Yesterday
was the two-year anniversary of a death, a friend of a friend. I knew him, not
especially well, but my friend, his friend, who had seen him through to the end
of a devastating course of cancer, is my best friend. Three and bit months
earlier was the two year anniversary of the death of one of my oldest friends.
Also of cancer. Both so young, 35 and 30. It had me thinking, two years, what
is two years. Is it a lot of time? Is it not much at all? It is two years that
neither one of them lived. A lot has happened in that time, and also a lot is
exactly the same. How are such periods to be measure, and now standing at the
line, the edge of such an anniversary, are we to be sad? Are we to be proud of
achievements or worried by problems that still linger?
Two years ago was a
crazy time, my best friend and I were living together and both grappling with
watching people we loved waste away to nothing until finally they disappeared.
I was living with one man and falling in love with another. We were both lost
in the woods of careers, of success, still are I guess, although we have both
moved forward, in our own ways. It is
hard to feel that distance grow between the time you held them and now. Some
day, if I make it, it will be twenty years, thirty. All that time they have
stayed the same age, remained the same people as we ebb and flow though this
life. I am stressed and a bit anxious these days, trying to figure out work,
trying to reach for the stars, or at least the low hanging ones. But at this pause, it makes you think you
shouldn’t worry, shouldn’t tear yourself up about the unknown, about the
mistakes, that from then until now, through all the ups and downs, everything
is alright, everything except for them, they are gone and that is the only
finite thing, the only solid reality, everything else is perspective. And so it
makes you feel you should be freer, so what if you don’t get the job, so what
if a project goes sideways, so what if a client is unhappy. These are but stumbling blocks they never got
to face.
Two years, it seems so much longer than one year, when it was all so fresh, now is the first anniversary of the fade, the slow forgetting. Doesn’t that feel more tragic that those other life hiccups, but it is just as natural, just as normal. And you realize you can’t hold any of it up for too long, everything as to be let go of at some point to be what ever it may be good, bad, distant. I am not sure the conclusion of such thoughts, except for that I had them, and that is enough for now. And always and forever I will remember.
