C and I were in school together. She was a year below me. We had already done a contract or two together. When my circus was looking for another female artist, I thought that she would be brilliant for this show. It turns out the company thought the same and she stayed on right after her audition.
The entire experience with this circus has been trying. There have been many wonderful times too, of course, but as with anything, there’s also lots of drama. Plus, we’re both from Canada, both had to jump through the same French hoops, and bore a lot of the same burdens that only those far away from home can truly appreciate. She has been my closest confidante. And there are things going on here that I can’t share with anyone else. Now that she’s gone, I don’t know how I’ll get by. You can’t possibly imagine how lost I feel.
I miss my friend. I miss planning dinners together on our days off. I miss movie nights and teatime. I miss my rock. There are so many ways she helped keep me grounded. Who else will advise me to give my internal organs a massage before the show when I’m feeling particularly anxious?
Her last show went brilliantly and she was showered with a huge outpouring of love. Many secret, and not so secret goodbye messages were littered throughout the performance. A sign saying “So long C!” taped to the marimba, getting roses all throughout the show, her name in song, paintings in her honour, a sign held up in the technical booth at curtain call, a goodbye made before the entire audience…
After her last show, we finally had tea on top of the tent. We’d been planning on doing it for ages and never did get around to it. It was the right time. It was the only time we had left. It was beautiful.
When her replacement took the stage and C could finally sit in the audience to watch the show (the first night C was still backstage guiding D) she cried. Of course she cried. I cried for most of her last show, most of the first show without her, and at the end of the show where she was in the audience. I’m crying now. I’ll be crying for days.
It doesn’t feel real. It doesn’t seem possible. I keep expecting her to come back. As she was driven away to the train station, half hanging out the window waving, the car flanked by at least half the troupe, it felt like a dream.
I miss her tremendously. I can’t even explain. Everything I just wrote is like a single drop of water in the ocean. Truly, a light has gone out here. And not just for me. The first full day of her absence, almost everyone was reflecting on the realization that she was really gone.
The technician who pulled her in her act looked wistfully out the kitchen window and said “It only just hit me that I’m not going to be seeing that smile again…”
And I can’t even count the times where her flight status and possible location ‘right now’ was discussed. There are echoes of her everywhere. It’s always hardest for those left behind.
She gave me a string of decorative lights that had always bedecked her caravan. I admit, I always did admire them. I didn’t get a chance to tell her that I strung them up before she left and had them on throughout that last show.
They may not as bright as her own light, but it’s still nice to have a little bit of here shinning here with me.
So long, C. We miss you.
