A Little More Bliss
Bruce came home from Europe with wine, chocolate, and a cold. I spent the day nursing cups of tea, heavy on the honey. I may have miscalculated the amount of caffeine so here I sit. Playing with the Internet. I think of the Internet as a finite amount of information and when Bruce and I speak, I often tell him I am reading the Internet. Sometimes when I am bored, I tell him I’ve read the whole Internet and am just waiting for someone to write something else for me to read. Really, the world does revolve around me.
Tonight, I did something I’ve never done, spurned on by something Bruce told me a few nights ago. He was telling me about the google search of long lost friends. I have a somewhat fatalistic approach to my friendships and am of the general opinion that I have the friends I want and the ones that were left behind, whether by distance or disdain, were just that, left behind. Not having a need to weigh myself down with those messy things like relationships and emotions, I’ve allowed myself to believe that I am behaving within normal social parameters.
Tonight I found my first long lost friend. And guess what. He died last year.
There was the flood of emotions (shock, disbelief, grief) and I suspect that is normal. But then came the wave of the other. I started to read about his life, and while it seems that he was deeply loved and will be missed by many, I wonder, is he better off? He never made it out of our town and was holding his status quo. Good ol’ boy doing what he aught to, but I wonder, was he slowly dying inside? Was he feeling shock, disbelief and grief as his dreams of getting out faded away to something so very different.
I remember the boy that caused more trouble than he was worth. I remember the boy that worked hard but was misunderstood. I remember the boy that wanted to be something, anything, that got him out of his house, out of our town. I remember a boy that had it pretty bad and knew that there had to be something more, a reason for his life.
I can’t say that there was a reason for his life. He died young and right where I left him. Behind.