The chill on the bottle of white warms, the oysters recede, sweaty and limp, into  their shells, and all that comes to mind is that, as much as we may intend it or want it or reach for it, we can’t seem to do anything right by each other, you and I.

And dinner is ruined before it starts. 

Why do we do things we don’t want to do? To don the mask, plaster the smile, bite our tongue when the truth so wants to be released — isn’t all of this, in the end, a disservice?

To me, to you, to truth itself?

I didn’t want to go to dinner tonight, not really. I was exhausted and cranky and would have preferred to go for a run in the Presidio or sit beside the lake and just… do nothing but be a witness to the darkening water and fading sky. 

And to let this be enough.

But it’s been a minute since things were good between us, you and I. Or really, it’s been since forever, if we are speaking truth.

But what if the mask slips and the smile dissolves? And what if the truth finds its way up and out and into the open?

What then? 

We’ve stood a long time on the shores of our darkening waters. If we stay much longer, the light will fade from our sky for good. 

And then what?

If you reached for my hand in this darkness, would you find it? 

— From the diary

Well?? What have you decided? This is a good opportunity for you, Pay, so stop sending my calls to voicemail. P.S. Hey, diddle diddle. ;)

With a winky face.

My 75-year-old father, Doctor Simon Foster, renowned psychiatrist, media darling, silver fox, dead-beat dad… uses winky faces in his texts.

Why.

To take the sting out? To try and sound less… Dad??

It’s true I’ve been sending his calls to voicemail. True I’ve been avoiding him.

Just like he avoided his family for most of our lives.

Now he wants something from me — specifically, he wants me to take over his practice.

Can you imagine, Liv?

He insists it’s legit, that the practice is sound, and that the potential for future growth is guaranteed. Am I cut out for this? My dad thinks so. Which is… What does that say about me?

I don’t want to give him the satisfaction of telling him yes.

Don’t have the courage to tell him no.

Don’t want him to use his training on me to make me tell him why not.

I know all of the tricks in the book, Dad. I’m a therapist.

I also know all your tricks. I’m your daughter.

You always said I was too hard on him, Liv. And maybe you’re right.

Probably.

But I see right through him. I can see the super-slick smile and know that he’s going to get something from me I don’t want to give. 

His new wife’s preggers. Did you know that? 

Twins.

At his age. 

Good luck with that, is all I can say.

Doctor Foster went to Gloucester and got his third wife pregnant. With twins.

Hey, diddle diddle, indeed.

He thinks I’m a joke, Liv. 

He thinks what I do is a joke. 

Not the therapy part (though I will never be as good at it as he is). But the therapy-on-the-app thing… He doesn’t get it. And he definitely doesn't get my clientele. Like he has room to talk.

My dad lives in one world and doesn’t quite get that other worlds also exist. Worlds in which people do therapy online, or over the phone, for example.

Or on apps like Ther-appy.

Over the phone, Pay?? What happened to good old face-to-face??

What happened, Dad, is that people have such tremendous anxiety these days that it’s really hard for some of them just to go outside. The app means they can connect with someone who can help with that.

It’s important.

Also? It’s the 21st century. It’s how things are done.

So there’s that.

If you were here, what would you tell me to do, Liv?

Take my head out of the sand.

Take his call.

Take the time to make things right.

Take a breath.

Take it easy.

I guess what I’m trying to say is, if you could read this, here’s what I’d want you to know:

You’re right about my dad.

Probably.

No — definitely. You’re definitely right.

I know I need to call him. Even as everything inside me is telling me to run.

It’s what I always do.

You know it, I know it.

This time, it’s only a matter of time.

I miss you.
Love,
Patience

And remember how she made us fresh-squeezed orange juice and left the hollowed-out orange on the tray because we insisted on it and would fuss and pout and make her life absolutely miserable if she didn't?

Even after all the juice was squeezed out, and there was nothing left but the peel and the pulp and maybe a few seeds, we wanted that orange.

That was us, Livvie. Sucking the juice out until there was nothing left. We thought we'd never run out.

But we did. And we have.

