I pinned the card up on the bottom right-hand corner of the bulletin board – the spot where my eyes rest every time I put something in the compost bin (that you convinced me to get.) You are smiling, surrounded by your girls in a place you love. But those of us who know you best see the sadness wrapped around you. You were mourning. And now so are we.
One day, maybe I won’t ask myself the same question every time I look at that picture. I won’t wonder how it is that you will never be here, in my kitchen, with us again. I won’t think about how the last time you were here, we had no idea it would be the last time; how two weeks later, the assumption that we would grow old together shattered along with your girls’ worlds.
That day, I told my husband – your best friend, “I’ve got this. I’ve lost a best friend before.” But I didn’t. Not at all. At first, I tried to figure out why. Was it because she was sick, so we knew it was coming? Or because she had no children and every time I look at yours my mind spins through all that is to come; all the things they will do without you by their sides. Maybe it’s because I never thought I’d have another best friend like the one I lost, and then I met your wife.
As we were exchanging introductions in our daughters’ 2-year-old classroom, my friend was in a hospital bed 200 miles away, a machine breathing for her while she planned her funeral. It was a time thick with 18 years’ worth of memories, making it impossible to focus on the here and now. Even if I had, I doubt it would have occurred to me that this pregnant redhead and her husband would feature in my most important memories to come.
Parties and playdates. Beach trips and baseball games. Black tie galas and backyard barbecues. Out on your boat and in at my dining room table (the one that you broke, producing my favorite dinner party story of all time!) It didn’t matter where we were or what we were doing, when the four of us were together, it was the best time. And we weren’t done. We had plans. Boy did we.
Now we have 20 years’ worth of memories and questions without answers. We have brave smiles and inboxes filled with messages asking how your family is doing; and how we are doing. Sometimes I hear you. I wonder if you hear me when I talk to you, which I do every day. I tell you what I can’t tell your girls – how useless I feel in the face of their tremendous loss.
I solve problems. It’s what I do in my professional life. It’s what I do in my personal life. I take in a set of facts, process them, and offer up solutions. It’s why my clients hire me. It’s why I’m a trusted confidante for my friends. It’s who I am. And it means nothing in the face of this.
I cannot solve for your absence. No solution will make it easier. There is no playbook to tell me how to navigate this uselessness.
You know I can hear you laughing at me, right? I can see you shaking your head, that half-grin that means you’re deciding whether you should say what you’re thinking. That look that reminds me that I am making things more complicated than they need to be.
“He made people feel seen,” I told your wife.
I am not alone in that assessment. It is a sentiment repeated over and over by people who knew you in different ways and at different times. It’s the little things, like filling my wine glass that I didn’t even know was empty and teasing me like the sister you never had. It’s the big things, like loving my children like your own and my husband like a brother. It’s showing up even when you cannot ease the pain or mend the broken heart.
Sometimes there is no plan to show you how to move forward because everything that forward once meant is no longer there. And it’s in those moments when we can do nothing more than let people feel seen, when we have nothing more to offer than our presence, that people understand how much we love them. I just wish it didn’t take your absence to make that so clear.
We love you, my friend, and we’ll take good care of those girls of yours even when it means just sitting with them in the darkness.