A dear friend from college passed away this weekend. We’re all chasing the tail end of our thirties and discovering our early forties so it I suppose it’s about time for that sort of thing to start happening; especially with Covid-19, vaccine complications and the like.
Now, I’ve not stayed in touch with my college crew. We all moved away from each other. Some started families, some started careers and some started both. I didn’t start either immediately. Still had some growing & learning to do after a very stunted childhood development.
Unfortunately, when I moved away from college to continue that development I took my first love with me. I did not treat her as she deserved to be treated and we eventually split up. It’s a decision I still regret – not so much from a lost love perspective, I made piece with that decades ago. I regret it in the sense that when you look back on your youth and realize that you hurt someone who didn’t deserve it and someone you loved at the time.
It wasn’t that I was abusive, to be clear. I was neglectful. I didn’t tend to the relationship or her as one should in a healthy relationship. I isolated myself and ignored her feelings and needs…and she stayed with me far longer than she should have. The follies of youth and inexperience, I suppose we all learn things the hard way.
Enough about the past. It’s a stubborn thing that refuses to change no matter how much we plead with it. The most we can do is ask it to teach us lessons so we can grow and do better in the future.
So, a dear friend who had a tremendous impact on my life back then died this past July 4th weekend. Like I mentioned earlier, we had not remained close over the last 15 years but I still intended on going to the funeral once I heard. After having hosted several funerals where few people showed up, I’ve realized how important it is to those that survive the lost to have people show up and be kind, supportive and share stories. So show up I did.
Once there I was much more emotional than I anticipated. To be honest, I didn’t expect to feel particularly sad because, honestly, it has been 15 years. Once I was there and saw the body though, it hit me. I remembered the good times we had and loss now suffered. I teared up a few times and I’m not ashamed to admit that I cried. There are not many times when it’s appropriate for men to cry but certainly a funeral is one of them.
I was a little disappointed to see that not many of her other college friends showed up. I’m sure they all had their reasons; distance, holiday plans, sick children, etc. Still, as somewhat of an expert in being the bereaved, I would have liked to have seen her surviving parents surrounded by friends telling her happy stories of the deceased’s life. That kind of thing means a lot when you’re in mourning.
So, I’m sitting in the service lost in my thoughts. My sports coat now ill-fitting thanks to a couple of years of Covid-19 related weight gain. I’m casually watching the crowd looking for someone I might recognize and of course there isn’t anyone. Then she walks in. The woman I loved back then and treated so poorly.
She’s barely hanging on. The death has clearly crushed her — she had a very close relationship with the deceased and obviously maintained that relationship over the years. She sees me and smiles, I give the biggest bear hug I can manage. She immediately strikes up a conversation with the people around us, she’s always been the social one.
During the conversation she stays at my side and my hand stays on her lower back. She doesn’t move away. It happens entirely automatically, naturally, without thinking. It’s also entirely out of character for me and entirely inappropriate. I’m not a tactile person by nature and certainly not with someone that’s been a stranger for the last decade and half…but here we are.
Her companion enters the room at that point and she pulls away, maybe a little sheepishly, and introduces Bret. I don’t know their precise relationship status but its easy enough to infer that they’re at least dating – you don’t bring friends to funerals for emotional support.
The service and funeral continue, both us of, I think, intentionally putting a little more physical distance between us…or at least I do and I project the same motive onto her because it makes for a better story.
At the reception after the funeral, we get a table together along with all of the deceased’s other college friends. I intentionally leave an empty seat between the two of us out of respect for her boyfriend. He seems like a good enough man at first meeting. I’ll always insist she deserves better but he seems kind and kindness can be enough. I’ll even forgive him being a raging liberal because as I’ve come to believe, character can be more important than politics or religion.
The group chats for several hours, swapping stories about the deceased and about each other’s lives over the years. Some of us have found great success, others less so but everyone has had a happy life and collected some happy memories. My first love reveals that after we broke up she got into a terrible, abusive marriage for many years and even her parents tried to force her to stay in it. Fortunately, with the deceased’s help she found the strength to leave. Hearing that at the table breaks my heart, a decade of suffering for no reason… but she’s in a good place now and that’s all that matters.
The group decides we should do a shot in honor of the deceased. So the boyfriend and I go to the bar, in another room, to buy drinks. He picks up one for himself and the former love. I order for the rest of the group. He tries to chip in and pay but its clear he’s a little tight on cash so we haggle a bit and tell him “I’ll pay, you carry.”
The real power move, gentlemen, is buying people a round and letting another man take the credit. Do that enough and someday you’ll have a reputation for being a good, humble man. Humble is, of course, BS but they’ll never know that.
A short aside, it’s amazing how much cheaper booze is at bars that aren’t in Nashville. A drink that would have been $20 here was only $7. Perhaps an argument for not living in a tourist trap of a city.
We do our shot and its getting late so the group says their goodbyes. I spend a little time with the deceased parents telling them how much their departed impacted and changed my life. They’re glowing and I’m glad to see that. They’re an incredibly sweet older couple and I would like to stay in touch with them. They lost their only child and that’s got to be hard. They’ll need people in their lives for the next little while.
As we’re leaving, I pull her aside and we talk a little more privately. I tell her I’m sorry for the way I treated her when we were younger and she accepts gracefully. We chat a little more, the conversation punctuated with several hugs. She wants to stay in touch and remain friends, I agree.
It’s a bittersweet coda to relationship that ended a decade and half ago. Maybe a pinch of regret but mostly, I think, one of fondness and nostalgia – the wounds healed by time. Two people bearing the battle-scars of life meeting again, remembering each other as we were: more innocent, more hopeful and youth still making us believe we held the world in our hands.
If