A friend of mine from grade school died last weekend. I haven’t seen him since graduating high school over a decade ago.
When I found out, I immediately tumbled into our seventh grade lunch room.
Thirteen year old me plopped down on the same circle stool she always did, banging her knee on the bar that attached to the table. Daniel was across from her. Michael was beside him.
“Okay, today you’re going to learn about The Bus.”
Daniel, a Steelers fan, and Michael, a Green Bay fan, spent weeks of lunch periods during middle school teaching me about NFL football. I don’t remember why. I don’t remember a whole lot about middle school, but I remember those lunches. And I’ll never forget that Jerome Bettis is The Bus.
I look across the table at Daniel, with his grinning thirteen year old face. And crumble.
This isn’t the first time someone who I was friends with a long time ago has died. I didn’t keep in touch with many people from high school or before, but the internet has made so much information accessible. And I don't know what to do with it.
Part of me feels like I’m not allowed to be sad - like I might be seen as a grief chaser or I might offend the people that stayed close.
But I also do feel grief. Deep body-shaking-sobs grief. I’m sad I lost contact and curious about who this kid I loved grew up to be. I’m sad that they’re gone from this world. Even if we were on parallel paths, both paths were always supposed to keep going. I’m devastated thinking about the pain he might have been experiencing. I mourn for his family - parents who drove us between houses years ago, and spouses and children I’ve never met.
He knew a whole different version of me - a version the people I know now never met. It’s intimate in a way. Different parts of me, younger parts, step out to grieve for themselves. And to show their respects.
And I only know a past version of him. A version that has no idea what their future looks like. A kid. An innocent, vivacious, goofball kid.
The last time I saw him was in his purple high school graduation gown.
I scour the internet for who Daniel became.
The second I open Facebook, he's there. Michael posted something about his passing, about how great he was, about how they were still best friends after all of this time. My thirteen year old eyes well up and I reach across the table for their hands.
In the comments, I see Michael’s friends that I don’t know, sending condolences, but also messages from the faces from my past all grown up, shocked and heartbroken.
I search for Daniel’s page. He looks exactly how grown up Daniel would look except maybe a little cooler than I would have imagined. I learn about his life through pictures of his family and his band, and through posts about wanting to help other people and how it runs in his blood.
I look at his partner’s page, full of messages of devastation. I don’t know her. I’m so so sorry for her. I feel like I’m invading her privacy so I stop.
I’m back at the lunch table, but he's not there anymore. Today me is sitting with thirteen year old me and rubbing her back. High school me has joined us, sporting poorly applied stage makeup and a collage of costume pieces from the school musicals we did together. An homage, what an artist. She’s humming one of Daniel’s solos from choir.
A younger version of me, she’s eight, slides in on the other side of my teenage self. Her legs dangle under the chair, unable to touch the cafeteria floor. She gestures for us all to follow her.
And we’re transported.
To third grade. It’s the year I moved to Virginia. All of the parts of me pause at the door of our classroom as eight-year-old me barrels in, running straight for eight year old Daniel. He’s so small. His head is just black floppy hair and glasses.
“Hi!”
“Hi.”
“You are going to have THE MOST AMAZING LIFE. You’re going to be a drummer, just like you want to. You have a band when we’re in school, but when you grow up, you have another band. And that band plays all around this town and you have so many friends who also love music. Your mom and dad become mom and dad to the whole music scene. You go to concerts and festivals a lot. You fall in love. You get your heartbroken, but then you fall in love again. You have a daughter. She’s so pretty and she looks like she’s fun and smart and I never met her, but I can tell she loves you soooooo much. And you love her too. You never get rid of your awesome curly hair, it just grows longer and you grow more hair on your face. You smile a lot even though sometimes you’re hurting. You make people laugh and smile all of the time. You try to do good and make the world better for other people and I think you succeed. You keep some of our friends your whole life! You’re really loved. Your grown up life is really cool.”
“You’re weird.”
“Yeah. Oh, and in a couple years you’re going to teach me about football and I’ll never forget it.”
“Do you know about The Bus?”
“And you’re really good in the school musicals. You make them way more fun.”
“What’s a musical?”
“I’m sad sometimes too.”
“Yeah.”
“I’m glad we’re friends.”
“Me too.”
