A friendship in brief
The following is what I posted on Galina's Facebook wall (along with a few more pictures), where many have been sharing their memories and laments and such. I posted it on August 30th, though I'd been working on it for a couple of weeks or so before that. I never gave it a name, as it seems strange to name these things. It will give a far better idea of what she meant to me than the last post, which focused on her funeral, and which only a few friends, plus whoever still reads this, have seen. I should have put this here much earlier but I forgot. Very soon I will talk about my mid-July visit to her old neighborhood and to the Scrabble club where we first met. Anyway:
"For the greater part of my adult life, Galina has been one of my closest and most valued friends. For much of that time early on, I was in love with her. She loved me very much too, though not in quite the same way. This was a cause for drama at times, but it never truly endangered our friendship. I guess I was just barely sensible enough not to let it. Eventually I moved past these hopeless feelings, and came to accept things for what they were. Yet in a way I still am in love with her and will always be. She had that effect on lots of people, as I think she knew.
Though we never dated, we were for a time “joined at the hip,” hanging out several times a week, for hours and hours at a time, often late into the night or the next day. We did all sorts of things together: dining (or just snacking), movies, parks, museums, malls, concerts, clubs, road trips, video games, art galleries, parties, fairs, bookstores, music stores, pet stores, convenience stores, people-watching, or just walking or sitting around talking about ourselves and our lives and our friends and our cats, about memories and goals and jokes and fantasies and ideas. When we were not actually together, the conversations continued in IM chats and text messages, many of which I still have saved, including the very first online chats. As is characteristic of this digital era, we didn’t talk on the phone as much, although, especially in later years when we lived further apart, we would call each other if one of us was in distress or needed advice or encouragement, or just to hear one another’s voice. Perhaps the image that most defines our relationship for me, though, is the two of us speeding down the road in my car with our favorite music on, laughing and talking and having not a care in the world.
I met her on January 21st, 2004, when I had just turned 20 and she was only 15. I had just moved back home to Hollywood, Florida with my parents, after an unsuccessful stint at college in Orlando in 2002 and 2003. We met on a Wednesday night at a session of the weekly Scrabble club in Lauderhill, which meets in a recreation center with nearby soccer and baseball fields, called Veterans Park. I’d been playing in clubs and tournaments for several years, and had attained some prominence. Galina, meanwhile, was there for the first time. I noticed her playing there when I arrived late one night and had to adjudicate challenges (when a player questions the validity of his or her opponent’s play) for the first round. Since she was new to club play, she could challenge words or play phony words without losing her turn. I had to come to her table several times that night. We were briefly introduced by another player, though otherwise I was too shy to talk to her. However, the following week, I did. We talked outside the club after the games as she waited for her parents to pick her up. We got along fairly well, and she said she’d keep coming back. Either that week or the following, she told me between games that she was going outside to get a soda from the vending machine. I said “Okay, cool” or something, and then she made it clear she wanted me to come out with her. “Come out with me, silly!” So we came outside and got our cans of soda, and went over to sit on a swing set in the little playground outside the building. We talked more about our lives, and how we were both kind of in this sucky situation of living with our parents, and things like that.
The third time I saw her at the club, we talked a lot more after the games once again, and we exchanged AIM screen names. As soon as we got home, we continued our conversation, this time for hours. We discovered we liked a lot of the same music and had much else in common too. The next day when we spoke again, she invited me to hang out at her house. After getting lost in her area and arriving a bit late, I picked her up in the late afternoon at her job at a nearby tea parlor, from which she was soon to be let go, due to being clumsy and dropping dishes, if I recall. We went to her house a few minutes away, and we played part of a Scrabble game before abandoning it for later. We took a stroll around her neighborhood, and then came in and watched a favorite movie of mine, The Big Lebowski, which Galina had never seen but enjoyed. We also had dinner with her mother (who I’d met before at club) and her three older brothers. Then she and I took another walk outside, and got a bit flirtatious, but I was still too shy to kiss her or anything. Plus there was the age difference to consider.
