Grief delayed, Angela Gugliotta 1963 - 2010

[lydy]

I just found out that someone I loved passionately died five an a half years ago. The fact that this is old news doesn't help a bit. I am gutted.

I may write more on this later. In the mean time, her name was Angela Gugliotta. I loved her immoderately. She was a professor at the University of Chicago. She was one of the smartest, most intriguing, passionate people I have ever known. Our lives took us in different paths, and I have always regretted not being able to reconnect.

May her memory be a blessing.

Comments

[lydy.livejournal.com]

I had tried to reconnect. It didn't go well. She had returned to a fairly conservative Catholicism, and she had three kids and was battling cancer. She had no spoons to revisit her libertine past and long ago love. In her very brief note, which made it clear she never wanted to hear from me again, it sounded as if she regretted our high school romance. We traded lives. When she knew me, I was a fundamentalist Christian, a preacher's kid, and a virgin. She was a wonderfully Bohemian libertine rebelling against her Roman Catholic background. We got older; I left the faith and she returned to it. I made my choices in part informed by our relationship. I do not know what went into her choices. I will always love her. I wish I could know more about her life after we parted, but there is no one I can reasonably ask.

[wyld-dandelyon.livejournal.com]

Oh, that's sad. If she'd just died, you could have gone to her wake and shared only the most bland things about your friendship with her and encouraged the family to talk a bit, but so long ago, yeah, you're likely stuck with the mystery.

Even if she longed to revisit your romance, being sick and having limited physical and emotional resources, what else could she do but put all her spoons to doing what she could for her children and husband?

I hope she was happy.

[lydy.livejournal.com]

I understood exactly why she did what she did. Insofar as it matters, I even approved of it. Obviously her life, her kids and spouse, were her priorities. Me, someone she'd had exactly one conversation with in the previous 25 years, someone who represented many things that she had since repudiated? I cannot fault her for her choice. But it would be a lie to say it didn't hurt me, deeply. It's one of those weird tragedies, a story untold, a love unrequited, a betrayal never redeemed, a passion still unslaked. Whatcha gonna do? Draw water, chop wood, I guess.

Anga always left me off balance and confused. Our entire relationship, from beginning to end, was a puzzle I was completely unable to solve. She was smarter than me, never said what she meant without layering it in poetry and allusion, and I never caught up. To love Anga was to love confusion, uncertainty, potential, and doubt. She was astounding, and to this day, I do not know what she saw in me.

I hope she was happy. She certainly made those choices from a position of knowledge rather than ignorance. It's fitting, I suppose, that until the end she remains, for me, an unsolved conundrum, a brilliant well of doubt.

[wyld-dandelyon.livejournal.com]

She sounds like quite a character.