Once Upon Forever

Journaling the journey’s end

• This piece was written in 2017

Grieving

Back in the day, we had each other’s backs and each other’s shadows. I should say, we were each other’s other shadow. We took selfies at dusk, Michael and I, gliding in tandem, our shadows dancing a duet behind us. Though we took innumerable glorious photos in daylight, the shadow pictures were special unto us.

Barely nine months into best-friends-forever, smoldering resentment on one end led to seething indignation on the other, led to the second spewing of Mt. Vesuvius. Our friendship emerged, ashen, a shadow of its former self.

Its shadow overshadowed ours. We stopped taking pictures, shadows and otherwise. When we walked, we rarely talked. No more strolling and lolling, sauntering and dawdling. No more cause to pause for photo-ops. No more tandem meandering. Each of us— silently, separately — picked up the pace, as if in a grim race for the finish. The friendship limped on behind us for another four years until finally, exhausted and demoralized, it quit.

I’ve hidden every shred of evidence of the glory days, as if desperate to shield them from search and seizure. I’ve ensured that no tell-tale pictures remain to give up what was given up. Their vibrancy is in stark contrast to the absence of life. Brilliant sunsets serve as sad reminders that our sun shall rise no more. Panoramic seascapes stand as a testament to the ship that has sunk.

It is the shadow pictures that torment most. Seeing me and my shadow and my shadow and my shadow’s shadow makes a mockery of us all. Thus, to the shadow of our death: touché.

Laid to rest

I made it!

Toss that trite trio to any pair of ears, and right back at yours comes an automatic “congratulations.” It is a reasonable response under most circumstances — as to this event, condolences rather than congratulations are in order.

The “it” that “I made” is a deadline in reverse. D-day, December 18th, had been — from 2011 through 2016 — the date by which I’d have to drop off Michael’s birthday card.

This year, December 18th was the date after which — having not acknowledged his birthday — I could officially declare our friendship dead. A “deadline” it was indeed — twice over — perversely flipped, with a macabre twist.

Ever since my birthday, February 17th, I’ve contrived to avoid encountering Michael. He set the precedent for the year by declining to send me a card; therefore — provided there was no contact between us in the interim — it would be natural for me to decline to send one to him.

I’m not playing “petty-cake” here. This card game is not of the “no-tit-no-tat” variety. I’m not spiteful. I am in this instance an opportunist. The reason I followed Michael’s lead of February 17th is that it inspired me to pace purposefully to the finish line, December 18th, rather than limp off-course and meander mournfully for another five years.

The treasure that had been our friendship became irrevocably tarnished five years ago through gross mishandling on both parts. For the past five years, I’ve suffered continually the realization that attempts to polish it have proved futile — our erstwhile treasure will never regain its glorious luster.

On February 17th, 2017, I resolved to bury it; on December 18th, 2017, I did so.

Services were private.

Just in passing

I have to walk past Michael’s house every day. I’d have to go at least five minutes out of my way to avoid it.

I occasionally took the long route in the beginning, when it hurt so bad. Mostly, I just hurried past with my nose in a book and never did run into him. Perhaps Michael saw me and never let on. Just as well.

I’d passed him by for 15 years having had my nose in a book because I usually read when I walk (and chew gum too). One day, three years ago, I chanced to look up — and so we met. Soon thereafter, we became Best Friends Forever.

The “Forever” was not to be. Less than a year later, we had a major falling-out — the fall-out of which was fatal to the friendship.

After our explosion, we imploded. We made an awkward, drawn-out attempt to reconcile, but the inexorable performance pressure caved us in. After two maddening months spent playing let’s-pretend-we-can-simply-start-over, it was clear there was no going back to square one. The die had been cast: game over. Sadly, we picked up our tokens, packed up the board, and went eastward/westward home.

Neither of us acknowledged that there would be no re-match. For my part, though I decided to be receptive to another round if Michael called to suggest it, I declined to take the initiative. As it was, he never did call, so that was that.

For many months thereafter, whenever passing Michael’s house, I resolutely kept my eyes on the innards of my hardcover blinders.

Now, I’m past that stage. Today, it struck me: I no longer register his house.

It’s as if we never had been friends as if we’d never even met. And to me, this careless, unwitting erasure is more demoralizing than the loss in itself.

Is this state of mindlessness supposed to be what is so cloyingly termed “closure?” Is “the mourning process” now “complete?”

Complete — and then some, I’d say. The heartache is supposed to abate over time; the heart, it is hoped, will mend itself. Mend itself — not Hoover itself, sucking up every last speck of memory dust in the cortical crevices for good measure.

Whenever I had a spat with my sister and vowed never to speak with her again, my grandmother used to say that “never” is a long time.

“Forever,” alas, is not nearly long enough.

A second pass

I still think of Michael, my erstwhile BFF. I think of him with sorrow, in memoriam for the glory days. We spent hours together almost every day. “Walkie-Talkies,” Michael dubbed our meanderings — which I in turn dubbed “we-anderings.”

We wandered through the cemetery, wherein Michael’s father and Chuck’s wife lie cater-cornered. Chuck is my “Best Man,” a term I coined along with its female counterpart, “First Lady.” It’s always irked me that romantic partners who outgrew boy/girlhood 50-plus years ago lacked more dignified designations.

It was largely because of triangular tension that I had to back away from my BFF, which he resented, which I resented him for resenting, which momentum devolved into a death spiral. We tried half-heartedly to salvage the wreckage, but the damages were deemed irreparable; thus demoralized, we wandered no more.

Though by then any animosity had drained away whilst leaving behind the dregs of our relationship, I will not say “we parted as friends”; that would be oxymoronic. We cross paths from time to time, and on some such occasions, one of us will feel obliged to boomerang briefly into an awkward step with the other.

Just yesterday, Michael stopped to offer me a ride. I had just been thinking of him and told him so, but quickly cooked up a mundane reason so as to forestall our feeding on the raw emotion such as had been our customary sustenance.

Michael said he had recently been thinking of me as well after he’d come across a take-out menu from one of “our” Mexican restaurants (we’d been there only twice).

I was glad Michael had occasion to think of me, and I do think of him. Somehow, the knowledge that we still exist for each other in the constructs of our minds validates our prior friendship. That precious treasure will not again be bestowed upon us, but as they say: It’s the thought that counts.