Remembering Cecilia Gentili

Two years ago my friend Cecilia died. Two days later I wrote this. I haven't shared it publicly until now.

A close up head shot of my beautiful friend, Cecilia Gentili, a Latine femme of Argentinian descent smiling at the camera with knowledge and love in her eyes, hair short on the sides and risung up past the top of the frame. Her one visible ear has a sparling diamond stud earing, she is wearing makeup and you can see the very top of her black leather jacket with epaulettes.

February 8, 2024

Dear Cecilia –

I didn’t eat lunch and it was 3:45 and my head hurt.

While the leftover soup heated up, I put droplets of bitters into water in a cup and readied the three pills I take for eating, plus two additional ones for the headache.

When I picked up the ibuprofen bottle, I was watching your hand pick it up.

I saw you push back a stray lock of hair loosened by the process, and I heard you laugh. You laughed because it was the middle of your day, just a regular day, and you were taking some ibuprofen for a headache.

You laughed because you laugh.

I felt you look out and through the window. It was the same window, but the view was different – because you were at home, in your home, not in my apartment.

That’s when I realized I’ve been carrying you inside me, just below my skin. I’d been carrying you there ever since I heard on Tuesday that you were dead.

Now it is Thursday.

Last night was the first memorial. It seemed like everyone there had been carrying you around inside them.

Whether they were staring blankly into the crowded space, whether they were weeping on the floor. Whether they were on the mic or huddled together or sitting in a chair.

Whether they were hugging. There was a lot of hugging.

Or whether they were placing something, often flowers, on the altar, surrounded by many vibrant photos of you on foamcore.

I didn’t have much for the altar. I had some caramels in my bag and thought of putting one on there. But I stayed glued to my seat, shifting a bit from side to side when I grew weary.

EL was curled against me a lot of the time. His head on my shoulder and my head. His shoulders in my arms, our hands interwoven by fingers. I didn’t want to make him get up. I wanted to be a soft place for him - it felt like that’s all I could do.

Two hours before I found out you were dead, I drove to my somatic therapy appointment.

I was bursting with frustration. Everywhere I looked I saw too much. Everywhere I looked I saw not enough.

I stumbled over myself, so eager to spell it all out, tumbling over the description of a day laden with unwanted interactions with exes and beloveds alike, the complications of endless COVID precautions few others are doing, and the hopelessness of anything getting any less tangled and burdensome.

The therapist had me draw a picture -- I chose crayons over pens -- on a big sheet of thick paper.

I drew wavy lines. Then I drew shapes angling up that were good. And then I drew the same shapes going down, because almost everything seemed like it was both good and bad and it felt like maybe that feels worse than bad.

I drew a light green body mass between and behind it all, my porous self, spongy and indistinct.

I can’t remember what she asked me, but it helped me be able to draw in some bones. Torso, arms, legs. A spine, and finally a skull.

She used her hands to help me locate the bones inside my body. It felt different, better, when she did that.

I laid on the table and she helped me find more of my bones. I got up and I felt taller and I also felt rooted. I rolled up the picture and set off for home.

A little less than an hour before I found out you were dead, I was coming back from therapy. I was on a Zoom meeting while driving. Bones in motion — temporomandibular joint pivoting the mouth parts and air into words, steering coming from scapulae, metatarsals pumping gas and brake.

I lingered in the car after I parked, bones not ready to shift to greater responsibility or additional weight bearing. But then I got out of the car.

I stood and walked and passed through doorways and ascended stairs and unlocked locks with keys. I was still on Zoom.

My friend Jen called. That was weird. Who just calls and why? I texted her to say that I couldn’t talk, that I was in a meeting, but I could text.

That’s when I saw all the other texts.

That’s when I wrote in the chat: “I just got really bad news, I have to go, sorry.”

As I write this, I see you tending to plants on a patio. You laugh, frequently.

Everyone loves you.

Everyone loves you.

Everyone loves you.

I feel my bones in this chair. I am keeping my bones in the picture.

I don’t know what to do with the rest.

Love, JD

Cecilia Gentili’s 2022 epistolary memoir, Faltas: Letters to Everyone in My Hometown Who Isn’t My Rapist, won the ALA Stonewall Book Award. And she did, and was, so much more. Cecilia died on February 6, 2024.