bittersweet

by Anna Huckabee Tull

Each month, for the first twelve months after Marie Pechet’s passing, I will carry her Blog forward, sharing about Marie in ways that I hope you will find meaningful, connective, and honoring of our shared friend.

Marie had a dream, and it didn’t end up coming true.

And yet, in the strange twinning of my friendship with her, this week her dream is coming true for me.

Marie had the dream of writing a book.

At first it was just a loosely held notion. But in the months and then years that she began emailing regular updates to a small collective of “Fertility Group” friends, and then emailing to even more friends whose names got added to that list, and then expanding into a Blog, which hundreds of you began to closely follow, she started to feel a hunger growing within her to shape those many entries into a “Real Book” that could become not just the story of her journey, but a way of capturing the very best of her message to the world.

She confided to me that this felt important to her. She and I worked together on creating a book outline for her. She met with an editor. We played with various titles and ways of sharing her story. It began to take shape. And then, just like that, it got edged out of the picture, by life, by illness and, eventually, by her passing.

At the same time, I too was working on a book. Marie would write me notes of encouragement, ask how it was going, buck me up with positive words when the writing got tough, and congratulate me when I hit various milestones. She brought me as her guest to a writing convention at her beloved Grub Street, the prestigious writer’s hub here in Boston of which she was an ardent supporter. And when I won a publishing contest and contract for the book proposal I had written, she came to my “Oh My Gosh Now I Really Have to Write a Book” party two years ago, sat in the front row, and beamed up at me as I performed her song, The Days of Your Opening, as part of the celebration. I shared that song on that particular night because of all the songs I have ever written (250 to be exact) it felt–and still feels–like the one that best captures the message of the book I was setting out to complete. It was the song, a countable number of seasons later, that I would also perform at her funeral.

Marie did not live to see her own book idea come to fruition. And she didn’t live to see mine become real either.

But even so, at each twist and turn in the road, I feel her cheering me on. And today, the dream is real.