First I took back that batch of cookies I’d baked especially for her last weekend, the ones with rolled oats and butterscotch chips and chunks of toffee. Then I asked for the note that went with the cookies back. I whited out the message line by line, from the bottom to the top. I handed back a box full of presents from over the years. It wasn’t enough to throw them out or donate them, because we do that sometimes even with things we still love. One of the books she’d given me, I’d regifted to my daughter. I pulled it from her bookshelf while she was out with her own friends one night, tucked it into a gift bag, and added it to the pile.
Deleting her from my phone was the easiest, first the contact gone, then erasing the conversation in one fell swoop. The e-mails took a bit longer, a search through the Gmail archives and deleting each birthday wish, each thread about when to have lunch, an endless supply of chat transcripts about Top Chef, what we had for dinner the night before, photos of cats. Facebook proved even harder to scrub, so much to untag, individual comments to delete.
For my heart, I used scalpel and syringe, excised each embroidered thread of memory, plunged out every drop of feeling that tipped the scales toward friendship. Our friendship was complex and deep; the surgery lasted hours.
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