A friend just sent out an email starting with, "Thinking of you all on this day, 9/13/10. Unbelievable that today marks year two of Jeff's passing."
I think about Jeff almost every day. And since I'm pursuing a career in nursing, the reality of his disease and death visit me whether I want them to or not. I'm a little shocked that I didn't synch the date with its significance until her email, because I'd been feeling the date getting closer for some time.
The last few months have felt particularly hard again. When he first died, I wondered how I'd ever stop feeling that searing, hot loss - the reality that this person was gone forever. I couldn't imagine what that would mean for my life and even for mine and my husband's relationship, but it's a loss that we feel in big and small ways continually.
When someone dies there's a lot of talk about eventually "moving on." I'm not sure what it means to move on, but I imagine it has to do with finding a place in your heart for the person where you can appreciate and love him without it hurting. I seem to actively resist this process. I mourn the loss of our unique friend and what he meant to all of us, and part of me thinks that if I let myself hurt bad enough for long enough, maybe it will turn out to be a horrible nightmare or cynical joke. Jeff took such an interest in his friend's lives, feeling such excitement for little wins and discoveries. To spend an excellent weekend with Jeff could include anything - cabin in the woods, reading folk stories outloud from an old book, doodling together, whittling sticks, roasting s'mores, picnicking on bread and cheese... or talking about a book, watching a movie, or making milkshakes. It was an easy friendship, and it was one in which I was completely, amazingly accepted.
I didn't have to entertain him or say anything special - I didn't even have to change out of pajamas if I didn't want to. I didn't have to be funny or witty or have something planned. Hell, sometimes I'd even fall asleep. Jeff didn't care. He was our friend. And he stayed with us through awkward high school phases and the very beginning of our relationship, to shuttling Morgan and I back and forth between colleges when we went to different schools, to visiting me on a random weekday night for a few hours when I was lonely in Harrisonburg, to when Morgan and I were finally at the same school and joined a co-ed service fraternity that became so important to our lives and mostly seemed bizarre to him, to the times after college when Morgan and I went long-distance again and I struggled to find something worthwhile in Pittsburgh (he visited me there, too), to the days when Morgan and I moved in together for the first time, to engagement and marriage where he was our best man, and to when he died 2 months later.
Jeff was more than a friend. And he was such a part of my whole person and who I came to be. Without this piece of myself I can function - I walk and talk, I make new friends, I travel, and I have happy and sad experiences just the same. My body can compensate for the loss, but it will never function quite the same.
I wonder when I'll stop feeling angry and robbed, though he'd probably be mad at me for not being able to have peace with it yet (and for this, well, self-indulgent divulgence). It all just happened so fast. There's too much history here; there's too much left undone and unsaid. Not being able to say goodbye, not having the time we thought we would, was so cruel. It's too much.
