Closure

You hear people talk about closure. Since I am a borderline control freak, I go around closing everything - closets, drawers, handbags. But how do you close a relationship?

One thing you can be sure of, is that it takes two people who have a vested interest in wanting to close things. Two people who are honest and kind and willing to let the other half of the relationship have some peace of mind. It's basically the quintessential humanitarian gesture. Anyone who harbors any real resentment, jealousy or superiority probably won't be able to do it. Because frankly, even those who think they are above it all, tend to like to punish someone who has hurt them. What better way, than to withold the closing of things, depriving them of feeling less guilty?

But let's face it. Holding out on closure is a phyrric victory. And it takes so much energy to be angry at someone, that I think it is therapeutically wise to go for the closure thing. Which is why I did it.

Now there were many pragmatists who feel it was an empty gesture. Things that happen in the past aren't worth being rehashed. If you meet one of those people, run like the wind, because they are probably in desparate need of closure. Besides being giant asses.

But my story is not about a giant ass, although it could be, because I know at least one. Rather it is about a bonafide, honest to goodness, textbook story of closure.

Fourteen years ago I fell madly in love with someone. Someone who had been a trusted friend. If at first it seemed like the world stood still, it quickly started to rock violently once all the injured parties entered the room. I could give you the details, but quite honestly, I don't have the energy to dig it all up again. Suffice to say we both had never wanted anything so much and for so long and it wasn't meant to be. So it ended.

Sometimes the emotions are so raw you really can't bear a face-to-face. I think that is what happened with us. That and the threats of significant others. I would say wife, but to this day I do not think of him as married. Rather detained.

When you don't have closure, and you need it, you are always waiting for it. Maybe the anniversary of the day you declared your love. Maybe your birthday, maybe Christmas - heck that is a time for forgiveness. But the holidays came and went for me, often bittersweet.

There is a scene in "The Age of Innocence", at the end, where Daniel Day Lewis - once madly in love with the Michelle Pfeiffer character, opts not to go see her, after his wife's death. His reasoning was very Victorian and odd to me. It was because he was "old-fashioned". Something in the back of mind rebelled from that logic. I knew I would never be old-fashioned, once I got the nerve.

Now what alligned the stars, what gave me the courage, I have no idea, but one day before, yet another birthday - 14 had gone by, I sent the text message that gave me the closure I needed. It's wonderful now that business men have Blackberrys. You can reach them anytime, anywhere. And so I sent a simple message that said double dare you. It started out as "dare you", but a dear friend quickly made me realize that we had to "up" the ante. So "double dare" it was and he quickly responded.

The details don't really matter - oddly. What matters is that we met and he got the opportunity to apologize and I got the opportunity to accept his apology. It was not happy, it was not joyous. It was sad and painful and never was I more aware of how much he cared for me and how much I missed him. Earlier in the week a non-believer of closure had mentioned that we could never be friends because of his ties. Not entirely accurate. We can never be friends because that would never be enough.

A week later I am still processing it. His last words to me, were that he was even more confused. I know it doesn't sound like closure. But it is.