As the months went on, we talked a lot more and saw each other at the club. Before long she stopped going to club, though we still played Scrabble online occasionally. Her interest in the game mostly waned I think, though her interest in me did not. In fact one night, we hatched a plan to meet up at the club, then ditch it and go get a bite to eat and hang out elsewhere for a few hours, only to return to the club as it was ending, and leave her folks none the wiser. I was still very active in the tournament scene, though, and she became content to be my cheerleader from afar. She still listened with interest as I recounted my tales of Scrabble conquest and woe. That very month, in February 2004, I won a tournament in the Tampa area and had to beat a well-established expert player from out of town to do it. I’m sure I was inspired by the wish to impress her. She was planning on going to school at Broward Community College, the same school I was going to. It has multiple campuses, including the Coconut Creek one close to where she lived. We wanted to go to school together, and hang out before or after or between our classes. Around this time we simply wanted to do everything together, and as I was saying at the start of this writing, in time we just about did. She never did attend BCC so that plan sadly never happened, but I do recall one day meeting her at the library of the campus by her, and her sitting at a computer when I arrived, and being so overjoyed to see me come in, and giving me an overwhelming hug.
So although the Scrabble part of our friendship didn’t last very long (though its symbolic value would still prove vital), we still found ways to see each other a lot, and I was gradually able to introduce her to some of my friends. I was the only one of us who had a car or license in those days, so I had to do all the driving, but I didn’t mind. I got used to the mini road trips (she lived about 35 miles from my house) and I suppose her family grew more comfortable with me coming and whisking her away so often, since I reliably got her back in one piece.
Before I knew it we were best friends. By early 2005, we were hanging out practically all the time. That February, we went on a short trip to Orlando to hang out with some of my old friends up there. I got to introduce her to two of my other best friends, Justin and Christina during that trip, and to my delight Christina eventually became one of her other very close friends, indeed the sister Galina never had. She had by now entered my life in a very big way. I was also, for better and for worse, falling deeply in love. I remember when we went to a big fair in Miami that March, and we were on a ferris wheel together. I said "Look, it's something that would distract you!" as I pointed to her left, and then, as she turned to look, I stole a cheek kiss. I don’t recall her exact reaction, but I think it was a combination of being flattered, embarrassed, and amused.
For most of this time she had a long-distance thing going on with someone, which I respected but which still left me very disappointed. Yet, this situation gave our friendship a strange, sweet sort of purity. That summer of 2005 I wrote her two love poems, which like just about everything else I’ve written for and about her, I still have. Though Galina was touched by them, they did not have their intended effect. Our friendship was strong enough that it barely mattered. I also remember rushing up to her house from my area on her birthday that June, with a Baskin Robbins mint chocolate chip ice cream cake in my car, the AC blasting cold air so it wouldn’t melt in the summer heat. The cake said “Designated Spiral” (an inside joke between us) and the letters of her name were offset by being written with different colored frosting. I never tired of showing my love and affection, even if I knew it was only for the sake of friendship.
This is not to say I didn’t have conflicted feelings at times, or that there was never drama or awkwardness, but drama and awkwardness never won out. The indelible bond between us did. What we shared was not made of sweet whispered nothings and caresses and all that mushy stuff, though I did often want that too. (However we did come up with some cute nicknames that unfortunately escape me now.) Instead it was made of excited chatter and jokes, freedom and movement and adventure and exploration, and music, always music. I was reading a lot of philosophy in those days, more than I do now, and I tried to teach her as much as I could of it. There was much she taught me as well, though it’s hard to put into words. Galina was awakening intellectually and spiritually at that time too, and was starting to become the bright, noble spirit we knew all knew her to be in the last few years. We sometimes sat on a swing set in a park by her house and talked, just as we had at the Scrabble club in those earliest days. We dubbed ourselves “The Sages of the Swings.”
Galina was life itself. Without her, I’d never have done things like jump into her neighborhood swimming pool with her while we were both fully clothed, or do a strutting dance walk together into and out of a bar in downtown Hollywood in the space of a minute, imagining, perhaps rightly, that we’d just wowed everyone inside with our unabashed vitality, or prowl through a construction site on Fort Lauderdale beach, nimbly eluding any who might try to interrupt our mischievous trespassing. And who else would, on numerous occasions, play Mario Kart 64 with me late into the night? And lie next to me on the ground in one of her neighborhood’s parking lots, looking up at the stars? One night, probably in 2005, we were driving down I-95 and she said “If I didn’t have you, I’d go insane.” I replied, “If I didn’t have you, I’d be too sane.”
