April, Relentless

A friend’s mother was buried today. She died over the weekend, cancer, and he’s a genuinely good person and there’s nothing useful to say to him. I keep trying sentences out in my head and they all land wrong.

There are stretches of time where nothing moves—weeks where you go through the same motions in the same order and the days are just the days. Then suddenly everything shifts at once. Departures, deaths, new starts. April has been that kind of month.

Becca is moving to Freiburg. She was one of my closest friends until recently, and she still is in the way that counts, and she’s decided to go as soon as she can arrange it. She thinks it’ll be better for her there. I think she’s right. That doesn’t make it a comfortable thought.

What I keep snagging on is how rarely I showed her what she meant to me. I was always preoccupied with something else—something I can’t even reconstruct now, which is its own small indictment. I’ll miss the specific things most: the baked cheese evenings, the walks we always did on the same loop, the afternoons that became whole days without anyone planning it. She has the clarity and the nerve to change something about her life when it needs changing. I’m not sure I’ve ever managed that.

You know how the rest goes. Everyone does. Other people pack and leave and arrive somewhere new, slightly different, while you’re still in the same room. I’ve been watching that pattern for a while, mostly from the inside. Tonight I’m picking up my history notes and finally making some progress on final exams, which is not the same as changing my life—but it’s what I’ve got.