Part one is here.
1. I thought about adding him to the first post I wrote years ago because we had already drifted apart by then. But, I hoped the months without talking would lead into months of better contact. I don't know if I've seen him since, though. Nothing happened -- no falling out or bad argument, and there are still "heard that old song and thought of you"-type texts from time to time -- but he's a single urban professional and I'm a married suburban mom and there are only so many meals you can sit down to together to relive the good old days before it becomes painfully clear there are no new memories to talk about. Still. Oh still. There are simply no words for how much his friendship once meant to me.
2. We're still friends, technically, and I wish her all the best in all the world but there was a time we were inseperable. We would laugh so hard, I'd end up spilling tears, and friendships with that much laughter are so rare, so special. You can't stay that close with someone forever, of course, as you both grow up and get jobs and make families and move to different cities. Life just can't be an all-night laugh-fest in a college dorm forever, but you hope the friendship might evolve as the years barrel on. Ours didn't, and that's okay. It really is okay, but laughing until you cry is pretty okay too.
3. I dated him for a couple months, maybe not even that long. He was the rare Democrat in a sea of young conservatives at my school, and it was so refreshing to find him. At lunch one day, I looked down at my phone and realized we'd been talking for hours, and he had missed his next class. "I'm so sorry! You needed to go!" "I'd rather be here," he said, and that's always how he made me feel, that he wanted to be with me, no matter what we were doing. While it ended when it needed to and I never wished it hadn't, I still wish I could thank him for reminding a broken 19 year old that she was worth talking to for hours.
4. I saw her at my high school reunion and she was just the same. Loud and full of life and beautiful and fun, just like all those years ago, and she put me instantly at ease just like all those years ago. I always enjoyed every minute I spent with her, but we lost touch for all the same pointless, stupid reasons every pair of great friends loses touch: geography, busy schedules, new friends, new loves. I hate that people can be so careless with the relationships they care about. I hate that we just let friendships end, not because we want them to or need them to but because we fool ourselves into thinking we can always reconnect tomorrow.
5. She was my dance teacher in high school and she was -- hands down, without a doubt -- the best teacher I've ever had in any subject or hobby. She was so damn tough, she left us all in a heap of sweat on the floor at the end of every class, and she smirked about it the entire time. She pushed and pushed and pushed and she never let us go a minute early but usually ten minutes late and she'd look at us with a gleam in her eye that said, "I dare you to complain. Just try it." We never did. I wanted to do one particular type of leap that I kept struggling with -- it was a tough move -- and she said, "Go home, move your furniture, and practice it over and over and over until you get it." Practice, that was her only advice. Keep going, she would scream at us. Again, she'd bark. She never expected us to be perfect, but she'd rage if we ever dared to give up. We became great because of her.
I got a call late one night a few years later. She was killed in a car accident. I never thanked her for all she taught me.
6. He took me to a fancy dinner when I didn't have a Homecoming date and out for ice cream when I didn't have a Valentine's date and he'd leave me hilarious messages on my answering machine because he knew they made me laugh even if he never once saw me laugh while listening to them. My freshman year of college, I did something pretty shitty to another friend, and most of our mutual friends stopped speaking to me for a while. Except him. He stayed by my side for those painful few weeks of cold shoulders. It's so clear when I look back on our friendship that before Mike, no one really loved me for me like he did. I would have laughed in your face if you had told me back then that we'd stop speaking one day. Never, I would have thought. Not until we're both dead and gone. Life can be so predictable on the one hand and then break us in half with surprise on the other.