Twenty years ago today I lost my best friend.
Regret is not something I deal with all that often. I don't wonder where all those years have gone. I don't joke about all that grey hair in college reunion pictures. For me, time passes and we leave signposts along the way. But this one, twenty years ... this one got me.
I don't miss him every day, I never have. But when I think about Tom and the South Bay years, I know those times changed my life. At his memorial service I read one of my favorite pieces of writing from John Steinbeck because those words described so clearly why time spent with Tom was so memorable. I offer you those words on this day.
"Time interval is a strange and contradictory matter in the mind. It would be reasonable to suppose that a routine time or an eventless time would seem interminable. It should be so, but it is not. It is the dull eventless times that have no duration whatever. A time splashed with interest, wounded with tragedy, crevassed with joy--that's the time that seems long in memory. And this is right when you think about it. Eventlessness has no posts to drape duration on. From nothing to nothing is no time at all."
My wish for all of you is that your times be splashed, wounded and crevassed.
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photo credit: flower x-rays
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1 comment:
"eventlessness has no posts to drape duration on" means (for me, in this moment) that I can't back out of the events we have planned — no matter how tempting the inclination. I think I have cultivated "eventlessness" in the hopes that it would lead to "dramalessness" —that, however, appears not to be the case.
"I'm sorry for your loss," isn't nearly enough... I hand you my silent meditation in memorium.
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