In June 2006, our friendship faced its greatest challenge yet. She was moving away to Pennsylvania to live with another long-distance boyfriend. A couple of weeks before she was to leave, we were hanging out and I told her we were going somewhere that’d be a surprise. I made her close her eyes until we got to the Scrabble club. It wasn’t Wednesday and I didn’t take us there to play, but to dawdle and reminisce. There was a gorgeous, colorful sunset that night, which she depicted in a drawing of the two of us, which I still hang on my refrigerator. (See photo below.) I also memorialized that day in a couplet I wrote which might end up closing a poem which I haven’t yet completed: “As we watched the pastel sunset say farewell to yesterday/I knew always in my heart you'd still be just an hour's drive away.”
Anyway, the night before I dropped her off at the airport, she stayed at my house with a few other friends of mine she knew. Then I dropped her off at the airport, I think in the afternoon, and I read her the poem "Ephemera" by William Butler Yeats. From then on, we talked online and on the phone occasionally, but it was unclear when or if she’d be coming back. She finally did in December, I suppose to spend part of the holiday season with her family and see old friends. We hung out a few times but, it having been by far the longest time we’d been separated, there was some awkwardness and estrangement at first. Soon she returned up north, and would come back and forth several times the following year, including an extended stay in February and March for the March wedding of her brother Ilya. I attended the wedding with her and got to see her all dressed up and looking elegantly beautiful.
That year, 2007, however, would prove especially dangerous for our friendship. Her erratic coming and going and all the associated uncertainty made it difficult to determine how much I could still count her a regular part of my life, plus another friend of mine, Ricky, had tragically passed away that April, and I’d been fired from my job the same day I found out. My moods were accordingly erratic for these and other reasons I won’t go into. Suffice it to say, by October or November, my life being in the throes of all sorts of turmoil, and her understandably losing patience with my chaos (though she did have sympathy about Ricky, who she'd gotten to meet once), did not bode well for the future as far as the two of us were concerned. She was undergoing her own changes, and so it appeared we were growing apart.
In November 2007 I moved out of my parents’ house and up north to Palm Beach County to start a new life. By January or February 2008 I’d gotten my act together to a considerable extent. I e-mailed Galina to tell her of my progress. I don’t think she replied to the e-mail, at least right away, but before long she called me and we began talking again. We only talked now and then for much of the year, in brief bursts and mostly on the phone, until that August when I moved into a new apartment with a roommate and got Internet access there. At some point not long after, she moved back down to Florida, but to my dismay, though she was willing to continue talking, she was not yet ready to see me again. I don’t know as much about her life during this period. We talked fairly often, mostly online, though not nearly with the frequency or duration we did in the first years. I filled her in amply on my own life, but she only gave me outlines and scattered details of hers. Now I wish I’d listened more, really listened, and asked more questions. I’m still very eager to know more. Fortunately at least I still do have these chats saved, and everything after, in addition to a good deal of the early years.
By December 2009 she was finally comfortable enough to see me again. Or she might have been before this and circumstances just didn’t allow it. In any case, I saw her for a few hours at her house in Parkland, while she and her family were in the process of moving to Ocala. It was the first time I’d seen her in over two years. She had another friend over, who also happened to be an acquaintance of mine. Our catching up was therefore limited, but it was still refreshing and relieving to finally see her again. 2010 was a tumultuous year in my own life, but happily I got to see Galina again that November, this time during a one-night, two day visit to her house in Ocala. We went up to Gainesville and got sushi and bubble teas and then, deciding it was too cold to venture around any further, we went back to her house and watched a bunch of our favorite comedy shows in her room. By now we’d reached the cherished status of old friends.
We didn’t see each other again for another two years, as I was busy working at my job and actually succeeding in school all through 2011, graduating with an English B. A. at the end of the year. Galina, too, had work and school and her own life, though by this time we were talking quite often again. I probably still could have made it up to see her at least once or twice that year, and still regret that I didn’t. The same goes even more so for last year, when all I did was work and take a couple of other trips. We met briefly at the end of November after she was in Boca Raton for a cousin’s wedding, but she got sick by the time we got to my house to hang out, and had to be taken back to her hotel before we could really do anything.
