Back in October of 2017 I learned that my childhood friend, one of my first friends, had brain cancer. I wrote a piece about it.

Here it is: http://paterfamiliasdomesticus.com/an-unexpected-visit-from-the-ghosts-of-my-childhood/

This morning I learned that he passed away.

In a crisis or an emergency, or emotionally charged situation, I tend to be the calm cool and collected one. I take a step back and start seeing what needs to happen, what I can quietly do. I think it’s a quality that has served me well as a Stage Manager, where there’s nearly always a good time for panic. In the big picture, it’s a good thing. Someone needs to be the calm one after all. But in the moment, I feel shame over it. It feels insensitive, it feels like a lack of empathy, it feels detached. Again, I can always forgive myself. There are ways other than hugs to show support and empathy. But still…

The news of Mike’s death has left me feeling less detached. I’m feeling a sharper pain here. Besides having watched his battle since it was announced, I think part of it might have something to do with a part of me dying with Mike, a part of me that I never felt I had a suitable grip on. He represented some of my best childhood memories. With his passing, a part of my childhood turned into dust and blew away. All that I have of him are memories and no more to make.

It’s time to stop mincing my words. I am wrecked. Simply wrecked. It’s easy to look at the wreckage of a flooded city or a house destroyed by a tornado and think, “Holy (bleep)!”

A similar sentiment can be applied to someone openly weeping in front of you. It’s striking, it never quite leaves your memory.

Then there is the kind of wreckage that never shows itself. It goes deep, very deep. It touches the core. It’s an internal wreckage that still leaves the walls intact. It’s the kind of wreckage that one can easily walk past without having known about it. I feel like I’m the latter right now and I can’t find words to adequately express it. I know I will not be satisfied with the words that I find. I’m not sure I will ever be satisfied with these words. But here I am, wrecked by the news of my friend’s death even though I haven’t seen nor spoken to him in decades.

I have not yet lost many friends to death. The older I get and the more connections I make, I’m realizing that the trend can only reverse. I’m realizing that death will be a defining facet of the second act of life. Now we are at the stage where we all start having to say goodbye. Friends, unlike family, are a chosen lot. You make a conscious choice with them. When that choice is made, whether you’re thinking it at the time or not, you have also made the choice to someday say goodbye. Choosing a friend, choosing to someday say goodbye—choosing to someday suffer a broken heart. Why do we do this to ourselves? Because I think loneliness is more painful.

The formation of a pearl has always struck me as a painful process for the oyster. Maybe that’s what we’re all doing, just building our own pearls.

Regardless, I’m learning that there’s a different sort of pain when it involves a deliberate choice over the built-in and (potentially) assumed Love of family.

My childhood has always existed in a nicely sealed tidy little box. There was no long goodbye with my childhood. Within days of graduating from eighth grade, my family moved out of state. After spending first through eighth grade with the same twenty-some-odd children, that life effectively ended with a clean and definitive cut. It was a chapter with an abrupt ending and I was off to become a part of a completely new life. My childhood friends still had the luxury of some familiarity. They were still in proximity to each other, and could enjoy an occasional glimpse of each other in a crowded hallway between classes, many likely even shared classes.

Mine? It ended when the moving truck’s doors opened in the driveway of our new Home. Like all of my family’s possessions, my childhood was put into a moving box.

Still, why am I such a wreck over Mike’s passing? Why am I a little ruined over the death of someone I have not spoken to in decades?

I think the other part might be regret. While I do not regret the box that my childhood went into, I do regret what I did with that box. I allowed myself to forget it. I put it in a forgotten corner of a forgotten closet. I allowed myself to lose touch with the individuals that helped make me who I was and ultimately who I am.

Mike’s disease caused a rip in that box. Mikes death caused the contents of that box to dump out.

I regret having lost touch with Mike and with all of my former classmates. I regret not visiting him. I regret the fact that my opportunities to reunite with him, to speak with him, to laugh with him again, are all over. I will never again see him on this earth. Unlike the box of my childhood, this is a box that has been closed and sealed forever.

When one hears the words, “Live life with no regrets” images of skydiving, or visiting exotic places or pursuing a dream get conjured. The message becomes deeper, more beautiful, and arguably easier when you take it to a less Instagram-Friendly place. Visit friends and family as often as you can, play with your children, buy that crappy cup of overpriced lemonade from that enthusiastic child sitting next to the misspelled sign. But most importantly, tell Loved ones that you Love them. Would you want your final words towards someone you care for to be anything less than that affirmation? You never know when you will see someone for the very last time, and you never know when you will speak your final words to them. Never regret that you did not take the opportunity to tell a Loved one they are Loved. Mike, the Mike I know, the Mike who departed this earth, will never hear the words I wish I had spoken.

“Live life with no regrets” Today I realized a new regret.

I miss my friend.