I Love You and Be Safe

Last night I said goodbye to my best friend. She is moving to Michigan where her fiancee is starting his residency at a hospital. I held it together very well, a part of me was worried I would burst into little tears around Gayle and her mother and her future in-laws. But I didn't. I said, I love you and be safe. I got into the car and drove away and I still didn't cry. I just felt very numb. It is not the friendship I am sad for. I know that we will continue to be close. I hope that one day when she and Raji have beautiful little cappuccino colored babies they will call me Auntie Jess. No, it's not the friendship that is gone, it is our childhood, our youth. We will never be 16 again, sitting in parking lots eating ice cream and complaining about life. We will never be 21 again and walking into weird bars in Tucson for the first time.

Saying goodbye made me realize very suddenly and abruptly that we are all moving apart from one another, apart and onto new paths, new journeys. This must be how parents feel when their children begin to grow beyond them. Such an odd mixture of happiness and joy and excitement for their new adventures coupled with a tiny nugget of sadness that is dull and lodges itself deep inside all that you thought was true about life.

But I am happy for her, no two people in love deserve this kind of happiness more than Gayle and Raji. They are like two old bookends that wound up next to one another in an attic somewhere, now that they are together, I cannot imagine them apart.

Life goes on, people move around, we are all only human.