So I had seen her only three times since the end of 2007, and two of those occasions were only for hours at a time. The final time I saw her was this past March, during her Spring Break from classes. I visited her in Ocala again, staying for two nights this time. I was in somewhat low spirits, having been heartbroken by another girl I’d just briefly dated. Galina did her best to cheer me up though. The first night we went to a park by her house and sat on a swing set and talked about the days when we first met, and how, had I not screwed up my life in Orlando right before, it would never have happened. We listened to music out there, and came back to the house and listened to more music in her room, and talked and watched beautiful nature documentaries and an episode or two of Futurama, a favorite show of ours. I’ve sometimes thought of us as being like Fry and Leela.
Since we were up late, we slept in the next day, and went to eat at Panera Bread and browse around Barnes and Noble and walk around a beautiful waterfront shopping and dining area. That night I instinctively insisted we take a bunch of pictures of each other by the water, and of the two of us. Those are some of the only ones I have of us, some others from years ago apparently now lost. The very last time I saw her, we were saying our goodbyes next to my car in the driveway behind her house. I know I kissed her on the cheek and she squinted bashfully. I’m also pretty sure I said “I love you” but if I didn’t, the kiss got the message across.
A great regret of mine is that we didn’t take enough pictures over the years, of each other and our adventures. But my memory is still strong and my words will have to do their best to capture what cameras never did. Another regret I have is that during this last meeting, I did not realize how many old conversations and writings and other artifacts I still have, both on my computer (which I even brought along) and on paper. How I would have loved to show her this unbelievable treasure trove! There was much she probably forgot about, as I myself had until I went through it again. I can only hope her heart remembers anyway, as mine did even before stumbling on these forgotten and half-forgotten documents.
After I saw Galina in March, we didn’t talk very much for a bit. She was busy finishing her semester at school, and just living her busy life. She recommended two movies for me to watch, which I promptly did: 500 Days of Summer, and Ruby Sparks. The first, especially, much resembled our story, except in the movie the characters dated and broke up over the course of a year and a half, whereas we never dated. Still, the way the narrative skips around in time, through highs and lows, is much like my own memories of us. The last time we spoke more than very briefly (as we did in late May), aside from some likes and comments on here, was in mid-May. It was a short but friendly and pleasant conversation, full of hope and good will. “It’s good to hear from you, David,” she said near the end of it.
One of the artifacts I found was something I’d truly forgotten about. We were both big fans of The Simpsons, and quoted and talked about it a lot. There was an episode from the mid 90’s in which a cynical and skeptical Bart sells his soul to Milhouse for $5, signing the deed to it over on a sheet of paper. Bart then has an anxious dream where he sees all these people doing partner activities with their souls, depicted as translucent versions of them. Bart, having sold his to Milhouse, is alone and regretful, while Milhouse is gleefully playing with both his own soul and Bart’s. Anyway, I discovered last month that in September 2005, Galina wrote a deed to her soul and gave it to me. It was at once incredibly heartwarming and incredibly heartbreaking to find. Since I’d forgotten, she may have too, and I would love to have shown her that and made my own to give to her in turn. She can still have mine either way. As for hers, I keep a piece for myself but I want all of you, those she loved and who love her, to have it too. (See photo below.)
I cannot imagine my life having been what it is, and may be, without her. Galina was an utterly unique, inspired and inspirational person. She had talents and wisdom far beyond her years, yet she brought youthfulness everywhere she went. No one who’s known her even for a short time, or met her even just once, can soon forget her. In a March 2005 IM chat we had, we were trading “Yo mama” jokes and at the end of it, before going to bed, she said “Remember me as the quirky weird girl that posted yo mamma jokes and rebelled against the universe. Because tomorrow, I WILL BE ANEW!” I still don’t know quite what that means, and yet I feel I know exactly what it means.
There’s a book we once saw at a bookstore together, called “Infinite Love Is the Only Truth: Everything Else Is Illusion.” We both agreed heartily with the proposition, but she, better than anyone else I know, has lived it. And if heaven was made for anyone, it was made for people like her.
It has been great to read all your remembrances and I hope to see more. I give my thanks to all who were her friends and who gave her such happiness, especially in these last few years when I barely saw her. I thank most of all her family, for bringing such a wonderful child and beautiful woman into this universe.
Galina, I love you more than all these mere fumbling words can say. May all the world remember you that way."
Me and Galina on March 8th, 2013. The next day was the last time I saw her.
