I had a friend when I was younger.
G and I would talktalktalktalktalktalk talk about everything, but mostly about religion. I never was one of those "The bible said it, I believe it and that is the end of it" sorts. I had to think about it, turn it over and look at it. Scratch my beard. Wonder why. Eventually I figured it out, but sometimes people got uncomfortable about me talking about things, asking why. G never did.
There was an "elephant in the room" with G and I. I was unsure how much of an elephant there was, whether it was there or not. He never said. So I ignored it. I just liked having him as my friend, my only one with whom I could talk about religion. We were tight. We could be apart for a very long time and pick right back up. Though in some of those spaces he developed habits that changed him. Drinking and smoking pot became his friends too, such that he kinda changed a bit. Hunter S. Thompson was his hero.
G and I the last time we spoke was a terrible terrible conversation. One wherein he professed his undying love for me and I bawled. He told me I inspired him, that I was the only girl he had ever loved (or something like that). When we first met, I was a little attracted to him, but as he got older he grew in strange ways. Ones that I grew away from. We stayed friends, but it was different, and only maybe when we first met did I like him so much.
G and I don't speak anymore. He is married, I am married. I lurk at his blog. I remember the past we shared. But his present has surely defined him more than anything he and I went through together. In this last year he lost twin daughters an uncle and a grandfather.
As I was driving around I thought of G. I wonder if he would ever, ever recover from 2006. Whenever I think about him now, I cry. He wasn't supposed to become a tragic figure. I wonder how a person recovers from losing twin daughters, babies they were, days old. Beautiful they were. Intensely beautiful babies.
How does life become happy again after that?
Our neighbors lost one twin daughter in a horse riding accident. They seem to rarely leave the house. J says that when something like that happens, it changes a person so that they always carry sadness and you have cut them alot of slack. I am sure he is right.
Good night G, I still pray for you. It is all I can do.
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2 comments:
This story really touched me. While I have absolutely no idea how painful it must feel to lose a child (let alone two), I do know about the idea of life being so out of your hands that a horrible event can change you forever. I'm certain your old friend feels pain, and that pain will never completely go away. But really, do we ever truly want every ounce of that pain to die? Having a small part of that pain with us is such a blessing; it grounds us to that event and the people who are left behind, and, more importantly, it humbles us in a way that nothing but a horrific event can do. As devastating as I can only imagine his year has been, there's beauty in it, too. Besides, I'm a firm believer in the idea that God doesn't give us anything we can't handle. It absolutely feels like we can't handle it at the time, but he graces us with such strength that is unknown until we truly need it. That's part of the beauty.
Only a voice of experience could have spoken these words Megan. Thankyou. I never thought anything good could come from such loss, but then I haven't traveled that road...yet.
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