You always talked about efficient memory usage - keeping the essential data, clearing the cache of everything else.

I never understood why you'd get so frustrated when "programs hogged memory" or whatever it is you used to call it.

But recently, I realized something:

Grief is the ultimate memory leak, isn't it.

It just keeps consuming resources until your whole system slows down.

These days, I force myself up and out, but there's no juice in me. It's all been squeezed out. Even the rind is dry.

I think of you first thing when I wake up. I see you in the sweetness of your little boy. He has your smile. And your stubbornness.

Most days when I think of you, it tugs at my heart, but it also makes me smile. But some days, I'm raging at you on the inside. So angry with you for leaving me.

How dare you. And you call yourself my friend.

But in the middle of all of this, I think I'm learning — finally — that missing someone isn't a bug to fix - it's a background process that teaches you what was worth storing in the first place.

I miss you, Livvie.

So much.

Love,

Patience

My best friend Liv was brilliant at tech - she knew that even the most robust systems fail. Netflix aims for 99.9% uptime, which means they budget for 8.77 hours of downtime per year. They plan for failure.

Meanwhile, I'm over here treating every emotional crash like a critical bug that needs immediate patching.

My ma sits in her room listening to Red Sox games. These players fail 70% of the time and still get celebrated. The best batting average in history is .366 - barely better than a coin flip.

What if we architected our emotional systems like we architect our code? With redundancy, graceful degradation, and the understanding that some downtime is not just inevitable - it's necessary for maintenance.

Stop trying to optimize for perfection. Start optimizing for resilience.

Your system can handle more failure than you think.

Six months since my world turned upside down and flat lined and became this bland, forgettable sort of soup of existence in which things register or they don’t, and it doesn’t matter much, either way.

Overall, I’ve been keeping my head above water, if only for the sake of your sweet boy who asks for you every day. He deserves at least this.

When is my mom coming home?? He wants to know. I don’t have an answer for him that satisfies, so I tell him the awful truth. 

She’s not, Will.

Why?

Because she died, remember? 

Month after month, we’ve had this conversation. For a while, he seemed to be processing your death, seemed to accept that accidents happen, that it was no one’s fault. That it’s just a part of life.

For a while, he freaked out every time we went somewhere in the car, so much so that John refused to ride with him. 

He was terrified of us dying like you did.

And then for a while, he simply kept to himself. And I waited and watched for an in to what he was thinking, there for him when the questions came again.

And they did, and they still do.

What must go through his head. Probably the same things that play on repeat in mine, but I have the benefit of age and wisdom and training to deal with them. He just feels his way, and there’s no telling the conclusions he’s drawing to help make sense of it all. 

He’s become more obsessed with time and schedules and punctuality since you’ve died. 

If Ma’s PT runs over, he’s there at the window until the van shows up.

If I’m out on a run longer than I promised I’d be, he’s there again. And the look of anguish and relief in his eyes when he finally sees me is heartbreaking.

My dad mentioned the other day that Will's behaviors remind him of a young patient of his — something about this kid being obsessed with checking on other children. 

'Patterns repeat,' he said cryptically, in that way he has. I'm not sure what he meant, but it stuck with me.

But he says it will pass. Says that we should be just a little late on purpose, every now and again. Says it’s the only way to rebuild Will’s trust in things mostly working out as they should.

Mostly.

I can do this. It breaks my heart to make him wait, knowing what must be going through his mind. But I can do it.

What I can’t do is make sense of any of this. Still. Even after all of these months.

What I can’t do is make it okay that you’re not coming back.

What I can’t do is answer the one question all of us want to know:

Where did you go, Liv??

So as the days without you here begin to stack up, I’ve decided to do something I often counsel my patients to do when they can’t make sense of things and are drowning in grief: I’m going to keep a diary.

Things I would share with you, just like I did when you were here.

Things that make me want to laugh or cry or scream and shout.

Things that make life worth living. Things that leave me wondering, what’s the point.

Things, dear Liv, that if you could read this, I’d want you to know.

Here’s the first — and most important —  thing:

I miss you.

Love,

Patience