The picture she drew me in May or June 2006 before she left for PA
The deed to Galina's soul which she made for me in September 2005
Galina and Christina
From the Facebook page of one of Galina's friends
One of Galina's drawings, which was laminated and displayed in the kitchen at her house
"For the greater part of my adult life, Galina has been one of my closest and most valued friends. For much of that time early on, I was in love with her. She loved me very much too, though not in quite the same way. This was a cause for drama at times, but it never truly endangered our friendship. I guess I was just barely sensible enough not to let it. Eventually I moved past these hopeless feelings, and came to accept things for what they were. Yet in a way I still am in love with her and will always be. She had that effect on lots of people, as I think she knew.
Though we never dated, we were for a time “joined at the hip,” hanging out several times a week, for hours and hours at a time, often late into the night or the next day. We did all sorts of things together: dining (or just snacking), movies, parks, museums, malls, concerts, clubs, road trips, video games, art galleries, parties, fairs, bookstores, music stores, pet stores, convenience stores, people-watching, or just walking or sitting around talking about ourselves and our lives and our friends and our cats, about memories and goals and jokes and fantasies and ideas. When we were not actually together, the conversations continued in IM chats and text messages, many of which I still have saved, including the very first online chats. As is characteristic of this digital era, we didn’t talk on the phone as much, although, especially in later years when we lived further apart, we would call each other if one of us was in distress or needed advice or encouragement, or just to hear one another’s voice. Perhaps the image that most defines our relationship for me, though, is the two of us speeding down the road in my car with our favorite music on, laughing and talking and having not a care in the world.
I met her on January 21st, 2004, when I had just turned 20 and she was only 15. I had just moved back home to Hollywood, Florida with my parents, after an unsuccessful stint at college in Orlando in 2002 and 2003. We met on a Wednesday night at a session of the weekly Scrabble club in Lauderhill, which meets in a recreation center with nearby soccer and baseball fields, called Veterans Park. I’d been playing in clubs and tournaments for several years, and had attained some prominence. Galina, meanwhile, was there for the first time. I noticed her playing there when I arrived late one night and had to adjudicate challenges (when a player questions the validity of his or her opponent’s play) for the first round. Since she was new to club play, she could challenge words or play phony words without losing her turn. I had to come to her table several times that night. We were briefly introduced by another player, though otherwise I was too shy to talk to her. However, the following week, I did. We talked outside the club after the games as she waited for her parents to pick her up. We got along fairly well, and she said she’d keep coming back. Either that week or the following, she told me between games that she was going outside to get a soda from the vending machine. I said “Okay, cool” or something, and then she made it clear she wanted me to come out with her. “Come out with me, silly!” So we came outside and got our cans of soda, and went over to sit on a swing set in the little playground outside the building. We talked more about our lives, and how we were both kind of in this sucky situation of living with our parents, and things like that.
The third time I saw her at the club, we talked a lot more after the games once again, and we exchanged AIM screen names. As soon as we got home, we continued our conversation, this time for hours. We discovered we liked a lot of the same music and had much else in common too. The next day when we spoke again, she invited me to hang out at her house. After getting lost in her area and arriving a bit late, I picked her up in the late afternoon at her job at a nearby tea parlor, from which she was soon to be let go, due to being clumsy and dropping dishes, if I recall. We went to her house a few minutes away, and we played part of a Scrabble game before abandoning it for later. We took a stroll around her neighborhood, and then came in and watched a favorite movie of mine, The Big Lebowski, which Galina had never seen but enjoyed. We also had dinner with her mother (who I’d met before at club) and her three older brothers. Then she and I took another walk outside, and got a bit flirtatious, but I was still too shy to kiss her or anything. Plus there was the age difference to consider.
