, Christina Joseph, Davis Land, Elisa Gutierrez, Emily Lang, Jen Poant, Lin Levy, Reva Goldberg, and Sarah Curtis.

This episode was produced by Sarah Curtis. It was edited by Lin Levy.

Original music in this episode by Marian Lozano, Rowan Nemisto, Pat McCusker, and Dan Powell. Dan also composed our theme music.

This episode was mixed by Daniel Ramirez with studio support from Mattie Marciello and Nick Pitman. The Modern Love column is edited by Daniel Jones.

Mia Lee is the editor of Modern Love Projects. If you'd like to submit an essay or a tiny love story to the New York Times, we've always got the instructions in our show notes.

And if you want to hear the song that Megan was talking about during our conversation, it's called Hold Down the Fort and it's by Chris Para. We'll put a link to that in our show notes as well. I'm Anna Martin. Thanks for listening.

[Music]