Ten years

My friend died yesterday. The boy, the 23-year-old with non-Hodgkin's lymphoma, didn't have months left to live. He barely had days, and I am sad. Completely, utterly, terribly sad.

I feel guilty about the degree to which I've been shaken by his death. I feel like grief isn't my right. He wasn't a close friend of mine. If not for the friends that we share, I never would have known his fate, but we do share friends. We did share friends and they are devastated.

After I found out about his death, after I cried at my desk in my cube down in Cubeville and a coworker came over to hug me as the tears streamed down my face, I submitted an application to volunteer with the local branch of the leukemia and lymphoma society. Then, I went out with a friend and I drank.

It didn't help.

I awoke thick-headed, fuzzy and blue. I also awoke with a cold. I thought about taking a mental health day or a physical health day or some sort of day so I could sit on my couch, eat ice cream and watch soap operas, but that wouldn't help either and I already planned to take days in the upcoming weeks, time when I could see the friends that we shared. At least at work, I wouldn't be alone with my thoughts or so I imagined. But they keep coming. The thoughts. The guilt over my grief.

I don't mourn the end of a friendship but the loss of a sweet boy and his life so short. He was 23. I have already lived 10 years more than he will ever have.

Ten years ago, I moved across the country and found a job that brought so many friends, a company cruise, a Super Bowl party at FedEx Field and airline miles. An appreciation of wine. Good food. That of chefs Thomas Keller, Michele Richard and Nobu Matsuhisa.

In the past 10 years, I've seen the sun set on the Great Barrier Reef and over sand dunes in Namibia. I've seen it rise in Istanbul, glinting off the dome of the Blue Mosque. I've searched Rome for Vatican City in a snow globe (which I never did find) and sat with a book on the Spanish Steps, along the Seine, near the black water at Emerald Tower. I have seen fields of lavender outside the Abbe de Senanque and near the vineyards of Franschhoek. People tangoing in the streets of Buenos Aires.

In the past 10 years, I've seen known wonders of the world - the footprint of the Mausoleum of Halicarnassus, the remains of the Temple of Artemis at Ephesus, the Taj Mahal, Stonehenge, the Colosseum, Hagia Sofia, Victoria Falls – and unknown wonders – my unborn niece on an ultrasound screen, my nephew growing into a proper young man, the lines forming on my brother's brow, the first buds of spring, falling in love.

I have flown to London to see a play for which I did not have tickets. I've walked the streets of Paris with a French Foreign Legionnaire.

The past 10 years have not always been easy with the loss of beloved grandparents and the tragic death of a friend in the week before her wedding. Moving. Changing jobs. Changing lives. Falling out of love. The past 10 years have included fear and uncertainty, frustration and loneliness as well as utterly pure, laugh-out-loud joy.

The past 10 years have been full.

My friend died yesterday. The boy, the 23-year-old with non-Hodgkin's lymphoma, didn't have months left to live. He barely had days. I have already lived 10 years more than he will ever have, and I am sad.

Completely, utterly, terribly sad.


Tag: Death