As the months went on, we talked a lot more and saw each other at the club. Before long she stopped going to club, though we still played Scrabble online occasionally. Her interest in the game mostly waned I think, though her interest in me did not. In fact one night, we hatched a plan to meet up at the club, then ditch it and go get a bite to eat and hang out elsewhere for a few hours, only to return to the club as it was ending, and leave her folks none the wiser. I was still very active in the tournament scene, though, and she became content to be my cheerleader from afar. She still listened with interest as I recounted my tales of Scrabble conquest and woe. That very month, in February 2004, I won a tournament in the Tampa area and had to beat a well-established expert player from out of town to do it. I’m sure I was inspired by the wish to impress her. She was planning on going to school at Broward Community College, the same school I was going to. It has multiple campuses, including the Coconut Creek one close to where she lived. We wanted to go to school together, and hang out before or after or between our classes. Around this time we simply wanted to do everything together, and as I was saying at the start of this writing, in time we just about did. She never did attend BCC so that plan sadly never happened, but I do recall one day meeting her at the library of the campus by her, and her sitting at a computer when I arrived, and being so overjoyed to see me come in, and giving me an overwhelming hug.
So although the Scrabble part of our friendship didn’t last very long (though its symbolic value would still prove vital), we still found ways to see each other a lot, and I was gradually able to introduce her to some of my friends. I was the only one of us who had a car or license in those days, so I had to do all the driving, but I didn’t mind. I got used to the mini road trips (she lived about 35 miles from my house) and I suppose her family grew more comfortable with me coming and whisking her away so often, since I reliably got her back in one piece.
Before I knew it we were best friends. By early 2005, we were hanging out practically all the time. That February, we went on a short trip to Orlando to hang out with some of my old friends up there. I got to introduce her to two of my other best friends, Justin and Christina during that trip, and to my delight Christina eventually became one of her other very close friends, indeed the sister Galina never had. She had by now entered my life in a very big way. I was also, for better and for worse, falling deeply in love. I remember when we went to a big fair in Miami that March, and we were on a ferris wheel together. I said "Look, it's something that would distract you!" as I pointed to her left, and then, as she turned to look, I stole a cheek kiss. I don’t recall her exact reaction, but I think it was a combination of being flattered, embarrassed, and amused.
For most of this time she had a long-distance thing going on with someone, which I respected but which still left me very disappointed. Yet, this situation gave our friendship a strange, sweet sort of purity. That summer of 2005 I wrote her two love poems, which like just about everything else I’ve written for and about her, I still have. Though Galina was touched by them, they did not have their intended effect. Our friendship was strong enough that it barely mattered. I also remember rushing up to her house from my area on her birthday that June, with a Baskin Robbins mint chocolate chip ice cream cake in my car, the AC blasting cold air so it wouldn’t melt in the summer heat. The cake said “Designated Spiral” (an inside joke between us) and the letters of her name were offset by being written with different colored frosting. I never tired of showing my love and affection, even if I knew it was only for the sake of friendship.
This is not to say I didn’t have conflicted feelings at times, or that there was never drama or awkwardness, but drama and awkwardness never won out. The indelible bond between us did. What we shared was not made of sweet whispered nothings and caresses and all that mushy stuff, though I did often want that too. (However we did come up with some cute nicknames that unfortunately escape me now.) Instead it was made of excited chatter and jokes, freedom and movement and adventure and exploration, and music, always music. I was reading a lot of philosophy in those days, more than I do now, and I tried to teach her as much as I could of it. There was much she taught me as well, though it’s hard to put into words. Galina was awakening intellectually and spiritually at that time too, and was starting to become the bright, noble spirit we knew all knew her to be in the last few years. We sometimes sat on a swing set in a park by her house and talked, just as we had at the Scrabble club in those earliest days. We dubbed ourselves “The Sages of the Swings.”
Galina was life itself. Without her, I’d never have done things like jump into her neighborhood swimming pool with her while we were both fully clothed, or do a strutting dance walk together into and out of a bar in downtown Hollywood in the space of a minute, imagining, perhaps rightly, that we’d just wowed everyone inside with our unabashed vitality, or prowl through a construction site on Fort Lauderdale beach, nimbly eluding any who might try to interrupt our mischievous trespassing. And who else would, on numerous occasions, play Mario Kart 64 with me late into the night? And lie next to me on the ground in one of her neighborhood’s parking lots, looking up at the stars? One night, probably in 2005, we were driving down I-95 and she said “If I didn’t have you, I’d go insane.” I replied, “If I didn’t have you, I’d be too sane.”
