Of course, naturally, without a doubt, never any question, sure thing, right away, no problem. Reassurances that all will go well. I am only certain that nothing is certain. Is Sadie gone? I feel her behind her door watching her soap operas, waiting to go bowling, sitting on her kitchen chair reading her newspapers. I wonder what it is like to be dead and secretly think that to fade away, as she did, is desirable and maybe even certain. People care about you less and less. You feel more and more invisible and more and more like you have nothing to contribute. Certainly useless. Better off wandering away mentally and physically, seated on your tiny ice floe, waving to your loved ones and urging them to go on contributing to their certain world. Sadie, if you’re out there, and I’m not certain that you are, but perhaps the electrical impulses that you were can relate to the electrical impulses that are the internet, I just want to say that I am certain that I did not care for you enough and if my mother is out there with you, tell her the same.

We closed “Portia Coughlan” yesterday at the Irish American Heritage Center. To be a part of this production was so comforting and warm in a way that only a cold dark play can be. The people I worked with for the first time and the ones I knew but now know better will forever be combined with ethereal music, rain, wet yellow leaves, the light streaming from the big old Mayfair building, and the smell of old elementary school books. This was a play in which everyone hates everyone else, everyone lies, everyone cheats, everyone procrastinates and the only love comes from a sinister ghostly twin or in a form of too little much too late. It was in this month of rehearsal and renewal that Sadie slipped away. I loved her much too little and certainly too late. Her ghost will travel with me, her smile in my heart.