It pains me to admit that I think about you more now than I did when you were alive. I stare into your negative space and fear that one day I will go twenty-four hours without pausing to remember you. As the sound of your voice grows more distant, leaving parts of you behind seems inevitable. I no longer remember all the steps to our secret handshake. I let your tense slide from present to past and even past perfect, the one used for actions that have been completed before others take place.Selfishly, one of the worst realizations is that you are only the first of the big losses I will face in my life. It’s not just our grandparents who look older these days: our parents no longer seem as invincible as they once did. I’ve also realized that you might not be the only friend who dies young or unexpectedly. And as cliché as it sounds, I’ve lost my sense of adolescent immortality. I know it could just as easily be me.While it is frightening to think of what comes next, somehow, in your own way, you’ve prepared me for it. You were my first friend and my first eulogy. I think it would make you, the eternal optimist that you were, happy to know that your friendship keeps making me a better, stronger person. You showed me that I can function in the face of tragedy. You taught me the vocabulary of grief so I can comfort others when they need it. I never would have asked for it to be this way, but if this is what I can take from it, I will. So, dearest friend, that’s all I have to share for now. I’ll raise a glass for your 18th birthday this summer, and, as always, I’ll keep you in my thoughts. zaidvilla
Posted on: Wed, 08 Oct 2014 02:58:05 +0000
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