In June 2006, our friendship faced its greatest challenge yet. She was moving away to Pennsylvania to live with another long-distance boyfriend. A couple of weeks before she was to leave, we were hanging out and I told her we were going somewhere that’d be a surprise. I made her close her eyes until we got to the Scrabble club. It wasn’t Wednesday and I didn’t take us there to play, but to dawdle and reminisce. There was a gorgeous, colorful sunset that night, which she depicted in a drawing of the two of us, which I still hang on my refrigerator. (See photo below.) I also memorialized that day in a couplet I wrote which might end up closing a poem which I haven’t yet completed: “As we watched the pastel sunset say farewell to yesterday/I knew always in my heart you'd still be just an hour's drive away.”
Anyway, the night before I dropped her off at the airport, she stayed at my house with a few other friends of mine she knew. Then I dropped her off at the airport, I think in the afternoon, and I read her the poem "Ephemera" by William Butler Yeats. From then on, we talked online and on the phone occasionally, but it was unclear when or if she’d be coming back. She finally did in December, I suppose to spend part of the holiday season with her family and see old friends. We hung out a few times but, it having been by far the longest time we’d been separated, there was some awkwardness and estrangement at first. Soon she returned up north, and would come back and forth several times the following year, including an extended stay in February and March for the March wedding of her brother Ilya. I attended the wedding with her and got to see her all dressed up and looking elegantly beautiful.
That year, 2007, however, would prove especially dangerous for our friendship. Her erratic coming and going and all the associated uncertainty made it difficult to determine how much I could still count her a regular part of my life, plus another friend of mine, Ricky, had tragically passed away that April, and I’d been fired from my job the same day I found out. My moods were accordingly erratic for these and other reasons I won’t go into. Suffice it to say, by October or November, my life being in the throes of all sorts of turmoil, and her understandably losing patience with my chaos (though she did have sympathy about Ricky, who she'd gotten to meet once), did not bode well for the future as far as the two of us were concerned. She was undergoing her own changes, and so it appeared we were growing apart.
In November 2007 I moved out of my parents’ house and up north to Palm Beach County to start a new life. By January or February 2008 I’d gotten my act together to a considerable extent. I e-mailed Galina to tell her of my progress. I don’t think she replied to the e-mail, at least right away, but before long she called me and we began talking again. We only talked now and then for much of the year, in brief bursts and mostly on the phone, until that August when I moved into a new apartment with a roommate and got Internet access there. At some point not long after, she moved back down to Florida, but to my dismay, though she was willing to continue talking, she was not yet ready to see me again. I don’t know as much about her life during this period. We talked fairly often, mostly online, though not nearly with the frequency or duration we did in the first years. I filled her in amply on my own life, but she only gave me outlines and scattered details of hers. Now I wish I’d listened more, really listened, and asked more questions. I’m still very eager to know more. Fortunately at least I still do have these chats saved, and everything after, in addition to a good deal of the early years.
By December 2009 she was finally comfortable enough to see me again. Or she might have been before this and circumstances just didn’t allow it. In any case, I saw her for a few hours at her house in Parkland, while she and her family were in the process of moving to Ocala. It was the first time I’d seen her in over two years. She had another friend over, who also happened to be an acquaintance of mine. Our catching up was therefore limited, but it was still refreshing and relieving to finally see her again. 2010 was a tumultuous year in my own life, but happily I got to see Galina again that November, this time during a one-night, two day visit to her house in Ocala. We went up to Gainesville and got sushi and bubble teas and then, deciding it was too cold to venture around any further, we went back to her house and watched a bunch of our favorite comedy shows in her room. By now we’d reached the cherished status of old friends.
We didn’t see each other again for another two years, as I was busy working at my job and actually succeeding in school all through 2011, graduating with an English B. A. at the end of the year. Galina, too, had work and school and her own life, though by this time we were talking quite often again. I probably still could have made it up to see her at least once or twice that year, and still regret that I didn’t. The same goes even more so for last year, when all I did was work and take a couple of other trips. We met briefly at the end of November after she was in Boca Raton for a cousin’s wedding, but she got sick by the time we got to my house to hang out, and had to be taken back to her hotel before we could really do anything.
So I had seen her only three times since the end of 2007, and two of those occasions were only for hours at a time. The final time I saw her was this past March, during her Spring Break from classes. I visited her in Ocala again, staying for two nights this time. I was in somewhat low spirits, having been heartbroken by another girl I’d just briefly dated. Galina did her best to cheer me up though. The first night we went to a park by her house and sat on a swing set and talked about the days when we first met, and how, had I not screwed up my life in Orlando right before, it would never have happened. We listened to music out there, and came back to the house and listened to more music in her room, and talked and watched beautiful nature documentaries and an episode or two of Futurama, a favorite show of ours. I’ve sometimes thought of us as being like Fry and Leela.
Since we were up late, we slept in the next day, and went to eat at Panera Bread and browse around Barnes and Noble and walk around a beautiful waterfront shopping and dining area. That night I instinctively insisted we take a bunch of pictures of each other by the water, and of the two of us. Those are some of the only ones I have of us, some others from years ago apparently now lost. The very last time I saw her, we were saying our goodbyes next to my car in the driveway behind her house. I know I kissed her on the cheek and she squinted bashfully. I’m also pretty sure I said “I love you” but if I didn’t, the kiss got the message across.
A great regret of mine is that we didn’t take enough pictures over the years, of each other and our adventures. But my memory is still strong and my words will have to do their best to capture what cameras never did. Another regret I have is that during this last meeting, I did not realize how many old conversations and writings and other artifacts I still have, both on my computer (which I even brought along) and on paper. How I would have loved to show her this unbelievable treasure trove! There was much she probably forgot about, as I myself had until I went through it again. I can only hope her heart remembers anyway, as mine did even before stumbling on these forgotten and half-forgotten documents.
After I saw Galina in March, we didn’t talk very much for a bit. She was busy finishing her semester at school, and just living her busy life. She recommended two movies for me to watch, which I promptly did: 500 Days of Summer, and Ruby Sparks. The first, especially, much resembled our story, except in the movie the characters dated and broke up over the course of a year and a half, whereas we never dated. Still, the way the narrative skips around in time, through highs and lows, is much like my own memories of us. The last time we spoke more than very briefly (as we did in late May), aside from some likes and comments on here, was in mid-May. It was a short but friendly and pleasant conversation, full of hope and good will. “It’s good to hear from you, David,” she said near the end of it.
One of the artifacts I found was something I’d truly forgotten about. We were both big fans of The Simpsons, and quoted and talked about it a lot. There was an episode from the mid 90’s in which a cynical and skeptical Bart sells his soul to Milhouse for $5, signing the deed to it over on a sheet of paper. Bart then has an anxious dream where he sees all these people doing partner activities with their souls, depicted as translucent versions of them. Bart, having sold his to Milhouse, is alone and regretful, while Milhouse is gleefully playing with both his own soul and Bart’s. Anyway, I discovered last month that in September 2005, Galina wrote a deed to her soul and gave it to me. It was at once incredibly heartwarming and incredibly heartbreaking to find. Since I’d forgotten, she may have too, and I would love to have shown her that and made my own to give to her in turn. She can still have mine either way. As for hers, I keep a piece for myself but I want all of you, those she loved and who love her, to have it too. (See photo below.)
I cannot imagine my life having been what it is, and may be, without her. Galina was an utterly unique, inspired and inspirational person. She had talents and wisdom far beyond her years, yet she brought youthfulness everywhere she went. No one who’s known her even for a short time, or met her even just once, can soon forget her. In a March 2005 IM chat we had, we were trading “Yo mama” jokes and at the end of it, before going to bed, she said “Remember me as the quirky weird girl that posted yo mamma jokes and rebelled against the universe. Because tomorrow, I WILL BE ANEW!” I still don’t know quite what that means, and yet I feel I know exactly what it means.
There’s a book we once saw at a bookstore together, called “Infinite Love Is the Only Truth: Everything Else Is Illusion.” We both agreed heartily with the proposition, but she, better than anyone else I know, has lived it. And if heaven was made for anyone, it was made for people like her.
It has been great to read all your remembrances and I hope to see more. I give my thanks to all who were her friends and who gave her such happiness, especially in these last few years when I barely saw her. I thank most of all her family, for bringing such a wonderful child and beautiful woman into this universe.
Galina, I love you more than all these mere fumbling words can say. May all the world remember you that way."
Me and Galina on March 8th, 2013. The next day was the last time I saw her.
The picture she drew me in May or June 2006 before she left for PA
The deed to Galina's soul which she made for me in September 2005
Galina and Christina
From the Facebook page of one of Galina's friends
One of Galina's drawings, which was laminated and displayed in the kitchen at her house